LTE-Advanced: Latency Analysis for IMT-A Evaluation

Deepti Singhal, Mythili Kunapareddy and Vijayalakshmi Chetlapalli

Abstract: Wireless networks have made dramatic advances in the technology catering to multidimensional services. Most of these services viz. voice, gaming, interactive applications etc, are sensitive to latency. As such, latency has become a key performance indicator in wireless data networks, besides throughput and QoS. All these performance related requirements drive innovations in wireless technologies. This is the key for Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) to work on LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) in conjunction with the IMT-Advanced (IMTA) requirements. LTE-A is a technology enhancement to Long Term Evolution (LTE). The demand for lower latency triggered studies on various means of achieving it. Optimization of latency may happen on control plane (CPlane) as well as user plane (U-Plane). This tutorial presents control plane and user plane latency calculations for Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) and Time Division Duplex (TDD) modes of operation of LTE-A, with the goal of evaluating whether the latency complies with the guidelines outlined by International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for 4G radio access technologies delivering high speed multimedia services. The analysis concludes that both the control and user plane latencies of LTE-A are in compliance with IMT-A requirements.

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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ......................................................................... 2 Control Plane and User Plane Latency .................................... 2 REQUIREMENTS & ASSUMPTIONS .......................................... 3 Requirements .......................................................................... 3 Assumptions ............................................................................ 3 CONTROL PLANE ANALYSIS .................................................... 3 Transition from Idle to Connected state ................................... 4 FDD Mode Analysis. 5 TDD Mode Analysis. 5 Transition from Dormant to Active state................................... 6 FDD Mode Analysis. 7 TDD Mode Analysis..7 USER PLANE ANALYSIS............................................................ 9 FDD Mode Analysis. 9 TDD Mode Analysis..9 CONCLUSION ........................................................................... 11 REFERENCE ............................................................................ 12 Appendix A: Method of calculating latencies for TDD ................ 13

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INTRODUCTION
LTE-Advanced is the technological advancement proposed by 3GPP to meet the requirements set by ITU for IMTA standard. The LTE-A standard primarily lays down performance performance improvement goals of LTE-Advanced are - flexible network deployment, improved enhancements to LTE Release 8 in addition to being backward compatible with it. The spectral efficiency, better user experience and cost effectiveness. LTE-A is designed to support peak data rates of 1 Gbps in the downlink (DL) and 500 Mbps in the uplink (UL). Its spectral efficiency is targeted to be thrice as that of LTE Release 8, with the ability to support spectrum

aggregation and scalable bandwidth. The idle to connected mode latency is less than 50ms and one-way packet transmission delay is less than 5ms. The cell-edge and average user throughput requirements of LTE-A are approximately 3 times that of LTE. Latency is defined as the average time between the transmission of packet and the reception of an acknowledgment. applications that do not require very high data rate, but they do require low latency. Voice, real

Low latency is a key performance criterion for better user experience. There are several time gaming and interactive applications are some examples. In LTE-A, the requirements for better quality of experience are more stringent than LTE Release 8. To reduce latency, LTE employs smaller transmission time interval (TTI) of 1ms. On an average, in FDD mode, the latency performance of LTE-A are simultaneous processing of Radio Resource Control (RRC)

packet needs to wait for 0.5ms for transmission. Amongst the suggested ways to improve and Non Access Stratum (NAS) requests at the eNB (evolved NodeB), reduced message processing delays at various nodes, reduced RACH (Random Access Channel) and PUCCH (Physical Uplink Control Channel) cycles and a contention based uplink [1].

Control Plane and User Plane Latency

data transmission. C-Plane latency is measured as the time required for the UE (User Equipment) to transit from idle state to active state. In idle state, the UE does not have an RRC

Control plane deals with signaling and control functions, while user plane deals with actual user

connection. Once the RRC is setup, the UE transitions to connected state and then to the active between a packet being available at the IP layer in the UE/E-UTRAN (Evolved UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network) edge node and the availability of this packet at the IP layer in the EUTRAN/UE node. U-Plane latency is relevant for the performance of many applications.

state when it enters the dedicated mode. U-Plane latency is defined as one-way transmit time

This tutorial presents in detail the delay budgets of C-Plane and U-Plane procedures that add to both FDD and TDD modes of operation. Technical details of C-Plane and U-Plane latency are overall latency in state transition and packet transmission. Latency calculations are made for

cited in [1], [2]. This tutorial is organized as follows: Requirements and assumptions in Section II, C-Plane latency analysis in Section III and U-Plane latency analysis in Section IV. The seconds (ms). The method of calculating these latencies is illustrated in the appendix. conclusions are summarized in Section V. All the values indicated in the tables are in milli

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REQUIREMENTS & ASSUMPTIONS

Requirements
The requirements set by ITU for C-Plane and U-Plane latencies are given in table I. The analysis

was carried out as per the IMT-A evaluation requirements and guidelines [3], [4]. C-Plane latency should be less than 100ms from idle to active states and U-Plane latency should be less than 10ms.

