Trends and Challenges in Broadband Wireless Access

Hikmet Sari
Pacific Broadband Communications,

4-14 rue Ferms, 75683 Paris Cedex 14, France sari@ pacband.com
population that is not served by the twisted pair telephone cable. Those wireless access systems, however, are narrowband, and can only carry telephony and low bit-rate data services. The emergence of broadband wireless access is very closely related to the recent deregulation of the world telecommunications market. This deregulation has created a new environment in which new operators can compete with incumbent operators that often are former state-owned monopolies. Wireless access networks are very appealing to new operators without an existing wired infrastructure, because with respect to building a wired network; they have the advantage of rapid deployment and low initial investment. The initial investment is determined by the initial customer base rather than the complete target network, because once in place, wireless networks are easily upgraded to accommodate additional subscribers as the customer base grows. This is a very attractive feature with respect to wired networks where most of the investment needs to be made during the initial deployment phase. Most frequencies available for broadband wireless access are at millimeter-wave frequencies between 20 and 45 GHz. Dedicated frequency bands for these applications have recently become available in Europe, North America, Asia-Pacific, and other regions. After an extensive field trial period, broadband wireless access systems operating at millimeter-wave frequencies are currently in an initial field introduction phase before undergoing massive commercial deployment in the several years to come. These cellular radio networks, which are commonly referred to as local multipoint distribution service (LMDS) networks, are intended to offer integrated broadband services to residential and business customers. LMDS networks are particularly suited for urban or suburban areas with high user density, because the cell capacity is typically in the range of the STM-1 data rate (155 Mbit/s) and the cell coverage is only 2 to 5 km. Although less than in the millimeter-wave frequency range, there are also some frequency bands available below 11 GHz. These include the microwave multipoint distribution service (MMDS)band in the US, the 3.5 GHz band in Europe, and the 10 GHz band in a number of countries. Below 11 GHz, there are also some unlicensed frequency bands that may be used for wireless access, but these will not be covered in the present paper.

Abstract - This paper gives an overview of broadband wireless access systems, discusses the current trends, and highlights the major technical challenges for future systems. The study covers local multipoint distribution service @MDS) networh that operate at millimeterwave radio frequencies above 20 GHz, as well as broadband wireless access at microwave frequencies below I I GHz. We outline the current standardization work in this field by the ETSI in Europe and the IEEE 802.16 Group in the US. We point out that one of the major problems is the intercell interference which limits the frequency reuse factor and the cell capacity. We address the issue of increasing cell capaciv using adaptive modulation, code-division multiple access (CDMA), and adaptive antennas. We also discuss the basic transmission technologies for lower frequency bands @elow 11 GHz) where a significant amount of multipath propagation must be compensated. I. INTRODUCTION

With the introduction of multi-gigabit routers and optical transmission lines, the core telecommunications network has become a very high-speed network that can offer a large variety of services to the users. The speed bottleneck is the access network that connects the end users to the edge and core networks, typically to the nearest central office or add-drop multiplexer. The most well-known access network is the twisted-pair copper cable, which serves virtually all homes and businesses. These cables were traditionally used to carry voice services and low-speed data communications using voiceband modems. They are now used to offer digital subscriber line @SL) services which come in different forms. High-speed DSL (HDSL) uses two or three twisted pairs to offer symmetric 2 Mbitfs data services, while the more recently developed asymmetric DSL (ADSL) technology offers a 6-8 Mbitfs data rate downstream and several hundreds of kbit/s upstream. Similarly, coaxial cable networks were traditionally used for broadcast TV services, and they have recently evolved to bidirectional networks that offer high-speed data and telephony services to the subscribers. In countries with a well-developed telecommunications infrastructure, there has been little need in the past for fixed wireless access. This type of systems were essentially deployed in developing countries with a large

