Design Low Power Physical Layer of NB-IOT LTE Uplink Receiver

Introduction:

However, LTE was designed for high-speed communication and is not optimized for applications that
need to support a potentially large number of low-rate, low power and delay tolerant devices

The internet of things (IoT) is the big move forward, connecting our everyday household objects to the
cloud. Most commonly the IoT devices make use of the local wireless internet connections available and,
similar to land-line phones, this greatly limits the mobility of the user. The next big step came with
cellular mobile connections, allowing users to always be reachable on their phones (almost) anywhere
they go. The current 4G mobile systems make use of 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) to reach higher
throughput and improve robustness. To give IoT devices the same mobility and connection quality as
enjoyed by today’s mobile phones 3GPP introduced the narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) functionality in LTE
release 14. This new functionality employs a small subset of the current LTE band to handle IoT-device
traffic, allowing a greater number of connected units per frequency band and the IoT devices to lower
their power consumption.

NB-IoT is a radio access technology standardized by 3GPP for cellular wireless communication. It is
especially suited for a high volume of low-complexity devices in challenging radio environments such as
deep buildings or underground radio signal penetration. Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT), also known as LTE
Cat NB1, is a Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) technology that works virtually anywhere. It connects IoT
devices more simply and efficiently on already established mobile networks and handles small amounts
of fairly infrequent 2-way data, securely and reliably. And the best is, it provides very low power
consumption, excellent extended 18 range in buildings and underground, easy deployment into existing
cellular network architecture, network security & reliability and lower component cost.

Realizing the importance of IOT for low-power and low-cost applications with extended coverage and
very long battery life, 3GPP introduced narrowband IOT (NB-IOT), as a part of their LTE-Release-14.
Although NB-IOT is based on LTE, but it's a new radio-access technology as it is not fully backward
compatible with the existing LTE devices. However, it can be easily integrated in the existing LTE
network by allocating some of the time and frequency resources to NB-IOT
Transmitter UP-link Chain:

The uplink of NB-IoT is based on SCFDMA with the same 15 kHz subcarrier spacing as LTE. Slot,
subframe, and frame durations are 0.5 ms, 1 ms, and 10 ms, respectively, identical to those in LTE.
Furthermore, slot format in terms of cyclic prefix (CP) duration and number of SC-FDM symbols per slot
are also identical to those in LTE.

Frame Structure

- Type 1, applicable to FDD only

, - Type 2, applicable to TDD only,

At the signal level, one NB-IoT uplink subframe is constituted from 12 × 14 resource elements (REs),
where 12 and 14 correspond to the number of subcarriers and to Single carrier frequency-division
multiplexing (SC-FDM) symbols of the subframe, respectively

UL RB
A physical resource block is defined as N symb consecutive SC-FDMA symbols in the time domain and N sc
consecutive subcarriers in the frequency domain corresponding to one slot in the time domain and 180
kHz in the frequency domain.

In the LTE system, two cyclic prefix (CP) formats can be used for SC-FDMA symbols: normal and
extended. The extended format reduces the number of SC-FDMA symbols per slot to six. In NB-IoT, the
extended CP is not allowed and thus each slot is strictly composed of seven SC-FDMA symbols.

In NB-IoT, the uplink transmissions can be done using (single-tone and multi-tone) options, but they
depend on the used subcarrier spacing. In this respect, if the 3.75 kHz spacing is used, only the single
tone option is possible (i.e., one subcarrier is used). In contrast, in the case of 15 kHz spacing, the two
options can be performed through four possible transmission configurations: one, three, six or 12
subcarriers.

RU
Resource unit N s c , which represents the smallest unit that can be transmitted in uplink regardless of
the subcarrier spacing being used and depends only on the transmission option (i.e., single-tone or
multi-tone). In such cases, the duration of the RU will be shorter when a higher number of subcarriers is
used since a greater number of REs can be transmitted within a shorter duration.

Transmitter block diagram:

Cyclic Redundancy Check:

Cyclic redundancy check (CRC) is a common data transmission error detection technique used in the
data communication field. The transmit end calculates a check code for Overall transmission chain of the
UE in a data frame based on a certain algorithm, appends the check code to the data frame, and sends
the data frame to the receive end. The eNB Receiver end verifies the correctness and integrity of the
received data by repeating the calculation using the same algorithm.
Turbo Encoder:

Turbo codes is the coding technique used in many communications and storage systems because its
performance is close to Shannon limit. Its function is helping the receiver to correct the received data.

it consists of two Recursive Systematic Convolutional (RSC) encoders with three shift registers XOR-ed
according to the following polynomials and one internal interleaver where the input to the encoder is
interleaved before entering the 2nd RSC encoder. However, the first one takes the input directly as it is
Rate Matcher:

The basic function of this module is matching the number of bits in transport block to the number of bits
that is transmitted through the channel. It also controls the rate as the turbo encoder gives 1/3 rate.

