Coexistence Possibilities of LTE with ISM Technologies and GNSS

Sudhir Kumar Baghel, Mangesh A. Ingale, Giriraj Goyal Samsung India Software Operations Pvt. Ltd, Bangalore, INDIA
[sudhirb, m.ingale, giriraj.g]@samsung.com

AbstractInterference due to in-device coexistence of multiple radios operating simultaneously in adjacent or overlapping radio frequency spectrum is a big issue. In this article, we understand the nature of issues related to coexistence of LTE with ISM technologies (Bluetooth, WiFi) and GNSS in a mobile handset. Each of these technologies have different characteristics such as different access mechanism, frame structure, peak transmit power and operate in different frequencies. We analyze the charecteristics of each technology and propose possible direction so that in-device coexistence interference for certain popular use cases can be mitigated. Keywords-In-device coexistence, LTE, Bluetooth, WiFi, GNSS I. INTRODUCTION

required to avoid in-device coexistence interference. Small form factor of mobile handset provides only 10-30 dB isolation. As a result an effective solution is required to mitigate in-device coexistence interference. In this article we highlight the coexistence possibilities including issues and possible solutions when LTE radio operates simultaneously with BT, WiFi and GNSS. The article is organized as follows. We first describe the exact issues of in-device coexistence when LTE is operating in different bands in section II. Popular use cases of LTE-ISM technologies and LTE-GNSS technologies working simultaneously are captured in section III. Behavior and usefulness of existing LTE Radio Resource Management (RRM) mechanisms are investigated in section IV. Additional generic solution space and their applicability are analyzed in section V and VI respectively. Finally we conclude the article in section VII. II. IN-DEVICE COEXISTENCE ISSUES

Multiple radios integrated in a single wireless device provide seamless user experience to transmit and receive digital content through a plethora of communication links based on the device capability. One such popular use case where coexistence of multiple radios is desirable is voice call over cellular radio with Bluetooth (BT) headset. Wireless device equipped with cellular radio based on the Long Term Evolution (LTE), short range radios based on BT and/or WiFi working in Industrial Scientific Medical (ISM) band and Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) receiver is a common multi-radio configuration. When these multiple radios operate simultaneously in adjacent or overlapping radio frequency spectrum, it results in interference from transmission of one radio to the reception of the other radio. This is referred as in-device coexistence interference throughout the article. In-device coexistence interference does not occur when separation of ~50MHz is available between LTE and ISM center frequency [1]. With a small separation of less than 20MHz, typically 50dB isolation is

LTE operation in frequency bands adjacent to the ISM band is depicted in Figure 1. GNSS consists of navigational systems developed by various countries such as GPS, Galileo, GLONASS and Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS). Commercial civil purpose GNSS receivers use L1 (1575.42MHz) frequency for location based services [2]. A. LTE TDD Band 40 Coexistence Issues Figure 1 shows lower portion of ISM band is very near to LTE TDD Band 40. In case of LTE-BT coexistence, LTE transmitter causes interference to BT receiver and BT transmitter causes interference to LTE receiver. Similar interference issue exists for LTE-WiFi coexistence. B. LTE FDD Band 7 Coexistence Issues Figure 1 shows there is 20MHz separation between BT and LTE FDD Band 7 Uplink (UL). Here LTE transmitter causes

Figure 1 Coexistence of LTE with ISM Technologies.