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The purpose of the present paper is to give a state-ofthe-art review of broadband wireless access systems, discuss the current trends and on-going standardization work, and indicate the technical challenges for future systems as well as some potential solutions. First, in the next section, we give a brief introduction to LMDS networks. In Section 111, we present an analysis of the intercell interference in LMDS systems based on timedivision multiplexing (TDM) on the downstream channel (from base station to users) and time-division multiple access (TDMA) on the upstream channel (from users to base station). Next, in Section IV, we outline the current standardization work by the IEEE 802.16 and the ETSI BRAN Groups for next generation systems. Next, in Section V, we discuss several potential solutions to reduce intercell interference and increase cell capacity. Finally, In Section VI, we discuss broadband wireless access at microwave frequencies below 11 GHz, which is essentially focused on residential applications. Our conclusions are given in Section VII. 11. AN OVERVIEW OF LMDS NETWORKS LMDS was originally used to designate the 28 GHz band in the US, but it is used today to designate all broadband wireless access systems operating at millimeter-wave frequencies above 20 GHz. LMDS networks are cellular, each cell serving a number of fixed subscribers located in its coverage area which has a radius of 2-5 km. The base station (BS) is connected to the backbone network through a backhaul point-to-point link, which can be a radio link or a fiber. The network topology resembles that of mobile cellular radio systems, but fixed wireless access systems have several distinctive features. The main of those is that since users are at fixed locations, each user is assigned to a predetermined BS (typically the nearest BS). Furthermore, fixed wireless access systems employ narrowbeam directional subscriber antennas pointed to the serving BS during installation. The increased gain in the direction of the BS reduces network interference and increases cell coverage. Another major difference concerns propagation. While mobile radio systems are subjected to shadowing and severe multipath propagation, LMDS systems are based on clear line-of-sight between the BS and the fixed users, and are virtually free of multipath propagation. Signal attenuation during normal propagation conditions is proportional to the square of the distance, and what truly limits the cell coverage is rain fading which further attenuates the transmitted signal by several dB or several tens of dB per km. Due to this phenomenon and to the limited power that can be generated at low cost at millimeter-wave frequencies, the cell radius in LMDS networks is in the range of 2 to 5 km depending on the climatic zone, the available transmit power, and the. required availability objectives. Although LMDS systems can be based on hexagonal cell patterns which are commonly used in mobile radio systems [IJ, rectangular cell patterns with 90" cell

sectoring have become very popular in LMDS network design ([2], [3]) and will be considered throughout this paper. Each sector is served by a 90" sector antenna, and different frequency channels are assigned to the different sectors. The channel bandwidth differs from region to region, and for Europe and other countries which follow the CEPT channeling, the channel spacing is of the form 112/2" MHz, where n is an integer. The typical channel spacing for broadband wireless access can be expected to be 28 MHz, unless the operator does not have sufficient bandwidth allocation. With a simple quatemary phase-shift keying (QPSK) modulation, a 28-MHz channel is sufficient to transmit a useful data rate of 16x2 Mbit/s. The total bit rate per cell is then 64x2 Mbit/s and can be used to serve for example 64 business customers with a 2 Mbith leased line each. This example is only to give an idea of the cell capacity. In practice, the number of subscribers per cell may be several hundreds or several thousands, and such a large number of users are accommodated by dynamically sharing the available resources between them. Assuming 1000 subscribers, the 64x2 Mbit/s cell capacity gives a bit rate of 128 kbit/s if all users are simultaneously active and the total capacity is evenly shared between them. But different users have different types of traffic, and while some users may be requesting high instantaneous data rates for high-speed intemet access, some other users may be idle. Therefore, the broadband wireless access system example at hand can accommodate many users and guarantee very high peak data rates provided it has an efficient medium access control (MAC) protocol. 111. ANALYSIS OF TDMA-BASED SYSTEMS Due to the lack of industry standards, first-generation broadband wireless access systems are based on proprietary solutions. In fact, technical specifications for LMDS systems were developed by the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) Project [4] and the Digital AudioVisual Council (DAVIC) [5] several years ago, but these specifications were primarily intended for digital broadcasting applications and two-way communications with low interactivity. Virtually all proprietary LMDS systems today as well as the DVB and DAVIC specifications are based on TDM on the downstream channel, TDMA on the upstream channel, and frequency-division duplexing (FDD). Since bandwidth is a limited and costly resource, the frequency reuse factor and the a'chievable cell capacity are crucial to the deployment of LMDS networks. These factors are strongly impacted by intercell interference. In this section, we discuss intercell interference assuming a rectangular cell pattern with 90" sectoring as mentioned previously. Throughout the paper, it is assumed that a separate channel is assigned to each sector, which means that four channels are used to cover each cell. But the same channels are reused in all cells as shown in Fig. 1. Note that channel assignment between neighboring cells follows a mirror-image rule in the horizontal, vertical, and diagonal directions.

