What is a typical CPICH power?

CPICH power typically takes about 8~10% of the total NodeB power. For a 20W (43dBm) NodeB, CPICH is
around 2W (35.1 ~ 33dBm).
In urban areas where in-building coverage is taken care of by in-building installations, the CPICH may sometimes
go as low as 5% because:
1) The coverage area is small since users are close to the site, and
2) More power can be allocated to traffic channels

Give Example for Channel coding and multiplexing example for DTCH and DCCH
Channel coding and multiplexing example for DTCH and DCCH: 

Channel coding example for the UL 64 kbps channel

Describe UMTS timing structure
UMTS has several different time slot configuration depending on the used channel. Here is
an example of DPCH (Dedicated Physical Channel) downlink and uplink time slot allocation.

TCP stands for Transmit Power Control, Feedback Information (FBI) is used for closed loop
transmission diversity. Transport Format Combination Indicator (TFCI) contains the
information relating to data rates. Pilot bits are always the same and are used for channel
synchronisation. 
 DPCH Time Slot Structure
Speak about UMTS power control
Open loop power control is the ability of the UE transmitter to sets its output power to a
specific value. It is used for setting initial uplink and downlink transmission powers when
a UE is accessing the network. The open loop power control tolerance is ± 9 dB (normal
conditions) or ± 12 dB (extreme conditions)

Inner loop power control (also called fast closed loop power control) in the uplink is the
ability of the UE transmitter to adjust its output power in accordance with one or more
Transmit Power Control (TPC) commands received in the downlink, in order to keep the
received uplink Signal-to-Interference Ratio (SIR) at a given SIR target. The UE transmitter
is capable of changing the output power with a step size of 1, 2 and 3 dB, in the slot
immediately after the TPC_cmd can be derived. Inner loop power control frequency is
1500Hz. 
The serving cells estimate SIR of the received uplink DPCH, generate TPC commands
(TPC_cmd) and transmit the commands once per slot according to the following rule: if
SIRest > SIRtarget then the TPC command to transmit is "0", while if SIRest < SIRtarget
then the TPC command to transmit is "1". Upon reception of one or more TPC commands in
a slot, the UE derives a single TPC command for each slot, combining multiple TPC
commands if more than one is received in a slot. Two algorithms are supported by the UE
for deriving a TPC_cmd. Which of these two algorithms is used, is determined by a UE-
specific higher-layer parameter, "PowerControlAlgorithm". 

Algorithm 1:
The power control step is the change in the UE transmitter output power in response to a
single TPC command

Algorithm 2:
If all five estimated TPC command are "down" the transmit power is reduced by 1 dB
If all five estimated TPC command are "up" the transmit power is increased by 1 dB
Otherwise the transmit power is not changed

Transmitter power control range

The transmit power of the downlink channels is determined by the network. The power

control step size can take four values: 0.5, 1, 1.5 or 2 dB. It is mandatory for UTRAN to
support step size of 1 dB, while support of other step sizes is optional. The UE generates
TPC commands to control the network transmit power and send them in the TPC field of the
uplink DPCCH. Upon receiving the TPC commands UTRAN adjusts its downlink
DPCCH/DPDCH power accordingly.

Outer loop power control is used to maintain the quality of communication at the level of
bearer service quality requirement, while using as low power as possible. The uplink outer
loop power control is responsible for setting a target SIR in the Node B for each individual
uplink inner loop power control. This target SIR is updated for each UE according to the
estimated uplink quality (BLock Error Ration, Bit Error Ratio) for each Radio Resource
Control connection. The downlink outer loop power control is the ability of the UE receiver
to converge to required link quality (BLER) set by the network (RNC) in downlink.

Power control of the downlink common channels are determined by the network. In

general the ratio of the transmit power between different downlink channels is not specified
in 3GPP specifications and may change with time, even dynamically. 