interference to BT receiver. There is no impact on LTE receiver from BT transmitter because corresponding LTE FDD Band 7 Downlink (DL) is far away from ISM band. There is only 5 MHz separation between WiFi and LTE FDD Band 7 UL but since WiFi operation is restricted only up to channel 13 in most of the countries except Japan, there is a separation of 17 MHz available. In case of LTE-WiFi coexistence, only WiFi receiver will be affected by LTE transmitter. Galileo is supporting proposal for new global allocation at 2.5 GHz for GNSS, which will be affected by LTE FDD Band 7 UL [2]. C. LTE Band 13/14 Coexistence Issues UL of LTE Band 13 (777-787 MHz) and Band 14 (788-798 MHz) can disrupt the working of GNSS receiver using L1 frequency (1575.42 MHz). This is because the second harmonic of Band 13 (i.e.1554-1574 MHz) and second harmonic of Band 14 (i.e.1576-1596 MHz) are close to L1 frequency. D. India Specific In-device Coexistence Issues In India recently spectrum for Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) services was auctioned in the IND TDD Band 57 (2300-2400 MHz) and IND TDD Band 59 (2535-2655 MHz) [3], [4]. IND TDD Band 57 is same as LTE Band 40, hence the LTE TDD Band 40 coexistence issues with ISM technologies mentioned above holds true for BWA services in IND TDD Band 57. IND Band 59 is for TDD operation which starts at 2535 MHz and separated by 51 MHz from ISM band. IRNSS position and restricted services are transmitted on L5 (1164-1215 MHz) and S (2483.5-2500 MHz) bands [5], where S band is affected by IND TDD Band 59 because of small separation. III. IN-DEVICE COEXISTENCE SCENARIOS

D. WiFi Router Multi-radio (LTE+WiFi) device acts as router where local data access by other wireless devices from the router is on the WiFi interface while the routers backhaul link is carried on LTE air interface. WiFi radio of the router acts as an Access Point (AP). Form factor is not an issue here so indevice coexistence becomes bit relaxed. LTE operation in Band 7 and Band 40 will cause interruption in service. E. GNSS Receiver The multi-radio LTE device is equipped with the GNSS receiver (e.g. GPS) to support location based services. The multi-radio device use LTE for voice traffic and GPS for positioning. Here the GPS reception on L1 frequency will be affected by second harmonics of LTE FDD Band 13/Band 14 UL. IV. EXISTING LTE MECHANISMS

It is important to investigate if existing RRM and Radio Link Monitoring (RLM) procedures of LTE can be used for eNodeB (eNB) to identify that the user equipment (UE) is experiencing in-device coexistence interference [6]. A. Reference Symbol Received Power (RSRP) RSRP is calculated only on reference symbols. It does not take into consideration whether received power is serving LTE eNB power or interference power. Hence, RSRP cannot be used to determine whether UE is experiencing in-device coexistence interference. B. Reference Signal Received Quality (RSRQ) RSRQ indicates not only the reference symbol power, but also the interference from both neighbouring cell and neighbouring system. Hence, it can be used to indicate whether interference exists, but it cannot distinguish whether the interference is from neighboring cell or concurrent operations of other technologies, e.g ISM radio within the same terminal as both type of interferer do not have any specific characteristics. RSRQ value might not be as bad as it is expected because of intermittent interference from ISM. C. Channel Quality Indicator (CQI) CQI indicates radio link quality, which is related to not only signal power, but also interference from both neighboring cell and in-device coexistence interference. Similar to RSRQ, it cannot distinguish whether interference is from neighboring eNB or in-device coexistence interference. CQI value might not be as bad as it is expected because of intermittent interference from ISM. D. Radio Link Failure (RLF) In-device coexistence interference deteriorates the DL radio link quality of LTE. This may result in UE experiencing RLF. Further, RLF initiates RRC re-establishment, by which UE may select an inter-frequency cell. Therefore, RLF can be considered as a candidate mechanism for UE to avoid in-

Issues related to the in-device coexistence can be identified based on the following most common use cases of LTE radio and other radios. A. Voice Call relayed to BT headset This is the most popular use case where voice data from LTE is relayed to a BT headset. The voice traffic has to be synchronized on the respective radio interfaces to meet the QoS requirement. LTE operation in Band 7 and Band 40 will cause interruption in service. B. Audio of HD Video relayed to BT headset While downloading High Definition (HD) video on LTE air interface, audio is relayed to BT headset. LTE operation in Band 7 and Band 40 will cause interruption in service. C. WiFi Data Access/WiFi Offloading When WiFi coverage is available to a multi-radio (LTE+WiFi) device, it access data on WiFi interface. However, high priority traffic such as an incoming voice call is carried over LTE air interface. Here the WiFi radio operates as a terminal in infrastructure mode. LTE operation in Band 7 and Band 40 will cause interruption in service.