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subjected to strong interference. Using a common subscriber antenna radiation diagram with a beamwidth of 5", we have plotted in Fig. 2 the SIR distribution within a sector when the BS is located in the upper left comer. Specifically, the figure shows the boundaries of the regions corresponding to an SIR higher than a given value. It clearly indicates that only in very small regions located at the other 3 comers, the SIR is lower than 15 dB.It also shows that in virtually half of the cell size, the SIR is higher than 30 dB.

Fig.I : Rectangular cell pattern with 90" sectors

The BS's, which are designated by heavy dots in Fig. 1, are located on a rectangular grid. The solid lines represent the sector borders, and the dotted lines indicate the cell boundaries. The labels A, B, C, and D represent the channels used in different sectors. As it is indicated in [2] and [3], the mirror-image assignment of these channels eliminates interference between adjacent cells. But the second-nearest cells have the same channel assignment as the cell at hand and interfere with it. Let 2A designate the distance between two adjacent BS's in the horizontal and vertical directions. Suppose now that a user is located on the border of two sectors at a distance a fiom the serving BS. This user's antenna will also be pointed toward a second-nearest BS that is at a distance 4A+ a. Assuming that all BS's transmit the same signal power and that the signal attenuation is proportional to the squared distance, which is a common assumption in line-of-sight microwave and millimeterwave radio systems, the downstream signal-tointerference ratio (SIR) for this user is
SIR(dB)= 20.10{?)-

Fig.2: SIR distribution within a sector when the BS is located in the upper left corner and the subscriber antenna beamwidth i s 5'.

This expression, which is valid for 0 e a I A , achieves its minimum value for a = A. This corresponds to an SIR of 14 dB which represents the worst-case SIR for TDMAbased systems with a rectangular cell pattem and 90" sectoring. In writing (l), we have assumed that BS's further than the second-nearest BS are not in clear lineof-sight with the user of interest, i.e., their signals are blocked by buildings, trees, or other obstacles. As it is shown in [3], the worst-case SIR of 14 dB is also valid for the upstream channel when automatic power control is used. But the similarity of downstream and upstream channels in terms of interference is limited to the value of the worst-case SIR. On the downstream channel, the SIR is a function of the user position, and only in a very small part of the cell, the users are

This figure indicates that if the system design requires an SIR value higher than 15 dB,there will be three small regions which will not be covered. Coverage will be even smaller if the system design requires an SIR higher than 20 or 25 dB. Also, a bandwidth-efficient modulation scheme that requires a high SIR value will not be usable if full cell coverage is required. But the figure also suggests that while users at unfavorable positions (regions of low SIR values) must use a lowlevel modulation scheme such as QPSK, users in more favorable locations can use higher-level quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) schemes such as 16-QAM or 64-QAM, at least during normal propagation conditions. This adaptive modulation (and coding) concept will be discussed in Section V. The situation is quite different on the upstream channel, because in this direction, all users get the same amount of interference, i.e., the SIR is not a function of the user position. Consequently, it makes little sense to use different modulation schemes for different users, but the adaptive modulation concept can still be used to adapt the modulation to propagation conditions. IV. CURRENT STANDARDIZATION While first-generation LMDS systems are currently going into field deployment, standardization activities

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are now underway at both the IEEE and the ETSI to define technical specifications for future systems. The groups that are carrying out this work within the IEEE and the ETSI are the IEEE 802.16.1 and the ETSI BRAN Groups. Specification work by both groups covers the physical-layer and the MAC-layer functions, and at the time of this writing, the IEEE 802.16 Group has just finalized and released its technical specifications [6] for broadband wireless access systems at frequencies from 11 to 60 GHz. As for the ETSI BRAN Group, it started its standardization work later than the IEEE 802.16.1 Group, and today, it can be expected that the ETSI BRAN specifications will not be completed before mid2001. But this group has already made a number of basic choices. These choices, which have a strong commonality with one of the physical-layer options in the IEEE 802.16.I specifications, include the following [7]: The transmission technique is based on single-carrier transmission. The reason for this is that LMDS systems suffer very little intersymbol interference (ISI), and this does not give much motivation for using orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) which is attractive for strong Is1 channels [8]. In addition, the strong sensitivity of OFDM to oscillator phase noise and transmit power amplifier nonlinearity makes this technique rather undesirable for systems operating at millimeter-wave frequencies, where high transmit power and low phase noise incur high cost.
As in the earlier DVBDAVIC specifications, TDM and TDMA have been adopted for the downstream channel and the upstream channel, respectively. This choice can be justified by the relative maturity of TDMA with respect to code-division multiple access (CDMA) that has been adopted in third-generation digital mobile radio standards 191.

