Performance Analysis of Physical Downlink and

Uplink Channels in TD-LTE System

Muzi Wu, Yuexing Peng, Xiao Yang, Xiaofeng Zhang, Wenbo Wang
Wireless Signal Processing and Network Lab
Key Lab of Universal Wireless Communication, Ministry of Education
Beijing University of Posts & Telecommunications, Beijing, China
AbstractTD-LTE as the evolution of TD-SCDMA is designed to
support high data rates and reduced radio link delays. To reach
these goals, new air interface is specified for TD-LTE. In this
paper, the performance of physical uplink and downlink
channels are evaluated by means of numerical simulations. Since
the deployment of smart antennas is the unique feature of TDSCDMA, special attentions are paid to the case of TD-LTE with
dual-polarized smart antennas scheme, which can greatly
facilitate practical application by smaller antenna array size and
better stability relative to traditional mono-polarized smart
antennas. The error performance is simulated for multiple
physical channels with both mono- and dual-polarized smart
antennas, and the simulation results on link level show that the
dual-polarization scheme pays slight penalty of signal-to-noise
ratio (SNR) loss, but brings significant benefits to practical
application. It is intensively recommended to deploy the dualpolarized smart antennas in TD-LTE.

I.

INTRODUCTION

As an international 3G standard, TD-SCDMA has been

commercialized in China since 2008. In order to make TDSCDMA competitive in the future, a smooth evolution from the
current TD-SCDMA standards to IMT-Advanced are
anticipated.
It can be divided into three phases in the evolution map [1].
Enhanced version of TD-SCDMA, such as TD-HSPA, TDMBMS and TD-HSPA+ are incorporated in the first phase and
the technologies are still based on CDMA.
In the second phase, long term evolution (LTE) program
for TD-SCDMA, named by TD-LTE, is undertaken. TD-LTE
aims at higher data rates with low latency, improved system
capacity and coverage, reduced operating costs, flexible
bandwidth operations (1.4 MHz up to 20 MHz) and seamless
integration with existing systems. To reach these goals,
OFDM-based air interface is adopted. In order to coexistence
with 3G standards, e.g. WCDMA for FDD and TD-SCDMA
for TDD, LTE can operate on FDD mode and TDD mode that
both modes share the same underlying framework. The
significant differences between the two modes are on the
physical layer, in particular, on the radio frame structure.
The last phase is the revolution to IMT-Advanced system
regarded as TD-LTE+ and becoming one alternative standard
in beyond 3G systems. The target data rates for IMT-Advanced
are up to 1 Gbps for downlink and 500Mbps for uplink.

Therefore TD-LTE+ should support bandwidth greater than 20

MHz, e.g. up to 100 MHz. Moreover, TD-LTE+ should
support backward compatibility so that a TD-LTE user can
work in TD-LTE+ networks. Due to the limited spectrum
resources, carrier aggregation is a solution that can aggregate
non-contiguous spectrum allocation and increase bandwidth.
The design of suitable control signalling is therefore more
challenging than LTE. Other advanced techniques, such as
multi-user beamforming and the use of relay nodes, may be
adopted in TD-LTE+.
In this paper, we focus on the ongoing evolution system,
the TD-LTE. In order to save space resources at base station,
known in LTE as the eNodeB, reduce investments as well as
accelerate the construction of TD-LTE network, it is advisable
to share antennas in TD-SCDMA system. As we know, smart
antenna is a key technology applied in TD-SCDMA, which
increase the system capacity, enlarge the cell coverage,
minimize the interference power from no-desired users and so
on [2]. Due to the benefits of TDD system, we can make full
use of the channel reciprocity for beamforming. Single-stream
beamforming has been supported in both TD-SCDMA and TDLTE. In current status, smart antennas are widely used uniform
linear arrays with 8 mono-polarized elements at base station
and antenna spacing equals to half wavelength ( / 2 )
depending on the frequency of operation. However, the
considerable size occupied by this type of smart antennas
results in high wind resistance, low stability and difficulty on
maintenance relative to 2G system. A dominant solution may
be miniaturization of smart antennas utilized dual-polarized
antennas. It is realized that eight elements at eNodeB can be
classified into four two-element groups, and position twoelement polarizations in orthogonal orientations, e.g. -45 and
45 degree, where inter-group spacing equals to / 2 while
intra-group spacing equals to zero. Therefore the impact on the
performance of physical shared and control channels with dualpolarized smart antennas in TD-LTE as well as the
performance gap between dual-polarized and traditional smart
antennas are required to be analyzed. We attempt to achieve
these goals in this paper.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. An overview
of physical downlink and uplink channels in TD-LTE are
provided in Section II and III, respectively. The link-level
simulation results for different physical channels in TD-LTE
with dual- and mono-polarized smart antennas are presented