TABLE 1 IMT-A LATENCY REQUIREMENTS

Plane Control Plane User Plane Max latency (ms) 100 10

All latency calculations are done with the following assumptions:

Assumptions

1) Ideally for best case scenario, the RRC and NAS requests are processed in parallel in LTE-A.

However, in practical scenarios, it is reasonable to assume an additional delay of 10ms for S1-C transfer delay + MME processing of NAS request. This is based on the S1-C transfer delay values mentioned in [2]. 2) 1ms PRACH and PUCCH cycle in FDD.

3) The RACH and PUCCH waiting times in TDD cases are calculated based on the UL/DL subframe locations in the respective frame configurations [5]. frame for UL/DL frame configuration 1. 4) In TDD mode analysis, UL/DL frame configuration 1 is considered. Figure 1 shows the TDD

Figure 1: TDD Frame Configuration 1

CONTROL PLANE ANALYSIS

C-Plane latency is calculated for Idle-Connected and Dormant-Active states [1], [2]. Figure 2 shows the transition states.

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Figure 2: Control Plane State Transition Diagram

Transition from Idle to Connected state

In idle state the UE doesnt have an RRC connection. UE monitors the paging channel to detect the incoming calls and acquire system information. Once the UE transits to connected state, it establishes an RRC connection and a radio bearer. So the UE is known at the cell level and can

respond to DL initiated transitions after the transition. Hence there is no case to consider for DL initiated transitions for idle to connected mode latency calculation. The calculations are made involved in idle to connected mode transition are: 1. UE waiting for RACH scheduling 2. RACH preamble to eNB 3. Preamble detection at eNB 4. Transmission of RA response (Time between the end RACH transmission and UEs reception of scheduling grant and timing adjustment) 5. Decoding of scheduling grant, timing alignment and CRNTI assignment at UE 6. Transmission of RRC connection request to eNB 7. L2 and RRC processing delay at eNB 8. Transmission of RRC Connection Setup to UE (Simultaneously NAS service is requested and processed) 9. L2 and RRC processing delay at UE 10. Transmission of RRC Connection Setup Complete to eNB. Steps 11-14 depict NAS service request and processing at MME. This happens in parallel with RRC Connection procedure in LTE-A and hence reduces latency. 11. Processing at eNB (UuS1-C) 12. NAS connection request, S1-C transfer delay 13. MME processing 14. NAS connection setup, S1-C transfer delay 15. Processing at eNB 16. Transmission of RRC Security Mode Command and Connection Reconfiguration (+TTI alignment) to UE 17. L2 and RRC processing at UE 18. Transmission of setup complete to eNB only for UL case. Figure 3 shows the message flow in idle to connected transition. The steps

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Figure 3: Message Flow for Idle to Connected Transition All the calculations are based on 1ms RACH cycle for FDD mode and combined RRC and NAS request in Idle to Connected transition.

FDD Mode Analysis RACH can be scheduled in UL once every subframe (1ms), so the average RACH waiting time to send a RACH is 0.5ms (TTI/2). The delay in FDD mode for idle to connected transition is shown in table II. In FDD mode, UL and DL transmissions are done simultaneously on different frequency bands.

TDD Mode Analysis

In TDD mode, the C-Plane latency calculations are dependent on UL/DL frame configuration [5] and the location of RACH trigger in the TDD frame [6]. The analysis for TDD is carried with UL/DL frame configuration 1 with the probability (P) of occurrence of RACH trigger. The reason behind the calculations being done only for one TDD frame configuration is that the TDD case has multiple scenarios and covering all the cases is beyond the scope of this document. For convenience subframe is designated as SF in the tables. C-Plane latency analysis for TDD is shown in the table II.