Additional special situations of power control are Power control in compressed

mode andDownlink power during handover. 
How WCDMA Spreading is done?
TDD WCDMA uses spreading factors 4 - 512 to spread the base band data over ~5MHz
band. Spreading factor in dBs indicates the process gain. Spreading factor 128 = 21 dB
process gain). Interference margin is calculated from that:

Interference Margin = Process Gain - (Required SNR + System Losses)

Required Signal to Noise Ration is typically about 5 dB 

System losses are defined as losses in receiver path. System losses are typically 4 - 6 dBs

Overview of Spreading Process

What is Compressed Mode?
Compressed Mode
During inter-frequency handover the UE’s must be given time to make the necessary
measurements on the different WCDMA carrier frequency. 1 to 7 slots per frame can be
allocated for the UE to perform this intra frequency (hard handover). These slots can either
be in the middle of the single frame or spread over two frames.

This compressed mode operation can be achieved in three different methods:

Decreasing the spreading factor by 2:1. This will increase the data rate so bits will get sent
twice as fast.
Puncturing bits. This will remove various bits from the original data and hence reduce the
amount of information that needs to be transmitted. 
The higher layer scheduling could also be changed to use less timeslots for user traffic.

From the 3GPP TS 25.212:

In compressed frames, Transmission Gap Length slots from Nfirst to Nlast are not used for
transmission of data. As illustrated below, the instantaneous transmit power is increased in
the compressed frame in order to keep the quality (BER, FER, etc.) unaffected by the
reduced processing gain. The amount of power increase depends on the transmission time
reduction method. What frames are compressed, are decided by the network. When in
compressed mode, compressed frames can occur periodically, or requested on demand. The
rate and type of compressed frames is variable and depends on the environment and the
measurement requirements.

The frame structure for uplink compressed frames is illustrated below.

There are two different types of frame structures defined for downlink compressed frames.
Type A maximises the transmission gap length and type B is optimised for power control.
The frame structure type A or B is set by higher layers independent from the downlink slot
format type A or B.

With frame structure of type A, the pilot field of the last slot in the transmission gap is
transmitted. Transmission is turned off during the rest of the transmission gap (below).

With frame structure of type B, the TPC field of the first slot in the transmission gap and the
pilot field of the last slot in the transmission gap is transmitted. Transmission is turned off
during the rest of the transmission gap (below).
What is the UMTS originated call procedure?
Call Setup

Basic Mobile Originating Call Diagram

In UMTS what is the Cell search procedure?
Cell search procedure

During the cell search, the UE searches for a cell and determines the downlink scrambling
code and frame synchronisation of that cell. The cell search is typically carried out in three
steps:

Step 1: Slot synchronisation

During the first step of the cell search procedure the UE uses the SCH's primary
synchronisation code to acquire slot synchronisation to a cell. This is typically done with a
single matched filter (or any similar device) matched to the primary synchronisation code
which is common to all cells. The slot timing of the cell can be obtained by detecting peaks
in the matched filter output.

Step 2: Frame synchronisation and code-group identification

During the second step of the cell search procedure, the UE uses the SCH's secondary
synchronisation code to find frame synchronisation and identify the code group of the cell
found in the first step. This is done by correlating the received signal with all possible
secondary synchronisation code sequences, and identifying the maximum correlation value.
Since the cyclic shifts of the sequences are unique the code group as well as the frame
synchronisation is determined.

Step 3: Scrambling-code identification

During the third and last step of the cell search procedure, the UE determines the exact
primary scrambling code used by the found cell. The primary scrambling code is typically
identified through symbol-by-symbol correlation over the CPICH with all codes within the
code group identified in the second step. After the primary scrambling code has been
identified, the Primary CCPCH can be detected and the system- and cell specific BCH
information can be read.
If the UE has received information about which scrambling codes to search for, steps 2 and
3 above can be simplified 

Structure of synchronization channel

The Synchronisation Channel (SCH) is a downlink signal used for cell search. The SCH
consists of two sub channels, the Primary and Secondary SCH. The 10 ms radio frames of
the Primary and Secondary SCH are divided into 15 slots, each of length 2560 chips. Picture
above illustrates the structure of the SCH radio frame.