and analyzed in Section IV, followed by the conclusions in

Section V.
II.

PHYSICAL DOWNLINK CHANNEL

In TD-LTE downlink, OFDM is selected as the airinterface. After procedure for cell search and synchronization,
user equipment (UE) uses downlink reference signals to
estimate channel in order to perform demodulation of the
downlink signal. Three different reference signals are provided,
including cell-specific reference signals, MBSFN reference
signals and UE-specific reference signals. The last one can be
used to enable beamforming of the data transmissions to
specific UEs.
Physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) is the main
data-bearing downlink channel in TD-LTE. On the purpose of
supporting data transmission for different UEs, downlink
control signalling is transmitted on the first n OFDM symbols
(n3) and carried by three physical channels- physical control
format indicator channel (PCFICH), physical HARQ indicator
channel (PHICH) and physical downlink control channel
(PDCCH).
A. PDSCH
PDSCH is mainly used for all user data, also for paging
messages and broadcast system information which not carried
on the physical broadcast channel (PBCH). When employed
for user data, one or at most two transport blocks can be
transmitted by each UE per subframe, depending on the
transmission mode selected for the PDSCH. Each transmission
mode corresponds to an applied multi-antenna transmission
technique. The mapping of data to physical resource blocks
(RBs) can be carried out by localized mapping and distributed
mapping. The former is suitable for most scenarios. The latter
is typically used for voice over IP service and results in the
increase of VOIP capacity. In order to facilitate UE to recover
the messages, the allocation of PDSCH transmission resources
are signaled to the UE on PDCCH, and the identity of a
specific UE is also indicated on PDCCH. For the broadcast
system information or paging messages transmitted on PDSCH,
the system information radio network temporary identifier (SIRNTI) and the paging radio network temporary identifier (PRNTI) are indicated on the PDCCH, respectively.
B. PCFICH
PCFICH carries a control format indicator (CFI) which
indicates the number of OFDM symbols, i.e. normally 1, 2 or 3,
used for transmission of PDCCH in a subframe. Three different
CFI values are used in LTE, and a fourth value is reserved for
future use. In order to make the CFI sufficiently robust, each
value is indicated by a codeword of 32 bits. To make the UE
receive the PCFICH from the desired cell, cell-specific
scrambling tied to the physical cell ID is applied to the CFI
codeword. After QPSK modulation, 16 REs are distributed
across the system bandwidth in the first OFDM symbol in
order to achieve maximum frequency diversity. To clearly
distinguish CFI from a neighbouring cell, the cell-specific
frequency offset tied to the physical cell ID is applied to the
positions of the PCFICH REs.

C. PHICH
PHICH carries the hybrid-ARQ ACK/NACK, which
indicates whether the eNodeB has correctly received a
transmission on the PUSCH or not. For a positive
acknowledgement, HARQ indicator is 0, while for a negative
acknowledgement, HARQ indicator is 1. The structure of
PHICH processing is shown in figure 1. The HARQ indicator
is firstly encoded by a factor-3 repetition coding for robustness,
and then modulated by BPSK. Multiple PHICHs can be
mapped to the same set of REs, which are multiplexed through
length-4 complex orthogonal Walsh sequences for normal
cyclic prefix (CP) or length-2 for extended CP. Therefore,
considering I/Q multiplexing, up to 8 UEs can receive their
acknowledgements on the same set of downlink REs. A cellspecific scrambling sequence is also applied. The number of
OFDM symbols for the PHICH transmission is configurable by
higher layers, including one, two or three OFDM symbols.