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TABLE II IDLE- CONNECTED TRANSITION

FDD Component 1 2 3-4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11-14 15 16 17 RACH Waiting Preamble eNB processing and Grant UE processing RRC + NAS Request eNB processing RRC setup UE processing RRC setup complete Parallel processing of NAS request at eNB+MME eNB processing NAS setup UE processing Total delay Average total delay Process Time [ms] 0.5 1 3 5 1 4 1 12 1 0 4 1.5 16 50 50 RACH in 2/7 (P=0.8) 2 1 3 6 1 6 1 12 1 0 4 3 16 56 55.5 TDD RACH in 3/8 (P =0.2) 0.5 1 3 5 1 6 1 12 1 0 4 3 16 53.5 RACH in Special SF 2.5 1 3 7 1 6 1 12 1 0 4 3 16 57.5 57.5

Transition from Dormant to Active state

In dormant state, UE has an established RRC connection and radio bearers. UE may be in

synchronized or unsynchronized state during the transition. The analysis has been carried on

both the cases of UEs with UL initiated and DL initiated transmission. When UE is synchronized it dormant to active transition are: 2) UE transmits the SR the eNB

waits for the PUCCH allocation for sending the Scheduling Request (SR). The steps involved in 1) Average delay to next SR opportunity 3) eNB decodes SR and generates the Scheduling Grant 4) Transmission of Scheduling Grant to eNB 6) Transmission of UL data 5) Decoding of scheduling grant and L1 encoding of UL data at UE

Figure 4 shows the message flow in dormant to active transition for a synchronized UE. The main purpose of RACH is to obtain UL time synchronization and then to access the network. So for an UE without UL synchronization, RACH procedure must be followed. In the case of DL

initiated transmission, the UE with UL synchronization monitors PDCCH (Physical Downlink Control Channel) during the on-duration of the DRX (Discontinuous Reception) cycle, and thus there is no additional delay component apart from the DRX cycle when compared to the case of and the transmission is assumed to be error free.

the UL initiated for a synchronized UE. For the purpose of analysis, DRX cycle is not considered

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Figure 4: Message Flow for Dormant to Active Transition FDD Mode Analysis For Dormant to Active transition, all the calculations are based on 1ms PUCCH cycle for FDD mode. Table III shows the FDD mode calculations for synchronized UE (both UL initiated and DL are shown in tables IV, V. initiated). Calculations for UL initiated unsynchronized UE and DL initiated unsynchronized UE

TDD Mode Analysis TDD mode analysis is also carried out for dormant to active transition for synchronized and unsynchronized UEs. Table III shows the TDD mode calculations for synchronized UE (both UL unsynchronized UEs respectively. initiated and DL initiated). Tables IV, VI show the calculations for UL initiated and DL initiated

TABLE III DORMANT- ACTIVE TRANSITION SYNCHRONIZED UE

FDD Component 1 2 3 4 5 6 Process PUCCH Waiting SR eNB processing Grant UE processing UL Data Total delay Average total delay Time [ms] 0.5 1 3 1 3 1 9.5 9.5 PUCCH in SF2/7 (P=0.8) 2 1 3 1 5 1 13 12.7 TDD PUCCH in SF3/8 (P=0.2) 0.5 1 5 1 3 1 11.5

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TABLE IV DORMANT- ACTIVE TRANSITION UL INITIATED UNSYNCHRONIZED UE

FDD Component 1 2 `3-4 5 6 Process RACH Waiting Preamble eNB processing and Grant UE processing UL Data Total delay Average total delay Time [ms] 0.5 1 3 5 1 10.5 10.5 RACH in SF2/7 (P=0.8) 2 1 3 6 1 13 12.5 TDD RACH in SF3/8 (P=0.2) 0.5 1 3 5 1 10.5 RACH in Special SF 2.5 1 3 7 1 14.5 14.5

TABLE V FDD: DORMANT- ACTIVE TRANSITION DL INITIATED UNSYNCHRONIZED UE

FDD Component Process UE waiting for dedicated PDCCH and UE processing RACH Waiting Preamble eNB processing and grant UE processing UL Data Total delay Time [ms] 6 0.5 1 3 2 1 13.5

0 1 2 `3-4 5 6

TABLE VI TDD: DORMANT- ACTIVE TRANSITION DL INITIATED UNSYNCHRONIZED UE

TDD Component Process RACH in UL SF 2/3/7/8 PDCCH in SF0/5 (P=0.2) 0 UE waiting for dedicated PDCCH UE processing and RACH waiting Preamble eNB processing and grant UE processing DL Data Total delay Average total delay 0.5 PDCCH in SF1/6 (P=0.2) 0.5 PDCCH in SF4/9 (P=0.6) 1.5 RACH in Special SF1/6 PDCCH in SF0/5 (P=0.2) 0.5 PDCCH in SF1/6 (P=0.2) 0.5 PDCCH in SF4/9 (P=0.6) 1.5