A. Adaptive modulation

For simplicity, we will limit our discussion here to adaptive modulation, but of course, the same applies to adaptive coding and to adaptive combined modulation and coding. Assuming that the SIR required is 12 dB for 4-QAM (QPSK), 19 dB for 16-QAM1and 25 dB for 64QAM and using a subscriber antenna beamwidth of 6", it was shown in [lo] that an adaptive modulation that combines these three signal formats on the downstream channel achieves an increase of cell capacity by a factor of 2.7 with respect to QPSK. It was also indicated that adaptive modulation is not directly applicable on the upstream channel, because all users are subjected to the same level of interference. To use adaptive modulation on the upstream channel, it was proposed in [IO] to split the channel in two parts and assign each subchannel to a specific region of the sector. It is possible to make this assignment in such a way that some subscribers are never affected by a high level of interference. Using subchanneling and an adaptive modulation involving the QPSK and the 16-QAM signal formats, a capacity improvement by a factor of 1.4 was achieved on the upstream channel. These results indicate that adaptive modulation substantially increases the cell capacity, although to a lesser extent on the upstream channel.

B. Adaptive antennas
Adaptive antennas are another potential technique to increase capacity on the upstream channel. Indeed, if the BS employs a steered narrowbeam antenna, only the users near the sector borders in the horizontal and vertical directions and those near the diagonal will be subjected to strong upstream interference, and the situation becomes similar to that on the downstream channel. Users located outside these regions can use a 16-QAM or a 64-QAM modulation depending on their location and the SIR value affecting them. The upstream cell capacity then becomes similar to that of the downstream channel. One difficulty to apply this concept is that adaptive antenna technology is not yet mature for microwave and millimeter-wave frequencies, but it can be expected to mature within the next few years at least for microwave frequencies below 11 GHZ.

To increase cell capacity with respect to pure QPSK, adaptive modulation and coding will be used. The purpose here is to use the most bandwidth-efficient modulation and coding schemes that are compatible with the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the interference level affecting the user of interest. This is function of the user position on the one hand (on the downstream channel), and the instantaneous fade level on the other hand. The candidate modulation schemes are 4-QAM (QPSK), 16-QAM7 and 64QAM for the downstream channel, and 4-QAM and 16-QAM for the upstream channel.

C. CDMA
Although very popular in new generations of digital mobile radio systems, CDMA has not yet become a strong candidate for broadband wireless access. But despite this, it is of significant interest to study its potential for LMDS applications. A comparison of TDMA and CDMA in LMDS systems [I 13 showed that while CDMA reduces worst-case interference on the upstream channel, it leads to higher interference than TDMA on the downstream channel. The comparison was made using TDMA and CDMA schemes with the same bandwidth occupancy and maximum cell capacity. A multimode CDMA concept was then introduced for the

V. TECHNIQUES TO INCREASE CAPACITY

With respect to QPSK-based LMDS systems, the cell capacity can be potentially increased using adaptive modulation and coding and/or adaptive antennas at the BS. In this section, we briefly discuss the potential of these techniques on one hand and investigate the use of CDMA on the other hand.

