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LTE-A Uplink Antenna Solution Analysis

Fang Zhou

Hua Guo

Institute of Electrical and Information

Anhui University of Technology
City of Maanshan, China
zf7782@126.com

Institute of Electrical and Information

Anhui University of Technology
City of Maanshan, China
guohua@ahut.edu.cn

AbstractMIMO is basic antenna solution for LTE system

comparing to UMTS optional MIMO function, and MIMO can
improve LTE cell coverage and frequency usage efficiency.
Uplink coverage is very important for LTE system, and MUMIMO antenna solutions can enhance the LTE uplink coverage
and capacity. The paper analyses the relation between different
antenna configurations and cell spectral efficiency under uplink
MU-MIMO antenna mode for LTE-A system. LTE-advanced
supports advanced MIMO antenna techniques such as
coordinated multi-point (CoMP).The paper proposes 4Rx CoMP
antenna deployment solution for LTE-A intra-eNodeB network
and also analyses the impact of the LTE cell throughput by
uplink 4Rx CoMP technique

To increase the system throughput and thanks to the

detection capability of eNodeB, multiple UEs can transmit in
the same time-frequency resource. These transmitting UEs and
the receiving eNodeB form a so-called virtual MIMO system.
By this form of space-division multiple access (SDMA), a
virtual MIMO system can provide significant throughput gain
over a traditional uplink SIMO system. Multi-user MIMO
scheme is also discussed in [2-6].

Keywords-LTE-A; Antenna Configuration; 2*4 MU-MIMO;

Uplink 4Rx CoMP; Throughput Gain

I.

INTRODUCTION

Due to the rapid development of wireless communications

from 2G / 3G to 4G , UEs experience becomes more and
more important. Increasing system capacity and spectral
efficiency is vital for the operator. Various solutions can solve
this problem, but Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is a
better antenna solution and can provide more than spectral
efficiency. MIMO chooses multiple antennas at the transmitter
and/or receiver in combination with several signal processing
techniques, which is extended form single-input single-output
(SISO). Generally speaking, single-input multiple-output
(SIMO), multiple-input single-output
(MISO), and
beamforming are all categorized under MIMO. LTE deploys
different MIMO techniques depicted in [1] both the downlink
and the uplink to meet various spectral efficiency requirements.
Single-carrier frequency division multiple access (SCFDMA) is adopted as the transmission scheme for LTE uplink.
Each UE can transmit with only a single antenna in Release 8.
On the other hand, Each eNodeB is typically equipped with
multiple antennas and thus can separate multiple independent
data streams. If user multiplexing on the same time-frequency
resource is not allowed, then it is a SIMO system and thus
only one data stream can be supported.

UE may have eight antennas and is allowed to send a

maximum of four independent streams in Release 10,.
Codebooks for rank-1 to rank-4 uplink transmissions have
been defined in the standard specifications. In a virtual MIMO
system, the uplink channel of each co-scheduled UE needs to
be estimated at the eNodeB. This can be accomplished by
applying different cyclic shifts and/or orthogonal cover codes
(OCC) to the uplink DM-RS for different UEs. Once the
channels have been estimated, the eNodeB can apply some
type of receiver, such as MMSE or MMSE-SIC receiver, to
recover the signal from each UE. Various types of receiver
will impact LTE performance for LTE MU-MIMO [7].
This paper analyses the relation between different antenna
configurations and cell spectral efficiency under uplink MUMIMO mode for LTE-A scenarios. MU-MIMO includes 2*2
and 2*4 and antenna configuration considers XPOXPO 0.5
and XPO 4.0.
In addition to the MU-MIMO techniques, LTE-advanced
supports advanced MIMO techniques such as coordinated
multi-point (CoMP), which coordinates multi-point
transmission and reception between cells. The proposed
coordinated scheduling/coordinated beam forming scheme is
robust in the realistic environments and can help system
achieve much better performance for cell edge UE, i.e., a gain
of 13% for intra-site CoMP and a gain of 20% for inter-site
CoMP with respect to the baseline single cell MU MIMO[8].
UL CoMP mainly includes two scenarios:
Case 1

The work was supported by the Anhui Natural Science Key Research Project
for Universities under grant No.KJ2012A040, No.KJ2011A039 and the
Young Teacher Scientific Research Foundation of Anhui University of
Technology under grant No.QZ201013.



k,(((

UE k is denoted by Sk,n, which is precoded to obtain the

length N t vector as follows:

Signal combining gains from UL CoMP UE's for UEs.

Case 2

dk , n

Intra-eNodeB interference mitigation gains from UL

CoMP.