1 2 `3-4 5 6

6 1 3 3 1 14.5

6 1 3 2 1 13.5 16.1

7 1 3 4 1 17.5

10 1 3 4 1 19.5

9 1 3 4 1 18.5 17.5

6 1 3 4 1 16.5

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USER PLANE ANALYSIS

U-Plane latency is also calculated for both TDD and FDD cases. The steps involved in the UPlane latency calculation are: 1) UE processing time 2) TTI duration

3) HARQ retransmission 4) eNB processing delay U-Plane latency for a scheduled UE consists of fixed node processing delays which include radio includes eNB processing delay and HARQ retransmission delay.

frame alignment, header compression delay, ciphering delay, RLC/MAC processing time. It also

FDD Mode Analysis

Figure 5 shows the FDD analysis for U-Plane latency. In FDD mode HARQ process is fixed to 8ms. So HARQ retransmission delay is n*8 ms, where n is number of retransmissions. Typically there would be 0 or 1 HARQ retransmission. For the given assumption, we consider n as the error probability of the first HARQ retransmission. Minimum latency is achieved with 0% BLER. But we also considered 10% BLER for more reasonable calculations. Table VII shows the U-Plane

latency calculations for FDD.

Figure 5: U-Plane latency components for FDD

TABLE VII U-PLANE LATENCY ANALYSIS FOR FDD

FDD Component 1 2 3 4 Process UE Processing Time (including Frame Alignment) TTI Duration (Fixed) HARQ Retransmission eNB Processing Total one way delay (ms) 0% HARQ BLER 1.5 1 0 1.5 4 10% HARQ BLER 1.5 1 0.8 1.5 4.8

TDD Mode Analysis UL/DL frame configurations in TDD with 0% BLER and 10% BLER. Tables VIII and IX show the UPlane analysis for DL with 0% BLER and 10% BLER respectively. Analysis for UL is shown in X and U-Plane latency analysis for TDD case is shown in figure 6 and 7. The analysis is done for all

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XI for 0% BLER and 10% BLER respectively. The analysis is carried on different TDD UL/DL frame configurations.

Figure 6: U-Plane latency components for TDD in DL

Figure 7: U-Plane latency components for TDD in UL

TABLE VIII U-PLANE LATENCY ANALYSIS FOR TDD IN DL WITH 0% BLER

Component Process 0 1 2.0 3 4.0 5 eNB Processing Frame Alignment TTI duration UE Processing HARQ Retransmission Total delay in ms 1 1.7 1 1.5 0 5.2 1 1 1.1 1 1.5 0 4.6 UL/DL configuration 2 1 0.7 1 1.5 0 4.2 3 1 1.1 1 1.5 0 4.6 4 1 0.8 1 1.5 0 4.3 5 1 0.6 1 1.5 0 4.1 6 1 1.4 1 1.5 0 4.9

TABLE IX U-PLANE LATENCY ANALYSIS FOR TDD IN DL WITH 10% BLER

Component Process 0 1 2.0 3 4.0 5 eNB Processing Frame Alignment TTI duration UE Processing HARQ Retransmission Total delay in ms 1 1.7 1 1.5 1 6.2 1 1 1.1 1 1.5 1.02 5.62 UL/DL configuration 2 1 0.7 1 1.5 0.98 5.18 3 1 1.1 1 1.5 1.05 5.65 4 1 0.8 1 1.5 1.16 5.46 5 1 0.6 1 1.5 1.24 5.34 6 1 1.4 1 1.5 1.12 6.02

TABLE X U-PLANE LATENCY ANALYSIS FOR TDD IN UL WITH 0% BLER

Component Process 0 1 2 3 UE Processing Frame Alignment TTI duration 1 1.1 1 1 1 1.7 1 UL/DL configuration 2 1 2.5 1 3 1 3.3 1 4 1 4.1 1 5 1 5 1 6 1 1.4 1

