EE360: Lecture 15 Outline

Cellular System Capacity

What is capacity?
Defining capacity
Shannon capacity of cellular systems
Information capacity of symmetric cellular multiple
access channels Hrishikesh Mandyam
Multicell capacity
User capacity

Summary
What is capacity?
Shannon capacity
Maximum achievable rate or set of rates with arbitrarily small
probability of error
Coding scheme not achievable, and complexity/delay are
infinite
Tractable formulas exist for point-to-point links, MAC and
degraded broadcast channels, and ad-hoc networks under
various assumptions
Other theoretical capacity definitions
Outage capacity
Computation cutoff rate (not very useful)
Capacity definitions used in practice
Achievable rates under practical system assumptions
User capacity under practical system assumptions
Defining Cellular Capacity
Shannon-theoretic definition
Multiuser channels typically assume user coordination and joint
encoding/decoding strategies
Can an optimal coding strategy be found, or should one be
assumed (i.e. TD,FD, or CD)?
What base station(s) should users talk to?
What assumptions should be made about base station
coordination?
Should frequency reuse be fixed or optimized?
Is capacity defined by uplink or downlink?
Capacity becomes very dependent on propagation model
Practical capacity definitions (rates or users)
Typically assume a fixed set of system parameters
Assumptions differ for different systems: comparison hard
Does not provide a performance upper bound
Approaches to Date
Shannon Capacity
TDMA systems with joint base station processing (Hrish)
Multicell Capacity
Rate region per unit area per cell
Achievable rates determined via Shannon-theoretic
analysis or for practical schemes/constraints
Area spectral efficiency is sum of rates per cell
User Capacity
Calculates how many users can be supported for a given
performance specification.
Results highly dependent on traffic, voice activity, and
propagation models.
Can be improved through interference reduction
techniques. (Gilhousen et. al.)
User Capacity
Maximum number of users a cellular
system can support in any cell.

Can be defined for any system.

Typically assumes symmetric data rates,
cells, propagation, and mobility.
Depends on the user specifications and
radio design
data rate, BER, modulation, coding, etc.
Multicell Capacity
Multiuser rate region per Hertz divided by
coverage area given reuse distance


Rate region (R
1
,,R
N
) can be obtained via
Shannon analysis
How to treat interference from other cells

Alternatively, can compute under practical
system assumptions
ASE sums rates in each cell:
2
1
) 5 (.
/ ) ,..., (
D
n
multicell
R
B R R
C
t
=
) ) 5 (. /(
2
D
i
i
R B R A t

=
Which link dictates capacity?
Reverse link (MAC)
Noncoherent reception
Independent fading of all users
Requires power control
Forward link (Broadcast)
Coherent demodulation using pilot carrier.
Synchronous combining of multipath.
Conclusion: reverse link has lower capacity
Thus, reverse link dictates capacity
Other cell interference will tend to equalize
performance in each direction.
In asymmetric traffic, forward link will be bottleneck

8C32810.44-Cimini-7/98
CDMA User Capacity
Single-Cell System
Similar to MAC user capacity





G=W/R is processing gain (W is bandwidth, R is data
rate)
q is interference plus noise (assumed fixed)
- Assumes power control
- Performance improvement through sectorization and
voice activity
) / ( ) 1 (
/
/
0
S N
R W
N E
b
q +
=
S N E
R W
N
b
q
+ =
0
/
/
1
Sectorization
Base station omni antenna is divided into M sectors.

Users in other sectors do not cause interference.

Number of users per sector is N
s
=N/M (reduces
interference by M).

Requires handoff between sectors at the base station


Voice Activity
Suppress signal when voice user not active.

Voice activity o=.35-.4 (reduces
interference by 60-65%).

Resynchronization for every talk spurt.
Higher probability of dropping users.
New Capacity (per cell)
Capacity increased proportional to the number of sectors
and inversely proportional to the voice activity (M/o
typically around 8).

Claim: CDMA is competitive with TD for a single-cell

Does not include impact of sectorization on out-of-cell
interference.
) / ( ) 1 (
/
/
0
S N
R W
N E
s
b
q o +
=
S N E
R W M
M MN N
b
s
q
o

|
|
.
|

\
|
+ = =
0
/
/
Multicell System
Codes reused in every cell.

No power control in forward link
Interference from adjacent cells can be very strong.

Power control in reverse link
All users within a cell have same received signal
strength
Interference from other cells have variable power
Fast fading (interference and signal) neglected (S/I
statistics).
The interferers transmit power depends on distance to his
base station.
Received power at desired base depends on distance to
base, propagation, and the interferers transmit power.
Reverse Link Interference
Total path loss: propagation (d
-4
falloff) and log-normal
shadowing ( is Gaussian, 8 dB STD)

Instantaneous interference power


r
m
is distance to interferers base, r
0
is distance to desired base

m
is shadowing to interferer base,
0
is shadowing to desired base
S is received power with power control
Power less than 1 since otherwise would handoff to desired base
1 10
) , (
10 / ) (
4
0
0
0
s
|
|
.
|

\
|
=

m
r
r
S
r r I
m m

4 ) 10 / (
10

= r L

Average interference power

- A is the cell area.
is the user density (=2N
s
/Sqrt[3])

is voice activity term (equals 1 w.p. o, 0 w.p. 1-o)
- Must be integrated against distribution of m, r
0
, r
m
,
0
,
m

- Simplify distribution of m by assuming minimum
distance.
- r
0
, r
m
uniformly distributed.
- Claim: I Gaussian since its a functional of a 2D white
random process
| | dA r r
r
r
S
I
m m
m
m


1 10 ) / ( 1 10
10 / ) ( 4
0
10 / ) (
4
0
0 0
s
|
|
.
|

\
|
=

}}
Mean and Variance
Numerical integration leads to E(I /S)=.247N
s
Second Moment:
Assumes autocorrelation of shadowing is a delta
function and STD is 8 dB.
Numerical integration leads to Var(I /S)=.078N
s


Total interference distribution
) / ( ) / (
/
/
1
1
0
S S I
R W
N E
s
N
i
i
b
q _ + +
=

=
I Gaussian, _
i
binomial r.v. with probability o
Capacity Calculation
Calculate probability E
b
/N
0
below target (BER
exceeds target) based on N
s
and these statistics.
.




Compute outage probability as a function of N
s.
Assumes target E
b
/N
0
=5 o=30
Results indicate 60 users/sector with 1% outage
S N E
R W
S I P BER P
b
N
i
i
s
q
o
o _
=
|
|
.
|

\
|
> + = >

0
1
3
/
/
/ ) 10 (
An Alternate Approach
Simulation approach
Includes three rings of interfering cells
Capacity for TDMA and CDMA compared
Similar assumptions about voice activity and
sectorization
TDMA assumes FH with dynamic channel
allocation
Results indicate CD greatly outperforms TD
Not surprising given the authors
Capacity degradation
Voice activity changed from .375 to .5, -30%
change

Path-loss changed from 4 to 3, -20% change

Multipath fading added, -45% change

Handoff margin changed from 0 to 6 dB, -40%
change

Power control error changed from 0 to 1 dB, -35%
change
Summary
Multiple definitions of cellular system capacity

True Shannon capacity unknown
Shannon capacity under given system assumptions still
complicated
Using multiccell capacity formulation allows
comparison of apples to apples

User capacity calculations highly dependent on
system assumptions
Easy to skew results in a given direction