The Primary SCH consists of a modulated code of length 256 chips, the primary

synchronization code (PSC) is transmitted once every slot. The PSC is the same for every
cell in the system.

The Secondary SCH consists of repeatedly transmitting a length 15 sequence of modulated

codes of length 256 chips, the Secondary Synchronisation Codes (SSC), transmitted in
parallel with the Primary SCH. The SSC is denoted csi,k in figure 20, where i = 0, 1, …, 63 is
the number of the scrambling code group, and k = 0, 1, …, 14 is the slot number. Each SSC
is chosen from a set of 16 different codes of length 256. This sequence on the Secondary
SCH indicates which of the code groups the cell's downlink scrambling code belongs to.

Explain the UMTS Quality of Service

Quality of Service
Network Services are considered end-to-end, this means from a Terminal Equipment (TE) to
another TE. An End-to-End Service may have a certain Quality of Service (QoS) which is
provided for the user of a network service. It is the user that decides whether he is satisfied
with the provided QoS or not.

To realise a certain network QoS a Bearer Service with clearly defined characteristics and
functionality is to be set up from the source to the destination of a service.

A bearer service includes all aspects to enable the provision of a contracted QoS. These
aspects are among others the control signalling, user plane transport and QoS management
functionality. A UMTS bearer service layered architecture is depicted below, each bearer
service on a specific layer offers it's individual services using services provided by the layers
below. 
  
QoS Architecture

There are four different QoS classes:

conversational class 
streaming class 
interactive class 
background class

List of UMTS Bearer Service Attributes:

Traffic class ('conversational', 'streaming', 'interactive', 'background') 

Maximum bit rate (kbps) 
Guaranteed bit rate (kbps) 
Delivery order (y/n) 
Maximum SDU size (octets) 
SDU format information (bits) 
SDU error ratio 
Residual bit error ratio 
Delivery of erroneous SDUs (y/n/-) 
Transfer delay (ms) 
Traffic handling priority 
Allocation/Retention Priority 
Source statistics descriptor ('speech'/'unknown')

SDU = Service Data Unit 

What are the UMTS synchronization procedsure?

UMTS synchronization

1.jpg
 1. The 1st 256 chip of every slot in every frame
contains primary and secondary synch. Codes
 2. Primary code is 256 chip
 3. Mobile wants to synch. So it listen to any carrier
until it hears the primary code once mobile hears it,
it knows the slot start (as it comes only in slot start)
 4. Ok we have 512 codes for BSs in the system
 5. We divide them into 64 group of 8 codes each
 6. Each group related to a sequence of 15
secondary codes
 7. So we have 64 different sequence of secondary
codes as in shape
 Untitled.jpg
 1. Once we know the slot start no more need to
hear primary code
 2. Now Mobile wants to know the frame start and
its BS code
 3. Now mobile starts to listen to secondary code
 4. It hears a sequence of 15 secondary codes ( 15
cascaded slot )
 5. Mobile compares this sequence to all 64
sequence stored in it
 6. As sequences is not similar and not shifted from
each other it can know which sequence it is
 7. Lets say the sequence is (5 5 12 16 6 11 2 16 11
15 12 1 2 1 15)
 8. From shape it is clear it is the sequence No. 3
 9. So mobile now can look for the BS code from
only 8 codes in group 3 and not 512 code
 10. And as this group 3 starts with (1 2 1 15 …..)
 11. So the slot contains code 1 then 2 next slot then
1 next slot, 1st code 1 is the frame start
 12. Now mobile synch. To slot start, frame start
and BS code
 13. Now Mo bile can send or receive any request

Speak about UMTS Paging

The Paging Channel (PCH) is a downlink transport channel. The PCH is always transmitted
over the entire cell. The transmission of the PCH is associated with the transmission of
physical-layer generated Paging Indicators, to support efficient sleep-mode procedures.