Interleaver:

The main function of this block in narrowband, taking into consideration that there is no control
information, is overcoming burst errors. As for the channels with deep fading characteristics, errors
often occur in bursts, these consecutive bits may be of the same symbol. This block overcomes this type
of noise by changing this burst error into a group of discrete errors by reordering the bits so that the
error happens in one bit only inside the same symbol.

Scrambler:

Scrambler is an algorithm that converts an input string into a seemingly random output string of the
same length using a gold sequence, thus avoiding long sequences of bits of the same value, which may
cause a bit error detection at high frequencies.

The scrambler is used to remove a long sequence of ones or zeros for the transmitted data. This helps
receiver for synchronization to recover the original data and facilitate the work of timing recovery
circuit. The scrambler is also used for encryption.

It does not increase or decrease the data rate. The output word length is the same as the input word
length. Scramblers are essential components in the physical layer due to ease of implementation in
hardware and good statistical properties. Scrambler consists of linear feedback shift registers (LFSRs)
and xor gates.

Modulator:

Modulation mapper is used to map the incoming data stream to the corresponding symbol in the
constellation of either BPSK or QPSK to provide more information capacity, compatibility with digital
data services, higher data security, better quality communications, and quicker system availability

these corresponding symbols are located in Look up Table in the design. For a BPSK case, the modulation
mapper maps the input bit to the corresponding symbol in each clock cycle. While for the QPSK case,
each two bits is mapped to the corresponding symbol, so it takes two clock cycles to generate one
symbol to the next block

Buffer:
the output of the modulator is produced every clock cycle as in BPSK or every two cycles as in QPSK.
Therefore, a buffer is required after the modulation mapper and before the FFT to store the results of
the modulator and provide data to the FFT every clock cycle in BPSK and QPSK as well.

Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access (SC-FDM):

Most of the wireless communication systems are multi-user systems. Given the limited radio resources,
the available frequency spectrum needs to be shared among multiple users. There are various multiple
access schemes such as:

 Time division multiple access (TDMA).  Code division multiple access (CDMA).

 Frequency division multiple access (FDMA).  Space division multiple access (SDMA).

 Carrier sense multiple access (CSMA)

Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access (SC-FDM) is a special kind of FDMA scheme in which
the carriers are structured in such a way that they don’t interfere with each other, i.e., they are
orthogonal to each other. The underlying technology behind SC-FDM is that of OFDM. This section
discusses the basic principles of OFDM .

In contrast, SC-FDMA signal generation begins with a special precoding process but then continues in a
manner like OFDMA

Basic principles of OFDM:

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a multicarrier transport technology for high data
rate communication system. The OFDM concept is based on spreading the high-speed data to be
transmitted over a large number of low-rate carriers. The carriers are orthogonal to each other and
frequency spacing between them are created by using the Fast Fourier transform (FFT).
 Fourier transform

This is similar to frequency division multiplexing (FDM) except for the fact that the carriers are spaced
much closer in frequency with no guard band in between, thus increasing the spectral efficiency. The
placement of these multiple carriers, also known as subcarriers, is done in a way that they do not
interfere with each other during the sampling time instant and hence can be separated at the receiver
despite their overlapping spectrum

Comparison between OFDMA and SC-FDMA:

The most obvious difference between the two schemes is that OFDMA transmits the four QPSK data
symbols in parallel, one per subcarrier, while SC-FDMA transmits the four QPSK data symbols in series at
four times the rate, with each data symbol occupying a wider M x 15 kHz bandwidth. Visually, the
OFDMA signal is clearly multi-carrier with one data symbol per subcarrier, but the SC-FDMA signal
appears to be more like a single-carrier (hence the “SC” in the SC-FDMA name) with each data symbol
being represented by one wide signal. Note that OFDMA and SC-FDMA symbol lengths are the same.

However, the SC-FDMA symbol contains M “sub-symbols” that represent the modulating data. It is the
parallel transmission of multiple symbols that creates the undesirable high PAPR of OFDMA. By
transmitting the M data symbols in series at M times the rate, the SC-FDMA occupied bandwidth is the
same as multi-carrier OFDMA but, crucially, the PAPR is the same as that used for the original data
symbols. Adding together many narrowband QPSK waveforms in OFDMA will always create higher peaks
than would be seen in the wider bandwidth, single carrier QPSK waveform of SC-FDMA. As the number
of subcarriers M increases, the PAPR of OFDMA with random modulating data approaches Gaussian
noise statistics but, regardless of the value of M, the SC-FDMA PAPR remains the same as that used for
the original data symbols.
Difference between OFDM and OFDMA

OFDM allocates users in OFDMA allocates users in

time domain only time and frequency domain

As OFDMA has high PAPR that can cause problems for amplifiers. Modifying an amplifier to avoid
distortion often requires increases in

1. Cost

2. size

3. power consumption.