Figure 1. The structure of PHICH processing

D. PDCCH
PDCCH carries downlink control information, including
downlink scheduling assignments, uplink scheduling grants
and uplink power control commands. UE identity is implicitly
encoded in the cyclic redundancy check (CRC). A PDCCH can
transmit 1, 2, 4, or 8 control channel elements (CCEs). Each
CCE corresponds to 9 resource element groups (REGs) and
each REG corresponds to 4 resource elements (REs). A larger
number of CCEs indicates a smaller code rate. eNodeB can
change the number of CCEs according to the channel
conditions to achieve sufficient robustness. The set of
downlink control information (DCI) formats is specified in [3].
DCI formats 0, 1A, 3 and 3A shall have the same payload size,
and the smaller format size is extended by adding zero padding
bits. Information fields defined in the DCI formats are
including: resource indication such as resource block grant or
assignment, resource allocation type; transport format such as
multi-antenna information, modulation and coding scheme
(MCS); HARQ process number; redundancy version; new data
indicator; power control commands. After information element
multiplexing and CRC attachment, the PDCCH information
bits are convolutional encoded and rate matched to an available
length. A cell-specific scrambling sequence is then applied.
The scrambled bits are QPSK modulated and mapped to blocks
of REGs. Interleaving is applied to the REGs in order to
provide frequency diversity. Finally, the available physical REs
are mapped to the set of OFDM symbols indicated by the
PCFICH. In general, multiple PDCCHs can be transmitted in a
subframe. In order to reduce computational load for blind
decoding at the receiver, a dedicated/common search space
containing a limited set of CCE locations where a PDCCH may
be placed is defined.
III.

PHYSICAL UPLINK CHANNEL

TD-LTE uplink applies SC-FDMA transmission scheme to

ensure maximum commonality with the downlink, and its

crucial single-carrier property results in the peak-to-average

power ratio (PAPR) significantly lower than multi-carrier
transmission scheme. The main uplink physical channels are
the physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) for data
transmission and the physical uplink control channel (PUCCH)
for control signalling transmission. Only localized mapping is
supported for PUSCH and PUCCH transmissions.
A. PUSCH
PUSCH is carried data from the uplink shared channel (ULSCH) transport channel and used frequency domain DFTSpread OFDM. The processing chain is shown in Figure 2.
Information bits are first channel-coded and rate-matched to a
suitable final code rate. The coded bits are then scrambled by a
length-31 Gold code prior to modulation mapping, DFTspreading, REs mapping and OFDM modulation. In order to
avoid the distortion caused by the DC subcarrier, the signal is
frequency-shifted by half a subcarrier prior to transmission.
Different modulation schemes, such as QPSK, 16QAM and
64QAM are supported. The fourth SC-FDMA symbol for
normal CP or the third SC-FDMA symbol for extended CP per
slot in each subframe is reserved for demodulation reference
signal on the purpose of channel estimation.

Figure 2. Uplink physical data channel processing.

B. PUCCH
PUCCH is only transmitted data non-associated control
signalling, including scheduling requests (SRs), HARQ
ACK/NACK bits and channel quality indicators (CQIs).
MIMO-related feedback, such as rank indicator (RI) or
precoding matrix indicator (PMI) for downlink transmissions,
also falls into this category.
A PUCCH transmission is comprised of two RBs each
subframe in a frequency region on the edges of the system
bandwidth. This is enabled to reduce out-of-band emissions
caused by PUSCH transmissions on the inner RBs, and
maximize the data rates of PUSCH and flexibility for PUSCH
scheduling. Frequency diversity is also achieved through slotbased frequency hopping. PUCCH can be multiplexed multiple
UEs via frequency-domain code-division multiplexing and/or
time-domain block spreading [4]. Demodulation reference
signal (DRS) is reserved for channel estimation. In the case of
normal CP, 3 reference symbols each slot are configured for
format 1/1a/1b and 2 reference symbols for format 2/2a/2b.
Format 1 supports of scheduling request which mapped to 1.
Format 1a/1b support 1- or 2-bit HARQ ACK/NACK
modulated by BPSK or QPSK. Format 2 supports CQI
feedback, which is encoded by using Reed Muller codes (20, k),
where k is the CQI payload size. The coded bits are scrambled
and QPSK modulated. Each modulated symbol is frequency
domain spread by multiplexing a cyclic time shift of the length12 base reference signal sequence. The number of cyclic time
shifts is configurable by a cell-specific higher-layer signalling
parameter. Then reference symbols and data symbols are timedivision multiplexed. For format 1/1a/1b, uplink control

