A scheme of Multi-User Reusing One Slot on Enhancing Capacity of GSM/EDGE Networks

Xiang Chen,Zesong Fei,Jingming Kuang,Linnan Liu

RCDCT, Modern Communication Lab, Dept. of E. E. Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT) Beijing, P. R. China xiaxiang@bit.edu.cn, feizesong@bit.edu.cn

Guang Yang
Wireless Technologies Division, Research Institute China Mobile Communication Corporation (CMCC) Beijing, P. R. China yangguangyj@chinamobile.com

AbstractGSM network is seeing its greatest expansion because of the growing demand for mobile voice services in emerging markets recently. A newly proposed technology, multi-user reusing one slot (MUROS), would help operators in densely populated cities to alleviate the strain on their networks. The concept of MUROS is based on multiplexing two or more users onto one time slot without degrading the speech quality. We improved one solution of MUROS, orthogonal sub channel (OSC) in this contribution. For the downlink (DL) OSC, we designed new training sequence codes (TSCs) which are low cross-correlated with legacy TSCs. For the uplink (UL) OSC, we adopted successive interference cancellation based on minimum mean square error (MMSE-SIC) algorithm. Theoretical analysis and simulation results shows that with proper TSC design, OSC is a promising scheme of MUROS due to its ability to double the capacity of GSM/EDGE networks without degrading the speech quality very much. Keywords- Multi-User Reusing One Slot (MUROS); Orthogonal Sub-channel (OSC); Training Sequence Code (TSC); GSM/EDGE;

Just as its name implies, MUROS is a concept of increasing voice capacity by multiplexing more than one user on a single time slot and ARFCN, thus the capacity can be considerably improved for a certain TRX hardware and possibly spectrum resource. Specifically, the MUROS technique constructs a multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) system in uplink that different handsets transmit signals through their own antenna and base station (BS) receives signal with two or more Rx antennas. In downlink, multiple users data are transmitted with higher-order modulation mode, and each mobile station (MS) receives its own signal in specific way. Note that the high-order modulation scheme should be selected carefully to make sure that it is available at the edge of a cell. In theory, MUROS can double voice capacity or even more with negligible impact to handsets as well as to networks. MUROS is unlike the speech codec approach to increase voice capacity, e.g. packing two GSM-HR mobiles onto one time slot but rather to multiplex four GSM-HR mobiles onto one time slot. Namely, the MUROS feature is expected to provide voice capacity improvement both for full rate and half rate channels. Its capability of increasing voice capacity is very attractive. Another important motivation for MUROS is that it can take advantage of widely available DARP phase I capable MS, i.e. handsets supporting single antenna interference cancellation (SAIC) technology [2, 3]. This implies that higherorder modulation scheme may not be necessary in downlink. SAIC supported MS is able to detect its own signal when it works at MUROS mode [4]. We improved one solution of MUROS, orthogonal sub channel (OSC) [5, 6] in this contribution, which concentrates on the two user reusing one slot case. For the downlink (DL) OSC, we designed new training sequence codes (TSCs) which are low correlated with legacy TSCs. For the uplink (UL) OSC, we employed successive interference cancellation based on minimum mean square error (MMSE-SIC) algorithm. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II introduces the concept of MUROS, as well as the OSC scheme to implement the concept. The detail of OSC technology is described in section III. We proposed low cross-correlation training sequence code in section IV. Then we present and analyze the simulation results in section V. The conclusions are given in Section VI.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Beyond dispute, GSM network is the most successful commercial cellular mobile communication system hitherto. It is reported that the number of GSM users all over the world had reached 2.5 billion by 2007. The increase in user amount and voice traffic puts a huge pressure on operators especially within populous countries. Furthermore, as voice and data service price gets cheaper, most operators face the challenge to obtain efficient utilization of hardware and spectrum resource. According to the demand of operators, many vendors have provide their solutions, such as adaptive multi-rate half-rate (AMR-HR) with interference canceling technologies on both BTS and MS sides, enhanced full rate (EFR), carrier frequency pool (CFP) and intelligent underlay overlay (IUO) of dual-band network. These solutions are based on the traditional concept that one user occupies one time slot. The capacity gain of EFR or CFP is limited. IUO simply adds new carrier frequencies in 1800 MHz band. There is no gain in spectrum efficiency. AMR-HR provides significant voice capacity gain as a speech codec, but contributes little to the data service. The multi-user reusing-one-slot (MUROS) technique originates a new idea to enhance the capacity of both voice and data service [1].
This work is sponsored by Research Institute, China Mobile Communication Corporation. Contact author: Zesong Fei, feizesong@bit.edu.cn

1-4244-2424-5/08/$20.00 2008 IEEE

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Figure 3. QPSK mapping on 8PSK constellation Figure 1. MUROS concept description.

