It is also possible that enodeB uses a higher aggregation level( more number of

CCE's) even if the bits transmitted on PDCCH are less. This happens when channel
conditions are bad , so to provide more redundant information to UE such that i
t can decode the PDCCH.

Aggregation Levels and PDCCH

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Just thought of writing a small note on how aggregation level controls PDCCH dec
oding and its importance in a wireless channel. There are 4 different aggregatio
n levels defined in LTE and they are 1, 2, 4 and 8 using which each DCI format i
s mapped on to the DL control symbols,
Basically all downlink control channels are defined in terms of following terms,
REG Resource element group, which is smallest defined unit and includes 4 su
bcarriers/resource elements
CCE Control channel element, which is nothing but group of 9 REGs, that mean
s there are a total of 94=36 subcarriers and since all the control channels are m
apped using QPSK/BPSK which basically can map 2 bits per subcarrier, we can acco
mmodate 72 control channel bits per CCE
Aggregation Levels
So now directly jumping to aggregation levels, as I told earlier there are 4 dif
ferent aggregation levels supported in LTE downlink, they are 1, 2, 4 and 8. Eac
h of these numbers basically specify the number of CCE they require to map a PDC
CH DCI, as shown below
Aggregation level = 1
Number of CCE = 1
Number of subcarriers available to map = 36
Number of bits possible to map = 72
Aggregation level = 2
Number of CCE = 2
Number of subcarriers available to map = 72
Number of bits possible to map = 144
Aggregation level = 4
Number of CCE = 4
Number of subcarriers available to map = 144
Number of bits possible to map = 288
Aggregation level = 8
Number of CCE = 8
Number of subcarriers available to map = 288
Number of bits possible to map = 576
How is aggregation level Chosen?
As we saw from the previous section, the number of bits that can be accommodated
are different in each of the aggregation levels and as we know the number of bi
ts in each of the DCI formats are less than the number of bits shown above. Lets
take a example of DCI format 1A for 10Mhz, the total number of bits after packi
ng all the fields will be 25 and after adding the 16 bit CRC, this will add upto
41 bits. Now the scheduler will have to decide, which aggregation to be used fo
r a DCI format and it takes that decision based on following factors,
 Worst case scenario this factor is considered for all the common DCIs such a
s SIB, RAR, Paging etc and the reason for assuming the worst case is, these DCIs
are supposed to be decoded by all the UEs connected to the eNodeB, no matter ho
w far or near they are to the eNodeB, hence most likely the scheduler will use t
he highest possible aggregation level of 8 to schedule these DCIs, so for the ab
ove example of DCI 1A, the 41 bits are rate matched and bloated to 576 bits givi
ng a very good forward error correction protection for these bits. Its also wort
h noting that the 3GPP spec mandates mapping any of the common RNTI DCI such as
SI, RAR, Paging to either of aggregation level 8 or 4
CQI based This factor is used based on the CQI reported by a UE and mostly f
or the dedicated DCIs , the scheduler will consider the CQI reported by the UE a
nd decided if the corresponding PDCCH should be robustly coded or lightly coded.
If the CQI is low, then scheduler will use a higher aggregation level and lower
aggregation level otherwise
RNTI wise This again mandates the scheduler to always use aggregation level
4 or 8 for common RNTIs such as SI, P, RA and allows the scheduler to choose any
aggregation levels for dedicated RNTIs such as C, TPC etc

So now we know that, higher the aggregation level used, better is the probabilit
y for the UE to successfully decode the DCI, then why at all lower the aggregati
on level? The answer is capacity. Higher the aggregation level, more number of s
ubcarriers are required for a given user, hence reducing the amount of space ava
ilable in the control channel for other UE DCIs, which in turn will control how
many users the scheduler will be able to schedule in the given subframe. So the
scheduler has to trade-off between efficiency and capacity. Also, higher aggrega
tion levels leads to more subcarriers per DCI, which can lead to higher CFI and
in turn this will decrease the number of OFDM symbols available for PDSCH, which
will again result in higher PDSCH coding rate compared to lower CFI and hence a
gain reducing the probability of PDSCH decoding