information and reference signal sequence are respectively

spread in the time domain by multiplexing length-4 and length3 orthogonal sequences in the case of normal CP. The first slot
is constructed according to the above procedure. Finally, the
second slot carries the same signal as the first slot but on the
other frequency band.
The method used to achieve multiplexing of ACK/NACK
and CQI from a UE is different for normal CP and extended CP.
In the case of the extended CP, with one reference symbol per
slot, ACK/NACK and CQI are jointly encoded by the same
encoder as the PUCCH format 2. While in the other case, 1 or
2 ACK/NACK bits are modulated by BPSK or QPSK, and then
used in the generation of the second reference symbol in a slot,
as known PUCCH format 2a or 2b.
IV.

PERFORMANCE EVALUATIONS

In this section, we present the link-level simulation results

for the physical channels described in section II and III, and the
performance comparisons between mono- and dual-polarized
smart antennas. The main parameters of the simulation system
are listed in TABLE I.
TABLE I.
Parameters
LTE frame structure
System bandwidth
Number of UEs
Channel Model
MIMO Configuration
Channel Eestimation Method
Receive Algorithm
PDSCH MCS.
PUSCH MCS.
PDCCH Format
Number of CCEs
PUCCH Formats

SIMULATION PARAMETERS
Description
TDD frame structure with normal CP
20MHz at 2GHz
1 UE
ITU-UMi
82 (Downlink) 18 (Uplink)
Ideal
Minimum mean square error (MMSE)
QPSK, Turbo Coding (1,13/11), Rate 1/2
16QAM, Turbo Coding (1,13/11), Rate 1/2
Format 0/1A/3/3A
1CCE , 2CCEs, 4CCEs, 8CCEs
Format 1/1a/1b/2/2a/2b

For the mono-polarized smart antennas, all the antennas are

vertically polarized and spaced at / 2 .This results in high
channel correlation and the whole size of mono-polarized smart
antennas is about 525 mm. For the dual-polarized smart
antennas, the antennas polarization angles are -45/45 degree
and 0/90 degree at eNodeB and UE, respectively. The intergroup spacing at the eNodeB is fixed at / 2 , and the whole
size is about 225 mm. The reduced size brings many
advantages, such as low wind resistance, facilitation of
operation and maintenance at eNodeB.
The downlink beam of smart antennas can be classified into
two patterns: directional beam for a specific UE and omnidirectional beam for the whole cell. Directional beam is always
applied to PDSCH while omni-directional beam is typically
applied to control channels. Beamforming algorithm is based
on singular value decomposition (SVD) method in this paper,
and the beamforming weights are corresponding to the largest
singular value of the channel matrix. The beamforming
gain is determined by the mean of eigenvalue . Therefore we
can utilize this value to verify the rationality of simulation
results.

Simulation results for PCFICH and PHICH are shown in

figure 3-c) and 3-d), respectively. From the simulation curves,
we observe the similar results as PDSCH/PDCCH that the
dual-polarization pays slight penalty of SNR loss for the
miniaturization design of smart antennas. Mean value of the
largest eigenvalue of the channel matrix is 6.70 and 7.66 for
dual- and mono-polarization, respectively. Therefore omnidirectional beam gain of dual-polarization is smaller than
mono-polarization, and then results in the performance
degradation.
b) PDCCH