Paging Channel selection

System information block type 5 (SIB 5) defines common channels to be employed in Idle
mode. In a cell, a single or several PCHs may be established. Each Secondary Common
Control Physical Channel (SCCPCH) indicated to the UE in system information may carry up
to one PCH. Thus, for each defined PCH there is one uniquely associated PICH also
indicated.

In case that more than a single PCH and associated PICH are defined in SIB 5, the UE shall
perform a selection according to the following rule:
The UE shall select a SCCPCH from the ones listed in SIB 5 based on IMSI as follows:

"Index of selected SCCPCH" = IMSI mod K,

where K is equal to the number of listed SCCPCHs which carry a PCH (i.e. SCCPCHs carrying
FACH only shall not be counted). These SCCPCHs shall be indexed in the order of their
occurrence in SIB 5 from 0 to K-1.

"Index of selected SCCPCH" identifies the selected SCCPCH with the PCH and the uniquely
associated PICH to be used by the UE. If the UE has no IMSI, for instance when making an
emergency call without USIM, the UE shall use as default number IMSI = 0.

The UE may use Discontinuous Reception (DRX) in idle mode in order to reduce power

consumption. When DRX is used the UE needs only to monitor one Page Indicator, PI, in
one Paging Occasion per DRX cycle.

The Paging Indicator Channel (PICH) is a fixed rate (SF=256) physical channel used to

carry the paging indicators. The PICH is always associated with an S-CCPCH to which a PCH
transport channel is mapped. Picture below illustrates the frame structure of the PICH. One
PICH radio frame of length 10 ms consists of 300 bits. Of these, 288 bits are used to carry
paging indicators. The remaining 12 bits are not formally part of the PICH and shall not be
transmitted (DTX). The part of the frame with no transmission is reserved for possible
future use.

Structure of Paging Indicator Channel (PICH)

Two Paging Procedures:

Paging procedure is used to transmit paging information to selected UEs in idle mode,
CELL_PCH or URA_PCH state using the paging control channel (PCCH). Upper layers in the
network may request paging, to e.g. establish a signalling connection. UTRAN may initiate
paging for UEs in CELL_PCH or URA_PCH state to trigger a cell update procedure. In
addition, UTRAN may initiate paging for UEs in idle mode, CELL_PCH and URA_PCH state to
trigger reading of updated system information. UTRAN initiates the paging procedure by
transmitting a PAGING TYPE 1 message on an appropriate paging occasion on the PCCH.

UE dedicated paging procedure is used to transmit dedicated paging information to one

UE in connected mode in CELL_DCH or CELL_FACH state. Upper layers in the network may
request initiation of paging. For a UE in CELL_DCH or CELL_FACH state, UTRAN initiates the
procedure by transmitting a PAGING TYPE 2 message on the DCCH using AM RLC. 

Two Paging Message Types:

PAGING TYPE 1 message is used to send information on the paging channel. One or several
UEs, in idle or connected mode, can be paged in one message, which also can contain other
information

PAGING TYPE 2 message is used to page an UE in connected mode (CELL_DCH or

CELL_FACH state), when using the DCCH for CN originated paging. 

PICH / S-CCPCH timing relation

Picture below illustrates the timing between a PICH frame and its associated single S-CCPCH
frame, i.e. the S-CCPCH frame that carries the paging information related to the paging
indicators in the PICH frame. A paging indicator set in a PICH frame means that the paging
message is transmitted on the PCH in the S-CCPCH frame starting tPICH chips after the
transmitted PICH frame.