(1)

N t u lk precoding matrix for UE k is Pk , A sequence of M

This paper proposes 4Rx CoMP antenna deployment

solution for LTE-A intra-eNodeB network and also analyses
the uplink 4Rx CoMP throughput gain in the LTE-A network.

II.

Pk sk ,n

symbols from each layer of the precoder output is applied to

the M-point DFT operation. Denoting the sequence
corresponding to the v-th layer as the vector:

[d k ,1 (v ), d k ,2 (v ), , d k , M (v )]T , where d k ,m (v)

d (kv )

LTE-A UL VIRTUAL MIMO ANTENNA SOLUTION

ANALYSIS

is the v-th element of

A. Antenna Solution System Model

Block diagram of UE transmitters is as follows:

dk ,m . The M-point DFT operation is

given by

q(kv )

FM d(kv )

The unitary M-point DFT matrix is

(2)

FM . This DFT

operation transforms the time-domain sequence

frequency-domain sequence

d(kv ) into the

q(kv ) , which is then mapped to M

out of N subcarriers. At the eNodeB, a procedure the same as

OFDM signal reception is first performed.
The frequency-domain signal as a vector of length M, Nr
for the Nr antennas and the M occupied subcarriers can be
written as follows:
x=HFEPs+w

(3)

Where:
The eNodeB receiver block diagram is illustrated in the
following figure.

x=[ [ [1U indicates the length-M frequency-domain

signal vector on antenna i, with xi(1L1U) ,


Additive white Gaussian noise vector with zero mean is

w and covariance matrix V 2 I MN r

MN r u KMNt matrix with diagonal blocks for H, and H
corresponds to the following form:

H1,1,1

H2,1,1
H


HNr ,1,1

K UEs are paired for SC-FDMA transmission on M

contiguous subcarriers. If the eNodeB has Nr antennas, each
UE has Nt antennas, and UE k is transmitting with rank lk . An
illustration of the operations performed by the UE transmitters
is shown. The n-th length lk modulation symbol vector from



 H1,1,Nt
 H2,1,Nt


 HNr ,1,Nt

H1,2,1  H1,2,Nt  H1,K,1  H1,K,Nt

H2,2,1  H2,2,Nt  H2,K,1  H2,K,Nt









HNr ,2,1  HNr ,2,Nt  HNr ,K,1  HNr ,K,Nt

(4)

H i ,k , j is a M u M diagonal matrix on its main diagonal,

It is a vector of length M l k which contains the

which contains the frequency response of the channel

between the j-th antenna of UE k and the i-th antenna of the
eNodeB on the M occupied subcarriers, F is a

information symbol sequences of all K UEs. MMSE

frequency-domain equalizer can be deduced according to the
above formulation.

KMNt u KMNt block-diagonal matrix and

k 1

has the

G PH EH FH HH HFEPPH EH FH HH  V 2IMNr

following form:

FM

FM


FM

is a

(10)
Downlink MU-MIMO system model is also researched,
and some system level simulation reveal significant gain for
MU-MIMO comparing to LTE Release 8 SUMIMO in [9].

KMNt u KMNt permutation matrix with eTf (i )

B. User Pairing and Scheduling for Virtual MIMO Antenna

Solution
User pairing and scheduling are crucial to obtain the
potential gain of virtual MIMO. Well-separated spatial
signatures are required for paired UEs. Some restrictions from
practical perspectives can be imposed for pairing users.

f (i) -th

element is one and all other elements are zero, with

i
i  MNt

i
MNt  N (i mod M )

f (i) MNt

M
MNt

is a K M N t u M

In [10], multi-cluster scheduling solution for LTA-A UL is

researched, Multi-cluster transmission has low signal PAPR,
so which has higher scheduling flexibility. UE capability and
left RB are firstly considered, and UE live limited power is
also one reason during the scheduling process.

(6)

N UEs is assumed for one pool and the maximum of M

UEs can be paired, so the number of possible UE groups to be
examined is given by:

l k block-diagonal matrix with the

k 1

following form:

P1

Every


P1
P2

P k (1 d k d K )

(9)

=Gx

on its i-th row, where e f ( i ) is a vector whose

1

The equalizer result can be described as:

(5)


P2

PK


PK

i
i

(11)

The performance metric used for the selection of UE group

is the value of sum priority. P is the sum priority of a UE
group.
R

pi

Ri

i 1

(7)

(12)

is repeated M times, and so:

s [s1,1  s1,M s2,1  s2,M  sK,1  sK,M ]T

The number of UEs is R in the group, Rpi is the predicted

payload of the i-th paired UE, and Ri(t) is the average
transmission rate of the i-th paired UE. The calculation of sum
priority is conducted for each possible UE group and for each
TFBLK. TFBLK is the scheduling unit defined in terms of
time-frequency resource.

