Chapter 9

Channel Coding &

Interleaving

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 Why do Channel Coding ???
The varying properties of Radio Channel results in high
bit error rate (order of 10-3 to 10-1 ).
Highly compressed redundancy reduced source coding
makes speech communication with acceptable voice
quality almost impossible.
Channel coding is required to bring error rate into an
acceptable range of 10-5 to 10-6.
In contrast to source coding, channel coding adds
redundancy to data stream to enable detection &
correction of transmission error.

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 Channel Coding
GSM Channel Coding Uses Several procedures:

1.Block Coding:
generates parity bits for error detection.
2.Convolution Coding:
generates redundancy for error Correction.
3.Interleaving:
Interleaving of data over several blocks reduces the
damage done by burst error

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 Stages of Channel Coding

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 Stages of Channel Coding
The block coding stage in GSM has the purpose of
generating parity bits for a block of data, which allow
the detection of errors in this block. Since block
coding is the first or external stage of channel coding,
the block code is also known as external protection.
After block coding has supplemented the data with
redundancy bits for error detection (parity bits),
added fill bits and generated sorted blocks, the next
stage is calculation of additional redundancy for error
correction to correct the transmission errors caused
by the radio channel. The internal error correction in
GSM is based exclusively on convolutional codes.

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 Coding Procedures
The basic unit for all coding procedures is data block. e.g.
A speech coder delivers data blocks to channel encoder.
Different logical channels have different lengths of data
block.
After Convolutional coding data blocks of all channels
are transformed into units of 456 bits.
Such a block of 456 bits transport a complete speech
frame or a protocol message in signalling channel.

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Starting Point of Channel Coding
Starting points are the block delivered to the input of
channel encoder from protocol processing in higher layers.
In general these blocks can be of three types
1. Speech blocks
2. Signalling blocks
3. Data channel blocks

Speech blocks, input to channel encoder contains 260 bits.

Signalling blocks may differ, mostly contain184 bits.
Data blocks are of 240 bits ( 9.6 Kbps / F.R).

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 Different Block Lengths

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 Full Rate Speech Channel
Coding

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 Speech Channel Coding
The BTS receives transcoded speech over the A-bis
interface from the BSC.
At this point the speech is organized into its individual
logical channels by the BTS.
The speech bits are grouped into three classes of
sensitivity to errors, depending on their importance to the
intelligibility of speech.
1. Class 1a
2. Class 1b
3. Class 2

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 Full Rate Speech Channel Coding
when using Full Rate Speech vocoding, 260 bits are
transmitted in 20ms equalling a transmission rate of 13 kbps
Class 1a
50 class 1a bits.
3 parity bits are generated on these bits.
These are most important bits.
Class 1b
132 class 1b bits.
Not parity checked
4 tail bits are added to this class.
Class 2
Least important 78 bits.
Not protected at all.

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Speech Channel Coding

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 Enhanced Full Rate Speech
Channel Coding

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 EFR Channel Coding
The transcoding for Enhanced Full Rate produces 20 ms speech frames of
244 bits.
In preliminary stage which adds 16 bits to make the frame up to 260 bits
the EFR speech frame is treated to the same channel coding as Full Rate.
EFR Speech Frame
50 Class 1a + 124 Class 1b + 70 Class 2 = 244 bits
Preliminary Coding
8 bit CRC generated from 50 Class 1a + 15 Class 1b added to Class 1b
bits
8 repetition bits added to Class 2 bits
Output from Preliminary Coding
50 Class 1a + 132 Class 1b + 78 Class 2 = 260 bits
EFR frame of 260 bits passed on for similar channel coding as Full Rate.
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 Control Channel Coding

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 Control Channel Coding
Control information is received as a block of 184 bits.
These bits are first protected with a cyclic block code of a
class known as a Fire Code.
Fire Code generates 40 parity bits.
Before the Convolutional encoding, four tail bits are
added which set the registers in the receiver to a known
state for decoding purposes.
The output is 456 bits, exactly the same as for speech.
The resulting 456 bits block is then interleaved before
being sent over the air interface.

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 Data Channel Coding
(9.6Kbps)

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 Data Channel Coding
Data channels are encoded using a Convolutional code
only.
After that some bits need to be removed to make it 456
bits exactly.
The data traffic channels require a higher net rate than
their actual transmission rate.
The output from the encoding process for each block of
240 bits of data traffic is 456 bits.
Over the PCM link 240 bits were transmitted in 20 ms
equalling a transmission rate of 12 kbps. 9.6 kbps raw
data and 2.4 kbps signalling information.
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Data Channel Encoding (9.6Kbps)

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 Interleaving & Burst
Formation

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 Interleaving
After channel encoding, the next step is to build its bit
stream into bursts to be transmitted within TDMA frame
structure.
Interleaving spreads the content of one traffic block
across several TDMA timeslots.
Interleaving depths used are:
1) Speech 8 blocks
2) Control 4 blocks
3) Data 22 blocks

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 Interleaving Cntd...

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 Purpose of Interleaving

This process is important, for it safeguards the data in the

harsh air interface radio environment.
Because of interference, noise, or physical interruption of
the radio path, bursts may be destroyed or corrupted as
they travel between MS and BTS.
The purpose of interleaving is to ensure that only some of
the data from each traffic block is contained within each
burst.

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 Purpose of Interleaving
when a burst is not correctly received, the loss does not
affect overall transmission quality because the error
correction techniques are able to interpolate for the
missing data.
It is interleaving that is largely responsible for the
robustness of the GSM air interface.

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 Types of Interleaving

There are two types of interleaving.

1. Diagonal Interleaving (Speech)
2. Rectangular Interleaving (Control)

One more variation of interleaving is

Hybrid (Diagonal + Rectangular) Interleaving
for Data channels

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 Diagonal Interleaving
(Speech)

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Rectangular Interleaving
(Control Channels)

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Hybrid (Diagonal + Rectangular)
Interleaving (Data Channels)

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 Hybrid (Diagonal + Rectangular)

Data channels encoded previously to

456 bits are divided into blocks of four
114 bit each. These blocks are then
interleaved together.
The first 6 bits from the first block are
placed in the first burst, the 2nd 6 from
block in the 2nd burst and so on. Each
114 bits will be spread across 19
bursts and total 456 across 22 bursts.
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