4. drains the battery faster

So, it will require an Amplifier with high operating

region at every UE which is so costly in case of using OFDMA In Up-Link. so, SC-FDMA is a good
solution for that problem to use in the Up-Link

FFT:

FFT is a block added to generate SC-FDMA symbols instead of Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiplexing (OFDM) symbols. As the latter have high Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR) and require
highly linear power amplifiers to avoid excessive intermodulation distortion. However, SC-FDMA solves
this problem by distributing given number of modulated symbols over all assigned subcarriers for
transmission instead of distributing one symbol over one subcarrier as in OFDM; therefore, the total
PAPR decreases due to this fair distribution.
Resource Elements Mapper:

The function of the REM is assigning the output symbols from the FFT to the proper subcarriers at the
input of the IFFT block and handle the repetition of the symbols to enhance coverage.

All the symbols are assigned to the 12 subcarriers allocated for the NB-IoT bandwidth and this is
provided as an upper layer information. In 6-point FFT case, the output 6 symbols of the FFT are
assigned to a certain 6 subcarriers of the 12 subcarriers and the rest are padded with zeros as the input
of the IFFT should be 2n, so it is then padded with zeros to the end of generation of symbols

IFFT:

IFFT is used to transform the symbols from frequency domain to time domain samples to be transmitted
through RF chain.

The IFFT subcarriers are grouped into sets of 12 subcarriers with spacing of 15 kHz between each
adjacent subchannels, each group is called a resource block. NB-IoT has one resource block only per UE
transmitter. 16-point IFFT is used as a minimum size, to implement IFFT block which supports 12
subcarriers as the max number of allocated subcarriers. This IFFT size is used to decrease latency and
power dissipation of the block and output sample rate is compensated by an Up-Sampler to upgrade the
rate to a convenient rate for the digital to analog converter (DAC) block.

Interpolation (Up sampling):

The output of the IFFT is sampled using an interpolator to meet the channel bandwidth requirement.

Decimation (Down sampling):

decimation can be synonymous with compression, or they can describe an entire process of bandwidth
reduction
Cyclic Prefix Insertion:

Due to multipath propagation, the wireless channel is, almost always, time-dispersive in nature. This
leads to delayed replicas of past SC-FDMA symbols interfering with the current symbol, a phenomenon
called inter symbol interference (ISI). In order to combat ISI and make the SC-FDMA symbols insensitive
to time-dispersion, a guard interval is provided in between the SC-FDMA symbols. The length of the
guard interval is selected to be more than the maximum delay spread of the channel. As a possible
solution, the last few samples of the SC-FDMA symbol are copied and added to the beginning of the
symbol to serve as guard interval. This type of guard insertion is known as cyclic prefixing.

Since the samples corresponding to the cyclic prefix get corrupted because of ISI, they are usually
dropped at the receiver. There is no loss of information in doing so as the cyclic prefix carries redundant
information. Adding a cyclic prefix, however, comes at a cost in terms of increased signal overhead and,
as a result, reduction in data-rate. Furthermore, the transmit power used for sending cyclic prefix
samples is wasted as the samples are dropped at the receiver. Hence, there is a trade-off in selecting the
duration of cyclic prefix

1. Shorter cyclic prefix: in small-cell environments to minimize the cyclic-prefix overhead.

2. Longer cyclic prefix: in environments with extreme time dispersion.

Reference Signal:

Pilot carriers /reference signals

Data carriers

Ti
me

Pilot
Frequency/subcarrier Frequency symbol

• The channel parameters can be estimated based on known symbols (pilot symbols)

• The pilot symbols should have sufficient density to provide estimates with good quality (tradeoff
with efficiency)

• Different estimation methods exist

• Averaging combined with interpolation

• Minimum-mean square error (MMSE)

Resource Grid:

Intersection between:

Subframe & subchannel (12 sub carrier) → PRB (Physical Resource Block): minimum usage for telecom UE

Slot & subchannel (12 sub carrier) → RB (Resource Block)

Subcarrier & Symbol (12 sub carrier) → RE (Resource element)

“RE = 1 Sample = n bits depend on Modulation order”

RE (Resource element): which is the smallest unit in the physical layer and occupies one SC-FDMA
symbol in the time domain and one subcarrier in the frequency domain.
Receiver UP-link Chain: -