(8)



The performance of LTE-A uplink virtual MIMO in

different scenarios are as follows by system simulation. The
simulation parameters are listed in Table III.

Upon completion, we have a two-dimensional table of sum

priority which is illustrated in Table I for the case of 4
TFBLKs, a total of 3 UEs and a maximum of 2 paired UEs.
Each entry in the table can be identified by an index pair (r, g),
where r and g represents a TFBLK and a UE group,
respectively.
TABLE I.

Figure 1 compares the performance of codebook-based

uplink 2*2/2*4 SU and 2*2/2*4 MU MIMO when eNodeB
antenna array is cross-polarized (XPO) with 0.5 and 4
spacing for MMSE receiver respectively. The notation MxN
for antenna configuration indicates that each UE has m
antennas and the eNodeB has n antennas. For the MU case, the
first number in the parentheses is the geometry threshold for
user pairing, and only UEs with geometry greater than the
threshold can be paired with another UE; the second number is
the largest allowed difference in geometry of two paired UE,
so two UEs with geometry difference greater than this number
can never be paired. Clearly, increasing the first number will
reduce the probability of MU pairing, while increasing the
second number has the converse effect. In this case, increasing
the probability of MU pairing and XPO spacing improve
average cell spectral efficiency. In [12-13], some cooperative
communication schemes are deeply studied for multimedia
applications.

2-D TABLE OF SUM PRIORITY CASE

TFBLK UEGroup

{1}

{2}

{3}

{1,2}

{1,3}

{2,3}

#1

R1,{1}

R1,{2}

R1,{3}

R1,{1,2}

R1,{1,3}

R1,{2,3}

#2

R2,{1}

R2,{2}

R2,{3}

R2,{1,2}

R2,{1,3}

R2,{2,3}

#3

R3,{1}

R3,{2}

R3,{3}

R3,{1,2}

R3,{1,3}

R3,{2,3}

#4

R4,{1}

R4,{2}

R4,{3}

R4,{1,2}

R4,{1,3}

R4,{2,3}

To illustrate the effect of pre-defined constraints on

TFBLK assignment, first assume the only requirement is that
resource allocation must be contiguous. Table II illustrates the
status of the entries at this stage, where the entries for TFBLK
#3 and #4 containing UE 2 are excluded as they violate the
principle of contiguous resource allocation. This scheduling
constraint is called mixed pairing as it allows a UE to be
paired with different UEs across its scheduled bandwidth.
TABLE II.
UEGroup /
TFBLK

2-D TABLE OF SUM PRIORITY WITH MIXED PAIRING CASE

R1,{1}

R1,{2}

R1,{3}

R1,{1,2}

R1,{1,3}

R1,{2,3}

#2

R{1}

R2,{2}

R2,{3}

R2,{1,2}

R2,{1,3}

R2,{2,3}

#3

R3,{1}

R3,{2}

R3,{3}

R3,{1,2}

R3,{1,3}

R3,{2,3}

#4

R4,{1}

R4,{2}

R4,{3}

R4,{1,2}

R4,{1,3}

R4,{2,3}

#1

Figure 1.

Simulation Results
In [11], different antenna configurations includes uniform
linear arrays(ULAs) and cross-polarized(XPO) with narrow
(0.5 ) and wide antenna( 4 )spacing respectively is
researched for DL SU-MIMO/MU-MIMO antenna solutions.

Cell average spectral efficiency Comparison

C.

TABLE III.

III.

UL CoMP chooses UL macro diversity to combine

received signals. UL CoMP uses the antennas of two cells to
receive UE signals from the physical uplink shared channel
(PUSCH) and combines two cells received signals in the
overlapped coverage area of one eNodeB. So both signal
combining gain and interference mitigation gain can be
provided by UL CoMP antenna solution.

SYSTEM-LEVEL SIMULATION PARAMETERS

Parameters

Values

Simulation model

57 cells for simulation cluster

Simulation scenarios

Case1 ( in TR25.814)

UE numbers

At least 10 UEs per cell

Carrier Bandwidth

10MHz

Channel model

SCM

LTE-A UL 4RX COMP ANTENNA SOLUTION ANALYSIS

UL CoMP depends on UL interference rejection

combining (IRC) and can be used only after UL Interference
Rejection Combining is enabled. UL CoMP is typically used
in the following two cases:
Case 1: UE is called type-1 CoMP UE.