a) PDSCH

-1

10

-1

BLER

BLER

10

1CCE,dual
1CCE,mono
2CCE,dual
2CCE,mono
4CCE,dual
4CCE,mono
8CCE,dual
8CCE,mono

-2

10

10

-2

10

-3

dual
mono
-3

10

-10

-9

-8

-7

-6

-5

-14 -12 -10

-8

-6

-4

-2

SNR(dB)
d) PHICH

SNR(dB)
c) PCFICH

For PUCCH 2/2a/2b, payload size of 4 bits is used for a

wideband CQI and then encoded by a linear code (20, 4) with
code rate 1/5. For PUCCH 1/1a/1b, time-domain spreading
within a subframe can be viewed as a repetition code with code
rate 1/8. Therefore, coding gain for PUCCH 1/1a/1b is larger
than PUCCH 2/2a/2b, which is testified by the simulation
results shown in figure 4-b). Furthermore, SNR loss of dualpolarization scheme is less than 1dB.
a) PUSCH

10

b)PUCCH

-1

10

1, dual
1, mono
1a, dual
1a, mono
1b, dual
1b, mono
2, dual
2, mono
2a, dual
2a, mono
2b, dual
2b, mono

-1

BLER

BLER performance for PDCCH format 0/1A/3/3A with 1,

2, 4, and 8 CCEs are depicted in figure 3-b). The payload size
for PDCCH formats 0, 1A, 3, and 3A are 31 bits, individually.
The more the number of CCEs, the smaller the code rate is.
Therefore the coding gain increases successively according to
the order followed by 1, 2, 4, and 8CCEs. When BLER is 1%,
the SNR loss for dual-polarization is about 1dB compared to
mono-polarization in all the cases of CCEs.

B. Performance results of physical uplink channels

Combining receiving instead of beamforming is applied in
uplink. We employ MMSE detection method for all uplink
channels. Simulation results for PUSCH are present in figure 4a). SNR gap between dual- and mono-polarized antennas at 1%
level on BLER is about 1dB.

BLER

A. Performance results of physical downlink channels

BLER performance for PDSCH with dual-and monopolarized smart antennas is shown in figure 3-a). For PDSCH,
SNR loss of the dual-polarization scheme at 1% BLER is 1dB
compared to mono-polarization scheme. Moreover we
calculate the mean of the largest eigenvalue of the channel
matrix in order to analyze the reasonability of the simulation
results. We observe the mean value is 11.28 and 12.87 in the
case of dual- and mono-polarization, respectively. We can
conclude that mono-polarization scheme achieves more
directional beam gain than dual-polarization due to the larger
mean of and then results in better performance. This analysis
accords with the simulation results.

10

-2

10

-3

mono
dual
-4

-2

SNR(dB)

10

-2

10

-3

-26 -24 -22 -20 -18 -16 -14 -12 -10 -8

-6

SNR (dB)

Figure 4. Dual-polarized vs. mono- polarized for a) PUSCH, b) PUCCH

1/1a/1b/2/2a/2b (normal cyclic prefix only)

V.

CONCULUSIONS

In this paper, an overview of physical shared and control

channel design for TD-LTE is presented. In order to ensure a
smooth evolution from TD-SCDMA to TD-LTE, smart
antennas should be incorporated and miniaturization design of
smart antennas by means of dual-polarization scheme is
mainstream trend to facilitate practical application. To evaluate
the performance of dual-polarized smart antennas in TD-LTE,
via link level simulations we analyze the error performance of
physical uplink and downlink channels. The simulation results
show that dual-polarized smart antennas cost slight SNR loss
of not more than 1dB at 1% level on BLER for the facilitation
of practical application. As a result, dual-polarized smart
antennas scheme is a perfect choice for TD-LTE.
ACHNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by National Key Technology
R&D Program of China under Grant 2009ZX03003-004-01.

-1

BLER

10

BLER

10

-1

10

-2

10

-3

-2

10

REFERENCES

mono
dual

-16

[1]

dual
mono
-3

-15

-14

-13

-12

-11

SNR (dB)

-10

-9

-8

10

-22

-20

-18

-16

-14

-12

-10

SNR (dB)

Figure 3. Dual-polarized vs. mono- polarized for a) PDSCH, b) PDCCH

0/1A/3/3A, c) PCFICH, d) PHICH

[2]
[3]
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