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Brief Ideology

Radio Planning Synthesizer Frequency Hopping

Frequency hopping is a technique in which the information carrier changes the modulation frequency within a specified band, this technique was use by the military to maintain confidentiality over their transmission and prevent their signals from being intercepted by the enemy. There are broadly two types of frequency hopping, namely slow frequency hopping and fast frequency hopping. If the frequency changes faster than the modulation rate then it is termed as fast frequency hopping and otherwise it is called the slow frequency hopping. GSM applies only to the slow frequency hopping technique and this is further classified as Baseband Frequency Hopping and Synthesizer frequency hopping. The difference in the two techniques is as follows. Advantages of Frequency Hopping: There are two basic advantages of frequency hopping. 1) Frequency Hopping maintains confidentiality over the transmission, since the number of frequencies in the hopping sequence are high therefore it is not possible to latch on the frequencies and therefore maintain confidentiality. 2) Frequency Hopping reduces the losses due to fading, multipath propagation and cochannel interference Baseband Frequency Hopping: C1
PA
F0 TPU 0

C2
PA
F3 TPU 1

C3
PA
F6 TPU 2

C4
PA
F9

C5
PA
F12 TPU 4

C6 Combiner
PA
F15 TPU 5

TPU 3

t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 The figure above shows the hopping sequence as seen in the base-band hopping mode, the t1.t6 are the sequences of the timeslots in different bursts, TPU is the transceiver processing unit, PA is the power amplifier, C1..C6 are the resonant cavities in the combiner. F0, F3, F6, F9, F12, F15 are the ARFCN the circuit is tuned to.

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Radio Planning

The figure clearly shows that the TPU, the resonant cavity (C1..C6) and all the transceiver circuits are always tuned to only one frequency only, so in order for a timeslot to hop the timeslot is relayed to from one TPU to another on every burst basis. As per the example in the figure, the timeslot of a particular subscriber is at TPU 0 at the t1 instant of time. However in the next burst the same subscriber timeslot is at TPU 1 at t2 instant of time, and so on, so for this subscriber the timeslot is at different frequency in each burst, hence for this subscriber the frequency is hopping. Advantages: 1) BCCH can also participate in the hopping sequence. 2) Narrow band combiners such as Filter combiner (less combiner loss) can be used hence saving the EIRP of transmission. 3) (Siemens Advantage), no change in hardware required. Disadvantages: 1) Hopping gain is negligible for less than 3 frequencies in the hopping sequence and therefore is not suitable for low TCH configurations. 2) The numbers of total TRX in the cell limits the maximum frequencies in the hopping sequence. 3) Siemens disadvantage (till BR 3.7) If a TRX fails, frequency hopping is disabled. Synthesizer Frequency Hopping C1
The TPU will change frequency on each Burst, the total frequencies will be as defined in the BSC database. PA
F0,3

C2
PA
F0,3

C3
PA
F0,3

C4
PA

C5
PA

C6 Combiner
PA
F0,3

F0,3 TPU 4

TPU 0

TPU 1

TPU 2

TPU 3

TPU 5 Different colors signify different Burst, and different bursts are transmitted on different frequency.

Different lines Signify different Frequencies, the total frequencies is limited by the No. of frequencies defined in the hopping sequence and not by the No. of TRX in the cell.

TS7 TS6 TS5 TS4 TS3 TS2 TS1 TS0

TS 0- TS 7 mean different timeslots.

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Radio Planning

Figure above shows a descriptive diagram of Synthesizer frequency hopping, the different colors of the subscriber timeslot signify different bursts, it should be noticed here that the TPU in this case will change the frequency at each burst. Therefore after each burst is transmitted the TPU should change the frequency to the new frequency in the hopping sequence. This is achieved by having two frequency tuned circuits in the same TPU , One RF circuit will prepare to change frequency as long as the other is already transmitting. Advantages: 1) More frequencies than the total TRX in a cell are possible in the hopping sequence. Therefore allowing more hopping gain in the system. 2) Lower C/Ic ratio are possible in the system without compromising speech quality, this results in a tighter frequency re-use and hence a higher capacity gain. 3) TRX expansions are very easy. Disadvantages: 1) Since the cavity in the combiner will be required to change frequency very fast, therefore the combiner such as FICOM cannot be used for Synthesizer hopping since these combiners need 2-3 seconds to tune to each frequency. This is a disadvantage because in higher configuration the FICOMS have less combiner loss compared to DUCOM or HYCOMs. 2) BCCH cannot participate in the hopping sequence. Since the total number of frequencies in the hopping sequence is more than the number of TRX required therefore no fixed frequency allocated for each TRX. However BCCH must always be transmitted, therefore BCCH allocation is done separately as a separate frequency. Hardware Requirements: 1) For SIEMENS Base Station Only: TPU 2 is mandatory to be used for synthesizer hopping. 2) All the combiners in the base station with synthesizer hopping should be wide band combiners, therefore FICOMS cannot be used in base station with synthesizer hopping. Frequency Planning Ideology for Synthesizer hopping: Many frequency planing ideologies are propounded for the frequency planning of the synthesizer hopping, however nearly all of them state that although the frequency plan is easy to generate but MAIO (Mobile Allocation Index Offset) planning is of crucial importance. Also the synthesizer hopping requires in some configurations that the Base station should be synchronized between them to avoid any frequency collisions. What is MAIO? MRP:- 1 X 3 Reuse Pattern.