Type-1 CoMP UE camps on the edge between intraeNodeB cells. The signals of this UE are very likely to obtain
obvious signal combining gains from UL CoMP antenna
solution.

Intra-site UL CoMP without Interference - Throughput Gain

60.00%
50.00%

Case 2: UE is called type-2 CoMP UE.

Gain(%)

40.00%

LTE-A RSRP difference indicates the differences in

reference signal received power (RSRP) between different
cells of one eNodeB to help understand the selection of CoMP
UEs.
TABLE IV.

0.00%

5MHz @ 2GHz

UE category

Rel-8, support of SIMO

Base station antenna configuration

2Rx/cell: one pair of X-pol

HARQ

On, max. 4

Power control for targeted SNR

Yes

-85

-90

-105

NRSRP(dBm)

-85

-92

-106

Figure 3.

According to Table IV parameters, we can get intra-site

Intra-site UL CoMP without Interference - Throughput

12000
10000
8000

Non-CoMP IRC

6000

UL CoMP MRC

4000

UL CoMP Full IRC

,QWUDVLWH8/&R03ZLWK,QWHUIHUHQFH7KURXJKSXW

-85

-90

-105

NRSRP(dBm)

-85

-92

-106

7KURXJKSXW.ESV

2000

0
RSRP(dBm)

Intra-site uplink CoMP throughput gain without

interference

Figure 4 and Figure 5 have showed the Intra-site test results

with interference. In Figure 4, similar to the previous
conclusion, the baseline throughput decreases when radio
conditions get worse. Compare with the results in Figure 2, the
baseline throughput become lower because of the existence of
interference. In addition, we can see that MRC CoMP almost
displays no gain at the first two test spots, because of
interference and relatively worse supporting link. However,
Full IRC CoMP has revealed expected performance in
interference mitigation. Obviously, when RSRP gets around 110dBm and NRSRP reaches to 145%, the CoMP gain is of
great significance. The IRC receiver can efficiently suppress
one dominant interference.

uplink CoMP throughput and corresponding gain as follows.

Throughput(Kbps) .

RSRP(dBm)

Values

System bandwidth

UL CoMP Full IRC

20.00%
10.00%

SYSTEM-LEVEL PARAMETERS

Parameters

UL CoMP MRC

30.00%

Figure 2. Intra-site uplink CoMP throughput without interference

Figure 2 and Figure 3 have indicated the intra-site test

results without interference. In Figures 2, baseline throughput
decreases with RSRP decreases. At the test spot with -85dBm
RSRP and -85dBm NRSRP, we can see that the baseline
throughput is good enough and almost reaches to peak
throughput, and there is very little CoMP gain. At the same
time, from Figure 3, we can see that the CoMP gain increases
while the radio condition becomes worse. The throughput gain
almost reaches to 55% when the RSRP and NRSRP are around
-105dBm.













1RQ&R03,5&
8/&R0305&
8/&R03)XOO,5&

RSRP(dBm)







NRSRP(dBm)







Figure 4. Intra-site uplink CoMP throughput withInterference



and the Young Teacher Scientific Research Foundation of

Anhui University of Technology under grant No.QZ201013.

,QWUDVLWH8/&R03ZLWK,QWHUIHUHQFH7KURXJKSXW*DLQ


REFERENCES



*DLQ



[1]
[2]
[3]


8/&R0305&
8/&R03)XOO,5&






[4]


RSRP(dBm)







NRSRP(dBm)







[5]

Figure 5. Intra-site uplink CoMP throughput gain with interference

[6]

Furthermore, we also can find that inter-site CoMP test

results with interference are similar to the results for intra-site.
And in general, inter-site CoMP gain is likeness to intra-site
CoMP, either with interference or without interference.
IV.

[7]

[8]

CONCLUSION

In this paper, we have described uplink MU-MIMO

antenna solutions in LTE-Advanced. A MMSE frequency
equalizer is derived according to the equivalent baseband
system model, and user pairing and scheduling algorithms used
in the system-level simulation platform are presented. 2*4 MUMIMO antenna solution shows capacity gain over 2*2 MUMIMO for some typical antenna configurations for LTE-A
uplink. Advanced MIMO antenna techniques (uplink 4Rx
CoMP) are also researched, and have further throughput gain
for cell edge UE according to simulation results.

[9]
[10]

[11]

[12]

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the anonymous referees for
their help comments and suggestions. The work was supported
by the Anhui Natural Science Key Research Project for
Universities under grant No.KJ2012A040, No.KJ2011A039

[13]



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