II.

THE CONCEPT OF MULTI-USER REUSING ONE SLOT

The GSM network is a TDMA system. Each carrier frequency is divided into eight time slots. Each slot is allocated to only one user to transmit its burst. As its name suggested, MUROS concept provides two or more users allocated on the same radio resource, i.e. the same time slot on the same carrier frequency, as shown in fig. 1. Each user occupies one orthogonal sub-channel, or in another way, the MUROS users signals are mixed together, receivers distinguish them by low cross correlation training sequence codes (TSCs). The GSM network has eight legacy TSCs, as table II given. Each training sequence code (TSC) is assigned to a cell, and the adjacent co-channel cells must be assigned with different TSCs, so that a BSS can tell which MS is in its cell by checking TSC in the middle of each burst. MUROS concept introduces eight or more new TSCs in order that each cell can be assigned two or even more TSCs without changing current frequency planning. Each BSS uses the TSCs to pack two or even more users onto one slot. The TSCs assigned to the same BSS must be low cross-correlated so that receivers can differentiate its own signal from MUROS partners in the same slot, with interference cancelling (IC) technology, such as space-time interference rejection combining (STIRC) [7], successive interference cancellation (SIC) [8] or joint detection (JD) [9] in uplink, or single antenna interference cancellation (SAIC) in downlink. In theory, MUROS can double voice capacity or even more with negligible impact to handsets as well as to networks. Combining with GSM-HR speech codec approach, the voice capacity can be largely increased.

OSC based on legacy GMSK handset is one solution of two user MUROS, namely, multiplexing two users onto the same slot, the two users are named MUROS pair. The key change is introduction of eight new TSCs paired with the eight legacy TSCs for lowest cross-correlation to enable separation of subchannels. First sub-channel can use an existing TSC and second sub-channel should use the corresponding new one for both downlink and uplink. Thus OSC concept relying on GMSK only handsets could offer double voice capacity. DL OSC and UL OSC are described in detail in the next two sections. III. ORTHOGONAL SUB-CHANNEL

A. Principle of Downlink OSC Figure 2 presents the diagram of DL OSC. A BSS is assigned two low cross-correlation TSCs, one legacy TSC and one new TSC. Each MUROS MS inserts one TSC in its burst. Bursts of MUROS pair are sent respectively by BTS transmitter in I- or Q- sub-channels of QPSK modulation. MS receiver tells its sub-channel by TSC to demodulate its own signal. Two modulation schemes are supported by GSM/EDGE system, i.e. GMSK and 8PSK [10]. To introduce OSC solution in downlink, four points on the 8PSK constellation are selected by a BTS transmitter to form the QPSK constellation. MUROS pair's symbols are mapped respectively onto I and Q channels of QPSK constellation, as illustrated in table I and fig. 3. The first sub channel (OSC-0) is mapped to MSB and the second sub channel (OSC-1) is mapped to LSB.
TABLE I. QPSK SYMBOL MAPPING ON 8PSK CONSTELLATION DL OSC mapping (OSC0, OSC1 ) (1,1) (0,1) (0,0) (1,0) Symbol parameter
j 2l / 8

8PSK Gray mapping (d3 i , d3 i+1 , d3 i+2 ) (1,1,1) (0,1,1) (0,1,0) (0,0,0) (0,0,1) (1,0,1) Figure 2. Diagram of downlink OSC. (1,0,0) (1,1,0)

si = e

j=0 j=1 j=2 j=3 j=4 j=5 j=6 j=7

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TABLE III. TSC index 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

THE DESIGNED EIGHT NEW TSCS ACCORDING TO THE RULES New TSC 00011101101011010001110110 01111111010001100111111101 00011101101101010001110110 11101101110001011110110111 11011101101000011101110110 01110100001001000111010000 11111101101010001111110110 01111110111000100111111011