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downstream channel. This technique, which consists of using spreading sequences whose length and number are a function of the user position, was shown to signifycantly improve the worst-case SIR with respect to conventional TDMA and CDMA. VI. LOWER FREQUENCY BANDS Both the IEEE 802.16 Group and ETSI BRAN first put a priority on the definition of system specifications for broadband wireless access systems operating at frequencies higher than 11 GHz, but they have now tumed their attention toward licensed frequency bands below 11 GHz. ETSI BRAN is still at the functional requirements phase, but the IEEE 802.16.3 Subgroup has already entered the technical specifications phase. In many aspects, broadband wireless access at lower frequencies is quite similar to LMDS, but it also has two basic distinctive features: The first concerns the traffic model. Whereas LMDS systems are essentially intended for small business applications, frequencies below 11 GHz are more likely to be used for residential subscribers where the major application is high-speed internet access. The implication of this is that traffic will be highly asymmetric, most of it being from the BS to subscribers. This feature will have a strong impact on both the physical layer and the DLC layer. The second distinctive feature is that due to larger cell sizes, smaller subscriber antenna directivity, and non-line-of-sight propagation, lower-frequency bands are subjected to a significant level of ISI, which must be compensated. One of the solutions for lower frequencies is to use the same technical specifications as for millimeter-waves (LMDS). The only thing that needs to be added in this case is an adaptive equalizer that is capable of handling the multipath encountered in this kind of networks. Another solution consists of using the OFDM technology which has been adopted in the IEEE 802.1 1 and ETSI BRAN specifications for wireless local area networks (LANs) at 5 GHz. This technique is known to be efficient against multipath fading when combined with appropriate channel coding and interleaving. This, together with the fact that it is relatively easier to design low-cost radios than at millimeter-wave bands, may favor the use of OFDM at frequencies below 11 GHz. Both options may be viable, and it is not certain at this point which way standardization will go, but the recent adoption of OFDM in a number of ETSI and IEEE standards puts this technique also in a strong position for broadband wireless access at frequencies below 1 1 GHz. VII. CONCLUSIONS We have given an overview of broadband wireless access networks which represent an attractive solution for new operators to reach the end users in high-density urban or suburban areas. After briefly discussing the cell capacity, frequency planning, and interference issues, we have summarized the current status of standardization work by the ETSI BRAN and the IEEE 802.16 Groups.

We then highlighted the fact that the major problem in broadband wireless access is intercell interference, and discussed a number of potential techniques to reduce it and increase cell capacity. These techniques include adaptive modulation, adaptive antennas, and CDMA. Finally, broadband wireless access at frequencies below 1 1 GHz is subjected to strong multipath propagation, and OFDM may be considered as an attractive technique for this application. REFERENCES T. S . Rappaport, "Wireless Communications: Principles and Practice," IEEE Press, New York, and Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1996. H. Sari, "Broadband Radio Access to Homes and Businesses: MMDS and LMDS," Computer Networks, vol. 31, pp. 379 393, February 1999, Elsevier Science B.V., The Netherlands.

G. LaBelle, "LMDS: A Broadband Wireless Interactive Access System at 28 GHz," in Broadband Wireless Comm., M. Luise and S . Pupolin (Eds.), Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1998, pp. 364-377. ETS 300 748, "Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB): Framing Structure, Channel Coding, and Modulation for MVDS at 10 GHz and Above," ETSI, October 1996. DAVIC 1.1 Specifications -Part 8: "Lower-Layer Protocols and Physical Interfaces," Revision 3.3, Geneva, September 1996. Air Interface for Fixed Broadband Wireless Access Systems, IEEE 802.16.3 Task Group, Sept. 2000. ETSI web site: www. etsi.org

H. Sari, G. Karam, and I. Jeanclaude, "Transmission Techniques for Digital Terrestrial TV Broadcasting," IEEE Communications Magazine, vol. 33, pp. 100-109, February 1995.
F. Adachi, M. Sawahashi, and H. Suda, "Wideband DS-CDMA for Next-Generation Mobile Communications Systems," IEEE Commun. Magazine, vol. 36, no. 9, pp. 56-69, September 1998.

J. P. Balech and H. Sari, "Advanced Modulation Techniques for Broadband Wireless Access Systems," Proc. the 7th European Conference on Fixed Radio Systems and Networks (ECRR 2000), pp. 159-164, September 2000, Dresden, Germany.

H. Sari, "A Multimode CDMA Scheme with Reduced Intercell Interference for LMDS Networks," Proc. the 2000 Intemational Zurich Seminar on Broadband Communications, pp. 3073 12, February 2000, Zurich, Switzerland.

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