device interference. However, declaration of RLF will take a long delay for UE, which may have impact on user experience, especially for time critical services. To reduce the delay, speeding up the RLF declaration is a potential improvement, but it requires UE to correctly distinguish whether the interference is in-device coexistence interference or neighboring cell interference. E. Handover (HO) When RSRQ is configured for mobility and deteriorated by in-device coexistence interference, a HO procedure is likely to be triggered. Because all intra-frequency cells are interfered by the ISM activities, RSRQ of all intra-frequency cells might not be much better than that of serving cell. It means that measurement report is more likely to be triggered by an inter-frequency cell. Hence HO can be viewed as another candidate mechanism for UE to avoid in-device coexistence interference. However, there are some issues with this mechanism such as all UEs need to be configured with RSRQ (even those without ISM radios), it is possible that there can be unacceptable delay in triggering measurement report and loss of HO commands due to interference. V. GENERIC POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

Figure 3 WiFi/BT signal moved away from LTE signal [7]. C. Filter Based Solution When sufficient frequency separation is not possible between two interfering radios, advance filter technology is introduced in both transmitter and reception chain to avoid coexistence interference. It is possible to reduce interference by using advance filters if minimum frequency separation of 20 MHz is available between two technologies of the multiradio wireless device. Advance filter based solution has two limitations: 1) The solution is band specific 2) It may not be a practical solution from cost point of view. D. Power Limitation Based Solution LTE transmit power can be lowered so that coexistence with ISM becomes possible. The eNB should take the lower transmit power requirement into account while scheduling UL resources to the UE. The coexistence based lower transmit power can result in a throughput loss or increase in latency of the UE traffic which may be acceptable in some scenarios and some it may not acceptable [8]. VI. APPLICABILITY OF GENERIC SOLUTIONS The applicability and effectiveness of the generic solutions to solve issues related to in-device coexistence is analyzed in the following sub sections. A. LTE-GNSS Coexistence GNSS frame structure is very long (in order of second) compared to 1ms sub frame of LTE. However most of the current receivers use a technique called coarse time navigation in which receiver does not need to decode the full Time-of-Week (ToW) signal. This reduces time to decode ToW to some extent. However GNSS receiver needs significant long time for its normal operation compared with LTE. This makes time sharing with GNSS impractical [9]. If multiple bands are available with wireless service provider along with Band 13/14 then it is good choice to shift LTE operation as far as possible so that second harmonics of those signals does not affect GNSS receiver using L1 frequency. It is worth investigating the status of dual frequency GNSS receivers so that this issue of coexistence can be resolved. Commercial dual frequency GNSS receivers are available. The dual frequency receiver work on L1 and L2 (1227.6MHz) frequency, however these receivers are very costly because L2 was originally designed for US military use and hence the precise code of it is not available in public domain. Some vendors have built receiver utilizing some

A. TDM Based Solution Time Domain Multiplexing (TDM) based solution avoids interference from one radio to another radio by time separation of their activities. TDM solution exploits the frame structure of different radios and characteristics of the use case in multi-radio operation. An important pre-condition for TDM solution is to have time synchronization of radio frames; which may not be possible all the time. TDM based solution are band agnostic. B. FDM Based Solution Frequency Domain Multiplexing (FDM) based solution provides sufficient frequency separation between two interfering radios. As shown in Figure 2, LTE signal is moved away from ISM band to mitigate coexistence interference by providing sufficient frequency separation. Similarly, as shown in Figure 3, ISM signal can leave some portion of ISM band to move away from LTE operation so that reception of LTE signal is filtered out by conventional band pass filter.