IV.
Figure 4. Diagram of uplink OSC.

NEW TSCS DESIGN FOR MUROS

B. Principle of Uplink OSC For compatibility reason, UL OSC allows MS to use normal GMSK transmitter with good cross-correlation property. IC technology is necessary at BTS receiver to detect signals of MUROS pair simultaneously. It is assumed that BTS uses e.g. STIRC or SIC receiver to receive orthogonal sub-channels used by different MSes. In this paper, we focus on the SIC receiver. SIC is a process of multi-user detection (MUD), when SIC receiver detects signals of several users, it will demodulate them in decreasing order of signal power. The strongest signal is detected and demodulated first, and then removed from the mixed signals, then is the second strongest signal and so on. The detection algorithms for SIC receiver are zero forcing (ZF), minimum mean square error (MMSE) and so on. MMSE method could be adopted by BTS receiver with two or more receive antennas. be the estimated signal, Let x be the transmitting signal, and x and r be the received signal, the criterion of MMSE algorithm is illustrated as follow,
2 2 = min x W r min( 2 ) = min x x

New TSCs design is of utmost importance to guarantee the performance of both DL OSC and UL OSC. Because channel estimation and synchronization are based on the detection of TSC. Orthogonal TSCs design will eliminate the intra-cell and inter-cell co-channel Interference (CCI). Though it is difficult to obtain absolutely orthogonal TSCs, the lower the crosscorrelation coefficients between TSCs are, the lower the intracell and inter-cell CCI are. Assume that tk and ck are two TSCs of the two MUROS sub-channels. The two sequences are in-phase with the corresponding binary sub-channel symbols. The discrete signal of the TSC part at the receiver side is

rk = hl tk l + j hl ck l + nk
l l

(3)

Correlation is the general operation at the receiver side for channel estimation. The correlation of received rk with TSC tk yields

t r
m

* m k +m

* * * = tm hk + hkl tm tm+l + j hkl tm cm+l + tm nk+m m l 0 m l m m

(1)

Where is the mean square value, and W is the weighted matrix.

2

W = (H H H +
Where

I Nt ) 1 H H

(2)

is the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR),

I Nt is identity

matrix, N t is the number of transmit antennas.

TABLE II. TSC index 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 THE EIGHT LEGACY TSCS SPECIFIED IN 3GPP STANDARD Legacy TSC 00100101110000100010010111 00101101110111100010110111 01000011101110100100001110 01000111101101000100011110 00011010111001000001101011 01001110101100000100111010 10100111110110001010011111 11101111000100101110111100

(4) The first item of the RHS is the desired channel response. The second item relates the autocorrelation of TSC tk with delay. The third item of the RHS is related with the crosscorrelation between the two sub-channel TSCs. Usually good TSC will ensure the second and third item to be zero. According to this, we design the eight new TSCs as listed in table III, the legacy TSCs specified in 3GPP standard are listed in table II for comparison. Note that the nearer to zero that the cross-correlation coefficients are, the lower the intracell and inter-cell CCI are. However, there are no eight different new TSCs which meet the condition that all crosscorrelation coefficients are zero. So we set lower bounds for coefficients. Table IV lists the maximum value of the absolute values of new TSCs autocorrelation coefficients and crosscorrelation coefficients between new TSC and corresponding legacy TSC with multi-path delay.
TABLE IV. MAXIMUM CORRELATION COEFFICIENTS OF NEW TSCS Maximum Correlation Coefficient (absolute value) 0.145 0.204 0.177 0.598

Correlation with multi-path delay Autocorrelation with delay = 1, 2 symbol(s) Autocorrelation with delay = 3, 4, 5 symbol(s) cross-correlation with delay = 0, 1, 2 symbol(s) cross-correlation with delay = 3, 4, 5 symbol(s)

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1 0.5 0 -0.5 -1 5 8 0 2 delay (symbol) -5 0 TSC index 6 4

FER / Burst BER

10

-1

10

-2

FER, GMSK FER, DL OSC burst BER, GMSK burst BER, DL OSC -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4

-10

C/I (dB)
Figure 6. Link level performance of DL OSC for TS-0, Burst BER/FER versus C/I for AFS 5.9, TU3iFH, the cross-correlation coefficient p between legacy TSC3 and legacy TSC2 is 0.617.