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4 5

eNB Processing HARQ Retransmission Total delay in ms

1.5 0 4.6

1.5 0 5.2

1.5 0 6.0

1.5 0 6.8

1.5 0 7.6

1.5 0 8.5

1.5 0 4.9

TABLE XI U-PLANE LATENCY ANALYSIS FOR TDD IN UL WITH 10% BLER

Component Process 0 1 2 3 4 5 UE Processing Frame Alignment TTI duration eNB Processing HARQ Retransmission Total delay in ms 1 1.1 1 1.5 1.16 5.76 1 1 1.7 1 1.5 1 6.2 UL/DL configuration 2 1 2.5 1 1.5 1 7.0 3 1 3.3 1 1.5 1 7.8 4 1 4.1 1 1.5 1 8.6 5 1 5 1 1.5 1 9.5 6 1 1.4 1 1.5 1.15 6.05

CONCLUSION
The analysis is summarized in tables XII, XIII and XIV for C-Plane and U-Plane latencies. For Cprocessing delay for the NAS request as mentioned in section II. Plane latency values, an additional average delay of 10ms is accounted for S1-C and S1-MME

The minimum and maximum C-Plane latencies from idle to active mode in FDD are 69.5ms for UE in synchronization case and 73.5ms for UE in unsynchronized case respectively. In TDD UL/DL frame configuration 1, these values are 78ms and 85ms respectively.

In U-Plane, the minimum and maximum latencies are 4ms with 0%HARQ BLER and 4.8ms with 10% HARQ BLER for FDD case. In TDD case minimum and maximum latencies are 4.1ms and 9.5ms for 0% and 10% BLER respectively.

Similar analysis has been presented to ITU [7] considering 3GPP Release 8 latency calculations.

TABLE XII C-PLANE LATENCY SUMMARY FOR FDD MODE

Mode IdleConnected S1-C transfer+MME processing of NAS request 10 DormantActive IdleActive

UL Initiated, UE Sync DL Initiated, UE Sync

50

9.5

69.5

50

10

9.5

69.5

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UL Initiated, UE Unsync DL Initiated, UE Unsync

50

10

10.5

70.5

50

10

13.5

73.5

TABLE XIII C-PLANE LATENCY SUMMARY FOR TDD MODE

Mode RACH Position Idle-Connected S1-C transfer+MME processing of NAS request 10 DormantActive IdleActive

UL Initiated, UE Sync UL Initiated, UE Sync DL Initiated, UE Sync DL Initiated, UE Sync UL Initiated, UE Unsync UL Initiated, UE Unsync DL Initiated, UE Unsync DL Initiated, UE Unsync

UL SF

55.5

12.7

78.2

Special SF

57.5

10

12.7

80.2

UL SF

55.5

10

12.7

78.2

Special SF

57.5

10

12.7

80.2

UL SF

55.5

10

12.5

78

Special SF

57.5

10

14.5

82

UL SF

55.5

10

16.1

81.6

Special SF

57.5

10

17.5

85

TABLE XIV U-PLANE LATENCY SUMMARY

Case FDD Min TDD DL TDD UL 4.1 4.6 0% BLER 4 Max 5.2 8.5 Min 5.18 5.76 10% BLER 4.8 Max 6.2 9.5

REFERENCE
[1] UTRA (LTE-Advanced) (Release 9). 3GPP, Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network. 3GPP TR 25.912 V8.0.0 (2008-12) Feasibility Study for Evolved Universal Terrestrial 3GPP TR 36.912 V9.1.0 (2009-12) Feasibility Study for Further Advancements for E-

[2]

Radio Access (UTRA) and Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN) (Release 8). 3GPP, Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network.

[3]

Advanced radio interface(s).

REPORT ITU-R M.2134, Requirements related to technical performance for IMT-

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[4] [5] [6] [7]

IMT-Advanced.

REPORT ITU-R M.2135, Guidelines for evaluation of radio interface technologies for 3GPP TR 36.211 V9.1.0 (2009-12) Physical Channels and Modulation

Evaluation of IMT-Advanced candidate technology submissions in Documents IMTADV/4 and IMT-ADV/8 by TCOE India, Document IMTADV/16-E, July 2010.

R2-101596, 3GPP TSG RAN WG2 Meeting #69, San Francisco, US, Feb 22nd-26th, 2010.

Appendix A: Method of calculating latencies for TDD

The latencies are calculated for TDD frame configuration1. The method of calculations is illustrated below -

TABLE XV IDLE-CONNECTED

TABLE XVI DORMANT-ACTIVE: UL/DL INITIATED, SYNC UE

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TABLE XVII DORMANT-ACTIVE: UL INITIATED, UNSYNC UE

TABLE XVIII DORMANT-ACTIVE: DL INITIATED, UNSYNC UE

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