Timing relation between PICH frame and associated S-CCPCH frame

tPICH = 7680 chips (3 slots)

Paging Block Periodicity (PBP): Period of the occurrence of Paging Blocks. (For FDD, PBP
= 1).
Paging occasion: (FDD) The SFN of the PICH frame where the UE monitors its paging
indicator (i.e. the SFN of the PCCPCH frame in which the PICH frame begins). 
WCDMA Link Budget
WCDMA Link Budget

Link budget planning is part of the network planning process, which helps to
dimension the required coverage, capacity and quality of service requirement in the
network. UMTS WCDMA macro cell coverage is uplink limited, because mobiles
power level is limited to (voice terminal 125mW). Downlink direction limits the
available capacity of the cell, as BTS transmission power (typically 20-40W) has to
be divided to all users. In a network environment both coverage and capacity are
interlinked by interference. So by improving one side of the equation would
decrease the other side. System is loosely balanced by design. The object of the
link budget design is to calculate maximum cell size under given criteria:

Type of service (data type and speed)

Type of environment (terrain, building penetration)
Behavior and type of mobile (speed, max power level)
System configuration (BTS antennas, BTS power, cable losses, handover gain)
Required coverage probability
Financial and economical factors (use of more expensive and better quality
equipment or not the cheapest installation method)

and to match all of those to the required system coverage, capacity and quality
needs with each area and service.

In an urban area, capacity will be the limiting factor, so inner city cells will be
dimensioned by required Erlangs/km² for voice and data. Even using 25dB as
inbuilding penetration loss into the building core area, link budget would typically
allow about 300m cell range, which is a way too much for a capacity purposes. In a
rural area uplink power budget will determine the maximum cell range, when
typically cells are less congested. A typical cell range in rural areas will be several
kilometers depending on a terrain.

Below is an example of how WCDMA voice call link budget can be done. Some of
the values can be debated, including the propagation model, but it gives an idea of
the calculation methods. 
 UMTS link budget

peak about UTRAN Iub Interface General Frame Structure

There are two types of frames (indicated by the Frame Type field). Data frame. 
Control frame. 
The general structure of frames

Data frame example:

DL FDD DSCH data frame structure

CRC:Cyclic Redundancy Checksum

FT:Frame Type
CFN:Connection Frame Number
TFI:Transport Format Indicator
SF:Spreading Factor
SP:Spare
MC Info: Multi Code to indicate the number of parallel PDSCH code on which the DSCH data
will be carried
TB: Transport Block

Control frame example:

Iub Common Transport Channel Control Frame Format

how data stream is modified during processing in UMTS?

This is a short overview how data stream is modified during processing in layer 2 and 1 in
downlink direction. Uplink coding is done in a similar way.

Ciphering happens in RCL or MAC-d part of the layer 2. f8 algorithm gets five inputs to
generate a keystream block that is ciphered by binary addition to a data stream. Channel
coding separates different down link connection to users within a cell. In the uplink direction
Channel coding is used for separation of physical data and control channels. Half-rate and
1/3-rate convolutional coding is used for low data rates, turbo coding is used for higher bit
rates. Channel coding includes the spreading. Rate matching is dynamic frame-by-frame
operation and done either by puncturing or by repetition of the data stream. Interleaving is
done in two stages. It is first done by inter-frame and then by intra-frame. 
 Transport channel multiplexing structure for downlink

what is Media formats and codecs in UMTS?

Multiple media elements shall be combined into a composite single MM using MIME multipart
format. The media type of a single MM element shall be identified by its appropriate MIME
type whereas the media format shall be indicated by its appropriate MIME subtype. In order
to guarantee a minimum support and compatibility between multimedia messaging capable
terminals, MMS User Agent supporting specific media types shall comply with the following
selection of media formats:

Text

Plain text. Any character encoding (charset) that contains a subset of the logical characters
in Unicode shall be used (e.g. US-ASCII, ISO-8859-1, UTF-8, Shift_JIS, etc.). Unrecognized
subtypes of "text" shall be treated as subtype "plain" as long as the MIME implementation
knows how to handle the charset. Any other unrecognized subtype and unrecognized
charset shall be treated as "application/octet - stream".