Figure 5. The cross-correlation coefficients between new TSC and corresponding legacy TSC with multi-path delay.

Figure 5 shows the detail of the cross-correlation coefficients of new TSC and corresponding legacy TSC with multi-path delay, which are no more than 0.5979. Simulation result in fig.10 verifies that coefficients less than 0.62 keep the degradation within 1dB compared with orthogonal TSC pair. V. SIMULATION RESULTS

To evaluation the link level performance of DL OSC and UL OSC, we developed the link level simulation platform of GSM. We observed an interesting phenomenon when the UL OSC receiver uses MMSE-SIC algorithm. Then we verified the importance of the cross-correlation properties of TSCs to minimize CCI. The simulation parameters are listed in table V. A. The BER/BLER performance of DL OSC Figure 6 illustrates the burst BER and FER performance of DL OSC. It can be observed that at FER=0.01, the degradation is about 3.5dB, and that at BER=0.01, the degradation is about 4dB, which is acceptable performance degradation, as confirmed in [5, 6]. Notice that the degradation is reasonable, since we adopt higher-order modulation scheme, namely, we use QPSK instead of GMSK. Further more, due to crosscorrelation of TSC pair and multipath fading channel, varying channel phase makes I-phase and Q-phase sub-channels interfere with each other, the degradation is more than 3dB.
TABLE V. Aspect Speech codec Propagation Environment Mobility Frequency Hopping Training Sequences Optimization Transmit Pulse Shapes Test Scenario (TS) SIMULATION PARAMETERS

B. The BER/BLER performance of UL OSC Figure 7 shows the BER and BLER performance of UL OSC. Note that user 1 represents the user whose signal is stronger at the BTS receiver, and user 2 denotes the weaker one. We can observe that at BER=0.01, the degradation of user 1 is about 4dB, the degradation of user 2 is about 8dB. Notice that user 1 uses legacy TSC0, user 2 adopts legacy TSC1, the crosscorrelation coefficient is 0.677, so the performance is without TSC cross-correlation property optimization. The next subclause will show the gain of optimal TSC design. We did further study of UL OSC with MMSE-SIC algorithm in TS-2 and TS-3 scenarios. The BLER performance is illustrated in fig. 8 and fig.9 respectively. When user 1 moves towards the BTS, its link performance improves because the SNR condition gets better, at the same time, it can be seen that the link performance of user 2 becomes better, while its SNR condition remains the same, for user 2 doesnt move. That is a feature of SIC, the more veracious detection of user 1s signal means the better interference cancellation have been done for the detection of user 2s signal.
10
0

10 BER/BLER 10

-1

Working Assumption GSM AFS 12.2 or AFS 5.9 Typical Urban (TU 3 km/h ideal Frequency Hopping (iFH Usage of combination of legacy TSCs and new TSCs with improved cross correlation properties legacy linearized GMSK pulse shape TS-0: MS-1 and MS-2 move randomly TS-1: MS-2 hold still, MS-1 moves towards BTS TS-2: MS-2 hold still, MS-1 moves away from BTS

-2

10

-3

MMSE user1 ber MMSE user1 bler MMSE user2 ber MMSE user2 bler one user ber one user bler -5 0 5 10 15

-10

Es/No(dB)
Figure 7. Link level performance of UL OSC for TS-0, BER/BLER versus SNR for AFS 12.2, TU3iFH. User 1 uses legacy TSC0, user 2 adopts legacy TSC1, the cross-correlation coefficient is 0.677.

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10

10

-1

FER
-2

BLER

10

-1

10

10

-3

user1 user1 user1 user1 user2 user2 user2 user2 -8 -6

0dB 1dB 2dB 3dB 0dB 1dB 2dB 3dB -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8 10

10

-2

p=0 p=0.617 p=0.856 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8

-8

C/I (dB)
Es/No(dB)

-10

Figure 8. Link level performance of UL OSC for TS-1, BLER versus SNR for AFS 12.2, TU3iFH, the cross-correlation coefficient is 0.677.