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Radio Planning

A 1 X 3 reuse pattern is the frequency assignment in which all the three sectors of a site have different frequency group, these frequency group may contain adjacent channel frequencies but no co-channel frequency, the adjacent channel interference can be avoided by intelligent allocation of MAIO. Before we continue our discussion further, let us define a few new terms MRP: (Multiple Reuse Pattern):a frequency re-use scheme in which the BCCH and TCH allocation is done by reserving separate band of frequencies for BCCH and separate band of frequencies for TCH. MAIO: (Mobile Allocation Index offset): The MAIO defines the start frequency of the hopping sequence. The maximum value of MAIO is determined by the total number of frequencies in the hopping sequence and not by the total number of TRX in a cell. HSN: Hopping sequence number: It defines the sequence of the frequencies while hopping. In Siemens base station it is possible to define 64 hopping sequences (0 - 63), where 0 defines cyclic hopping and 1 - 63 define un-correlated pseudo random hopping sequences. Channel Occupancy Rate: A term specifically used for synthesizer hopping which defines a ratio of total number of TCH frequencies in a cell to total number of frequencies in the hopping sequence, for a good network this ratio should not exceed 40%. Mathematically: No. of TCH in a cell No. Of Frequencies in the hopping sequence. In a 1 X3 Re-Use pattern the frequency re- use pattern will look like the following,

A C A C

B A C B A C

A C B A C B

B A C B A C

A C B A C B

B A C B A C

A C B A C B

B A C B A C B B

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Group

Radio Planning

Where A, B, C are mutually exclusive groups however these groups have adjacent channel frequencies. A typical allocation of the frequencies may look like the following:
ARFCN Numbers allocated to the group.

A B C

1 2 3

4 5 6

7 8 9

10 11 12

13 14 15

Therefore for a site the allocation may look like

(1,4,7,10,13) (2,5,8,11,14) (3,6,9,12,15)

In the above case we assume that the total site configuration is 3/3/3 and that BCCH frequency planning is done separately using a dedicated band therefore the remaining configuration is 2/2/2 for the TCH frequency allocation. Therefore if we have 5 frequencies in the hopping sequence then the Channel occupancy rate would be 2/5 = 40%, which is acceptable value. Notice that in the above example, each sector has adjacent channel frequency within the same site, this could pose a serious problem. This is problem can be solved by carefully planning MAIO for the above site we propose the following MAIO allocations. (notice that since there are 5 frequencies in the hopping sequence hence the Maximum number of MAIO can be 5 { MAIO= 0- 4})
Stages 1 2 3 4 5 Sector 1 Sector 2 Sector 3 MAIO 0,2 MAIO 1,3 MAIO 0,2 1,7 5,11 3,9 4,10 8,14 6,12 7,13 11,2 9,15 10,1 14,5 12,3 13,4 2,11 15,6

(For reasons of simplicity we assume cyclic hopping in the above case.) So consider the first stage of Hopping, in this case the first sector will transmit frequency 1 and 7 , sector 2 will transmit frequency 5 and 11 and sector 3 will transmit frequency 3 and

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Radio Planning

9, hence even-though we have adjacent channel frequencies in the same site still we can avoid adjacent channel interference by planning MAIO. For the case of neighboring sites with the same frequency allocation, to avoid the cochannel collision we must plan different Hopping Sequence Number (HSN). MRP:- 1 X 1 Reuse Pattern. For low configuration networks with limited frequency band, another idea can be proposed is that of a 1 X 1 Re-use pattern. In such a case a separate band can be reserved for BCCH alone and the other band can be used for a TCH in the hopping sequence, usually the allocation is such that the number of frequencies in the BCCH band is sufficient to avoid any possibility of collision. It should be pointed out that the 1X 1 configuration requires that the BTS be synchronize between all the cells in one site, that mean with the existing BS60 the maximum configuration possible with 1 X 1 hopping is 2/2/2, because the BS60 is unable to synchronize beyond one rack. As a suggestion for configuration like 3/3/3 what can be done is to allocate a second band for this third cell which is in the extension BS60 rack, this will result in a 1 X 2 re-use pattern. However the BS240 is capable of synchronizing between racks and therefore 1 X 1 can be implemented more easily in BS240. One can configure the network in such a fashion that all the cells in one site have the same hopping sequence number, however differ only in the MAIO allocation. This argument is valid both for 1 X 3 re-use pattern and also for 1X 1 re-use pattern also. Impact on the Network: Since the frequency re-use is very tight the effective BER ( Bit error rate, a measure of RXQuality in GSM ) will be very high, however the quality as perceived by the subscriber is not a measure of BER but a measure of F.E.R (Frame Erasure Rate), in a good network the FER should not exceed 2 %. One important point to notice is that since the emergency (quality Based) hand-over parameters is the based on the quality as perceived by BER, therefore the value of the parameters related to quality handovers should be adjusted to avoid unnecessary handovers in the network.

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