Figure 2 LTE frequency moved away from ISM band [7].

characteristics of L2 by performing reverse engineering. High cost dual frequency GNSS receiver is an impractical solution choice. However, it is possible to build low cost dual frequency GNSS receiver using L1 and L5 (1156.45MHz) since L5 frequency is open for public use. Furthermore, the issue with L5 is that there are only few satellites transmitting L5 and that too over North America only. All GPS satellites start transmitting L5 only by 2020. Nevertheless, Galileo is planning L5 frequency operation by 2014. Low cost dual frequency receiver using L1 and L5 is attractive choice since at least it solves the coexistence issue of Band 13/14 in North America and globally by 2014. When Galileo starts operation at 2.5 GHz then also there should not be issues because UE vendors can integrate the GNSS receiver using L1 frequency or dual Frequency receivers using L1 and L5 frequencies. Same is the case with IRNSS. From above analysis it can be inferred that TDM based solution is not possible for LTE and GNSS in-device coexistence. Possible solutions are FDM based or low cost dual frequency GNSS receivers. B. LTE-BT Coexistence BT SIG, Filter Expert Group (FEG) recommended filter specifications [10] to eliminate the in-device coexistence interference. FEG has recommended at least 20 MHz separation between LTE and BT for coexistence. More stringent emission mask requirements are proposed. When filter solution does not meet requirements recommended by FEG, then some form of TDM or FDM solution will be required. FDM solution is preferred if wireless service provider has other frequency away from ISM band otherwise, some form of TDM solution is required. For TDM solution time synchronization of the LTE and BT radios is basic requirement to handle the voice call relayed to BT headset. It is achieved by aligning the BT slot boundary with the LTE frame boundary as shown in Figure 4. LTE frame duration is either 5 or 10 ms which is integral multiple of BT slots, resulting in periodic synchronization on frame basis. Since BT radio operates with different clock, there would be time drift with LTE frame boundary and BT radio requires periodic clock adjustment to compensate for this drift. Usually BT uses eSCO EV3 packets for voice call [11]. The pulse code modulation used in BT generates 64 Kbps voice data for transmission in BT link between master and slave. To achieve 64 Kbps symmetric traffic in eSCO EV3 BT requires at least one transmission/reception opportunity in every TeSCO interval of 3.75ms. If BT does not get atleast one transmission followed by reception opportunity in TeSCO then 64 Kbps data rate cannot be maintained resulting in bad voice quality. BT operation time depends on LTE radio

frame structure and the DL to UL ratio. In [12] it is analyzed that there exist a possibility that BT can get one transmission and reception opportunity in every TeSCO interval but LTE has to compromise 2-3 DL subframes (crossed RX subframes in Figure 4) in every 15ms depending on TDD configuration. LTE voice call is typically supported by Semi Persistent Scheduling (SPS). In SPS relatively fixed DL and UL resources are typically given every 20ms. In Figure 5 LTE+BT voice call using SPS is depicted for TDD configuration 1. The synchronization point is such that BT Master aligns with the beginning of the LTE radio frame. The time line is shown for 60ms because it is least common multiple of 3.75ms and 20ms. From Figure 5, the grey BT slots are not available for BT operation while, white BT slots are available for BT operation. The grey LTE subframes are used for LTE VOIP data and ACK/NAK. From Figure 5 following conclusions can be drawn. There exist at least one BT transmission and reception opportunity in every TeSCO interval such that 64 Kbps data rate can be maintained. Sometimes two or three transmission/reception opportunities are present for BT every TeSCO. This is true for all TDD configurations. If there is a need for retransmission for VOIP traffic in LTE then the first retransmission should be done in predefined manner known to UE in the next 10ms frame following the initial transmission. C. LTE-WiFi Coexistence FDM solution is preferred if wireless service provider has other frequency away from ISM band otherwise, some form of TDM solution is required. LTE DRX mechanism can be used to create ON/OFF pattern of 30-60ms for time multiplexed operation of LTE and WiFi. The reception of data for the use case of LTE + WiFi (offloading) needs to be carefully controlled as the UE in this case is acting as a Station (STA) [13], [14]. AP can any time transmit the data for the STA and STA should be able to receive it otherwise back off process will drastically lower the data rate. WiFi has the following mechanisms to control the WiFi reception (1) Basic Power Saving (PS) mechanism, (2) U-APSD (Unscheduled Automatic Power Save Delivery) [15]. Basic PS mechanism is compulsory in all the nodes. In this scheme a STA communicates to the AP on its status before it is going to sleep mode. If the AP has any data to send to the STA in sleep, AP buffers the data. One of the disadvantages of the basic PS mechanism is that it is highly relied on the Beacon reception by the STA. If the STA misses Beacon then the data reception can be delayed. Also interval between two beacons is sufficiently long which makes this mechanism not suitable for less delay tolerant services.