The conclusion in TS-3 scenario is different. When user 1 moves away from the BTS, its link performance decreases because the SNR condition gets worse, in the meantime, the link performance of user 2 doesnt change much. That is because user 2s signal becomes the stronger one. It is detected first. As user 2 doesnt move, its channel conditions remain the same, so its link performance almost doesnt change, as shown in fig. 9. C. The Impact of the cross-correlation property We chose 3 TSC pairs to introduce OSC, legacy TSC3 with legacy TSC2, legacy TSC3 with new TSC3, and legacy TSC3 with TSC=[0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0], the cross-correlation coefficients p between them are 0.617, 0, 0.856, respectively. The simulation results are illustrated in fig. 10. At FER=0.01, the degradation of p=0.617 case is about 1dB compared with p=0 case, i.e. the orthogonal TSC pair case, while the degradation of p=0.856 case is more than 5dB. So the optimal TSCs design is crucial. The maximum crosscorrelation coefficient is p=0.598 between designed new TSC with corresponding legacy TSC, thus the degradation is within 1dB for all TSC pairs, which is an acceptable degradation.
10
0

Figure 10. Link level performance difference of 3 different TSC pairs for TS0, FER versus C/I for AFS 5.9, TU3iFH. The the cross-correlation coefficient p between legacy TSC3 and legacy TSC2 is 0.617, between legacy TSC3 and [0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0] is 0.856, between legacy TSC3 and new TSC3 is 0.

VI.

CONCLUSION

MUROS is introduced in this contribution, which is a new concept to enhance capacity of voice and data service of the GSM/EDGE networks. OSC is a specific solution to implement MUROS in current GSM network. We improved the performance of DL OSC by optimizing the new TSCs design, and studied the performance of UL OSC with MMSE-SIC in three scenarios. We conclude that OSC is a promising technology to implement two-user-reusing-one-slot without degrading the speech quality very much. Moreover, it is quite compatible with current GSM network [5, 6]. REFERENCES
[1] GP-072033, "WID: Multi-User Reusing-One-Slot (MUROS)," China Mobile, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, Nokia, Nortel Networks, NXP, Qualcomm, Telecom Italia, Vodafone, 3GPP GERAN #36, Vancouver, Canada, Nov. 2007 [2] R. Meyer, W. H. Gerstacker, and R. Schober et al. "A Single Antenna Interference Cancellation Algorithm for Increased GSM Capacity," IEEE Transctions on wireless communication, vol. 5, No. 7, July 2006 [3] 3GPP TR 45.903 v7.0.1, "Feasibility Study on Single Antenna Interference Cancellation (SAIC) for GSM networks," 3GPP GERAN, Aug. 2007 [4] GP-071738, "Speech capacity enhancements using DARP," QUALCOMM Europe,3GPP GERAN#36,Vancouver,Canada,Nov.2007 [5] GP-070214, "Voice Capacity Evolution with Orthogonal Sub Channel," Nokia, 3GPP GERAN #33, Seoul, South Korea, Feb. 2007 [6] GP-071792, "Voice Capacity Evolution with Orthogonal Sub Channels," Nokia Siemens Networks, 3GPP GERAN#36, Vancouver, Canada, Nov. 2007 [7] G. Klang and B. Ottersten, "Space-time interference rejection cancellation in transmit diversity systems," The 5th International Symposium on Wireless Personal Multimedia Communications,vol.2 Page(s) 706-710, 2002 [8] M. Debbah, B. Muquet, and M. de Courville et al. A MMSE successive interference cancellation scheme for a new adjustable hybrid spread OFDM system, in IEEE VTC Spring, Page(s) 745-749, 2000 [9] S. J. Grant and J. K. Cavers, "Performance enhancement through joint detection of cochannel signals using diversity arrays," IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 46, pp. 10381049, Aug. 1998. [10] 3GPP TR 45.004 v7.0.0, "Modulation," 3GPP GERAN, Aug. 2007.

10

-1

BLER

10

-2

10

-3

user1 0dB user1 -1dB user1 -2dB user1 -3dB user2 0dB user2 -1dB user2 -2dB user2 -3dB -5 0 5 10 15

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Es/No(dB)

Figure 9. Link level performance of UL OSC for TS-2, BLER versus SNR for AFS 12.2, TU3iFH, the cross-correlation coefficient is 0.677.

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