Speech

The AMR codec shall be supported for narrow-band speech.

The AMR wideband speech codec shall be supported when wideband speech working at 16
kHz sampling frequency is supported.

Audio

MPEG-4 AAC Low Complexity object type should be supported. The maximum sampling rate
to be supported by the decoder is 48 kHz. The channel configurations to be supported are
mono (1/0) and stereo (2/0). In addition, the MPEG-4 AAC Long Term Prediction object type
may be supported.

Synthetic audio

The Scalable Polyphony MIDI (SP-MIDI) content format defined in Scalable Polyphony MIDI
Specification and the device requirements defined in Scalable Polyphony MIDI Device 5-to-
24 Note Profile for 3GPP should be supported. SP-MIDI content is delivered in the structure
specified in Standard MIDI Files 1.0, either in format 0 or format 1.

Still Image

ISO/IEC JPEG together with JFIF shall be supported. The support for ISO/IEC JPEG only
apply to the following two modes:
mandatory: baseline DCT, non-differential, Huffman coding
optional: progressive DCT, non-differential, Huffman coding
Bitmap graphics

The following bitmap graphics formats should be supported:

GIF87a
GIF89a
PNG

Video

For terminals supporting media type video, ITU-T Recommendation H.263 profile 0 level 10
shall be supported. This is the mandatory video codec for the MMS. In addition, MMS should
support:
H.263 Profile 3 Level 10
MPEG-4 Visual Simple Profile Level 0

These two video codecs are optional to implement.

NOTE: ITU-T Recommendation H.263 baseline has been mandated to ensure that video-
enabled MMS support a minimum baseline video capability and interoperability can be
guaranteed (an H.263 baseline bitstream can be decoded by both H.263 and MPEG-4
decoders). It also provides a simple upgrade path for mandating more advanced codecs in
the future (from both the ITU-T and ISO MPEG).

ITU press release regarding H.264 video compression standard (23/12/02)

Etsi and Digital Video Broadcasting Project are developing DVB-X standard for UMTS. Read

the EETimes article. (11/10/03)

Vector graphics

For terminals supporting media type "2D vector graphics" the "Tiny" profile of the Scalable
Vector Graphics (SVG-Tiny) format shall be supported, and the "Basic" profile of the
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG-Basic) format may be supported.

World Wide Web Consortium Issues Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 and Mobile SVG as
W3C Recommendations (14/01/03)

File format for dynamic media

The file format used in the present document for timed multimedia (such as video,
associated audio and timed text) is structurally based on the MP4 file format. However,
since non-ISO codecs are used here, it is called the 3GPP file format and has its own file
extension and MIME type to distinguish these files from MPEG-4 files. When the present
document refers to the MP4 file format, it is referring to its structure (ISO file format), not
to its conformance definition.

To ensure interoperability for the transport of video and associated speech/audio and timed
text in an MM, the MP4 file format shall be supported. The usage of the MP4 file format shall
follow the technical specifications and the implementation guidelines specified in TS 26.234.
Media synchronization and presentation format

The mandatory format for media synchronization and scene description of multimedia
messaging is SMIL.
The 3GPP MMS uses a subset of SMIL 2.0 as format of the scene description. MMS clients
and servers with support for scene descriptions shall support the 3GPP PSS5 SMIL Language
Profile. This profile is a subset of the SMIL 2.0 Language Profile but a superset of the SMIL
2.0 Basic Language Profile. TS 26.234 also includes an informative annex B that provides
guidelines for SMIL content authors.

Additionally, 3GPP MMS should provide the following format:

XHTML Mobile Profile
The 3GPP MMS uses a subset of XHTML 1.1 as a format for scene description. MMS clients
and servers with support for scene descriptions shall support XHTML Mobile Profile, defined
by the WAP Forum. XHTML Mobile Profile is a subset of XHTML 1.1 but a superset of XHTML
Basic.