Figure 4 Synchronized LTE activity timeline compared with BT (eSCO with EV3 packet) for TDD configuration 1 [12].

Figure 5 LTE VOIP using SPS and BT eSCO EV3 for TDD configuration 1. The drawback of the basic PS mechanism is avoided by UAPSD which does not require the STA to hear the Beacons. A STA supporting U-APSD can ask the AP for its data availability whenever it wakes up. U-APSD is introduced in IEEE802.11e. This feature is usually implemented and can be considered as potential solution. VII. CONCLUSION TDM solution using LTE DRX can be used for WiFi coexistence with LTE. REFERENCES
[1] "LS on in-device coexistence between LTE and ISM update of TR 36.816", R4-104809, November 2010. [2] Understanding the nature of issues related with in-device coexistence, R2-104329, Samsung, August 2010. [3] National Frequency Allocation Plan, WPC, DoT, 2008. [4] "Results of 3G and BWA Auction", F. No. P-11014/13/2008-PP, DoT, May- June 2010. [5] Current and Planned Global and Regional Navigation Satellite Systems and Satellite-based Augmentations Systems, UN, Office of Outer Space Affairs, June 2010. [6] Considerations on interference avoidance for in-device coexistence, R2-104874, CMCC, August 2010 [7] Analysis in In-Device Coexistence Interference Avoidance, R2104444, Mediatek, August 2010. [8] Types of TDM Solutions for LTE ISM Coexistence, R2-105764, Qualcomm, October 2010. [9] Analysis of GNSS and LTE coexistence solution possibilities, R2105574, Samsung, October 2010 [10] Filter recommendations for coexistence with LTE and WiMAX, March 2010. [11] Specification of the Bluetooth System, [Vol 0], Version 4 December 2009. [12] Is LTE and BT in-device coexistence possible without TDM gap pattern?, R2-105576, Samsung, October 2010. [13] Possible TDM Solution for LTE, WiFi and BT In-device Coexistence, R2-105572, Samsung, October 2010 [14] Part 11: Wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) Specifications, 12 June 2007. [15] Xavier Perez-Costa et al, AU-APSD: Adaptive IEEE 802.11e Unscheduled Automatic Power Save Delivery IEEE ICC 2006.

In this article, it is indicated that multiple radio technologies of different types are integrated in a mobile handset. Most popular combination along with cellular technologies such as LTE is WiFi, Bluetooth and GNSS. It is shown how operations of these devices affect each other in different situations. India specific in-device coexistence scenario is highlighted for its acuteness and urgency for solution because recently concluded BWA auction has given acceleration to possibility of TD-LTE deployment in India. We analyzed how existing mechanisms of LTE behave when there is in-device coexistence interference from ISM technology. It is concluded that existing LTE mechanisms are not sufficient and other solutions in the form of combination of TDM, FDM, power limitation and filter based will be needed on a case by case basis. It is also concluded that for LTE-GNSS coexistence TDM is impractical whereas FDM may be possible; while rest of the improvement can be expected from GNSS receiver advancements. When wireless service provider has other frequency away from ISM band then FDM is the preferred choice otherwise TDM is required. TDM solution using LTE SPS for VOIP is shown for Bluetooth coexistence with LTE.