Erik Dahlman

Design aspects of network assisted device-to-device communications

Device-to-device (D2D) communications underlaying a cellular infrastructure has been proposed as a means of taking advantage of the physical proximity of communicating devices, increasing resource utilization, and improving cellular coverage. Relative to the traditional cellular methods, there is a need to design new peer discovery methods, physical layer procedures, and radio resource management algorithms that help realize the potential advantages of D2D communications. In this article we use the 3GPP Long Term Evolution system as a baseline for D2D design, review some of the key design challenges, and propose solution approaches that allow cellular devices and D2D pairs to share spectrum resources and thereby increase the spectrum and energy efficiency of traditional cellular networks. Simulation results illustrate the viability of the proposed design.

LTE: the evolution of mobile broadband

This article provides an overview of the LTE radio interface, recently approved by the 3GPP, together with a more in-depth description of its features such as spectrum flexibility, multi-antenna transmission, and inter-cell interference control. The performance of LTE and some of its key features is illustrated with simulation results. The article is concluded with an outlook into the future evolution of LTE.

UMTS/IMT-2000 based on wideband CDMA

The UMTS terrestrial radio access is based on wideband 4.096 Mchip/s DS-CDMA technology. UTRA will be connected to an evolved GSM core network for both circuit and packet services. A merger between ETSI/Europe and ARIB/Japan based on W-CDMA, a GSM core network, and a common frequency allocation according to the ITU Recommendation of 2 GHz makes a global IMT-2000 standard feasible. UTRA based on W-CDMA fully supports the UMTS/IMT-2000 requirements (e.g., support of 384 kb/s for wide-area coverage and 2 Mb/s for local coverage). Furthermore, the air interface has flexible support of mixed services, variable-rate services, and an efficient packet mode. Key W-CDMA features also include improved basic capacity/coverage performance compared to second-generation systems, full support of adaptive antenna arrays, support of hierarchical cell structures with interfrequency handover, and support of asynchronous inter-base-station operation. There have been no constraints due to the strong requirements for backward compatibility with second-generation systems. This has facilitated a high degree of flexibility and a future-proof air interface. Extensive evaluations by means of simulations and field trials have been carried out by a number of companies, and full system tests are ongoing. Consequently, W-CDMA technology can now be regarded as a mature technology, ready to provide the basis for UMTS/IMT-2000.

WCDMA-the radio interface for future mobile multimedia communications

This paper presents the wide-band code-division multiple-access (WCDMA) radio interface chosen by the ETSI as the basic radio-access technology for the universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS). A detailed description of the physical layer of ETSI WCDMA is given together with an overview UMTS of the higher layers of the WCDMA radio interface. Finally, the WCDMA performance, based on results from the ETSI evaluation of UMTS radio interface candidates, is presented.

LTE-Advanced - Evolving LTE towards IMT-Advanced

This paper provides a high-level overview of some technology components currently considered for the evolution of LTE including complete fulfillment of the IMT-advanced requirements. These technology components include extended spectrum flexibility, multi-antenna solutions, coordinated multipoint transmission/reception, and the use of advanced repeaters/relaying. A simple performance assessment is also included, indicating potential for significantly increased performance.

Evolution of LTE toward IMT-advanced

This article provides a high-level overview of LTE Release 10, sometimes referred to as LTE-Advanced. First, a brief overview of the first release of LTE and some of its technology components is given, followed by a discussion on the IMT-Advanced requirements. The technology enhancements introduced to LTE in Release 10, carrier aggregation, improved multi-antenna support, relaying, and improved support for heterogeneous deployments, are described. The article is concluded with simulation results, showing that LTE Release 10 fulfills and even surpasses the requirements for IMT-Advanced.

LTE release 12 and beyond [Accepted From Open Call]

As the specification of Release 11 of the LTE standards is approaching its completion, 3GPP is gradually moving its focus toward the next major step in the evolution of LTE. The drivers of the LTE evolution include the increasing demand for mobile broadband services and traffic volumes as well as emerging usage scenarios involving short-range and machine-type communications. In this article we provide an overview of the key technology areas/components that are currently considered by 3GPP for Rel-12, including support for further enhanced local area access by tight interaction between the wide area and local area layers, signaling solutions for wireless local area network integration, multi-antenna enhancements, improved support for massive MTC, and direct device-to-device communications.

Performance comparison of HARQ with Chase combining and incremental redundancy for HSDPA

We compare two hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) combining strategies that currently are considered for the high speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) evolution of WCDMA. The two HARQ combining schemes are Chase combining, where the retransmissions are identical copies of the original transmission, and incremental redundancy (IR), where the retransmissions consist of new parity bits from the channel encoder. We show that the link-level performance of a HARQ type-II system can be significantly better with IR compared to Chase combining. The largest gains are obtained for high channel-coding rates and high modulation orders. For low modulation and coding schemes (MCS), the link-level performance gains with IR are less significant. We further show that in a system that uses link adaptation we can not expect any large gains with IR as long as the link adaptation errors are reasonably small. Furthermore, we show that on fading channels there are situations when an IR system actually performs poorer than a Chase combining system.

The 3G Long-Term Evolution - Radio Interface Concepts and Performance Evaluation

3GPP is in the process of defining the long-term evolution (LTE) for 3G radio access, sometimes referred to as super-3G, in order to maintain the future competitiveness of 3G technology. The main targets for this evolution concern increased data rates, improved spectrum efficiency, improved coverage, and reduced latency. Taken together these result in significantly improved service provisioning and reduced operator costs in a variety of traffic scenarios. This paper gives an overview of the basic radio interface principles for the 3G long-term evolution concept, including OFDM and advanced antenna solution, and presents performance results indicating to what extent the requirements/targets can be met. It is seen that the targets on three-fold user throughput and spectrum efficiency compared to basic WCDMA can be fulfilled with the current working assumptions. More advanced WCDMA systems, employing e.g. advanced antenna solutions may however achieve similar performance gains. Enhancements for reduced latency and IP optimized architectures and protocols are further applicable to both LTE and WCDMA

Ultra-dense networks in millimeter-wave frequencies

Demands for very high system capacity and end-user data rates of the order of 10 Gb/s can be met in localized environments by Ultra-Dense Networks (UDN), characterized as networks with very short inter-site distances capable of ensuring low interference levels during communications. UDNs are expected to operate in the millimeter-wave band, where wide bandwidth signals needed for such high data rates can be designed, and will rely on high-gain beamforming to mitigate path loss and ensure low interference. The dense deployment of infrastructure nodes will make traditional wire-based backhaul provisioning challenging. Wireless self-backhauling over multiple hops is proposed to enhance flexibility in deployment. A description of the architecture and a concept based on separation of mobility, radio resource coordination among multiple nodes, and data plane handling, as well as on integration with wide-area networks, is introduced. A simulation of a multi-node office environment is used to demonstrate the performance of wireless self-backhauling at various loads.