Classifications

• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04B—TRANSMISSION
  • H04B17/00—Monitoring; Testing
  • H04B17/30—Monitoring; Testing of propagation channels
  • H04B17/309—Measuring or estimating channel quality parameters
  • H04B17/345—Interference values
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04B—TRANSMISSION
  • H04B17/00—Monitoring; Testing
  • H04B17/20—Monitoring; Testing of receivers
  • H04B17/24—Monitoring; Testing of receivers with feedback of measurements to the transmitter
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04W—WIRELESS COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
  • H04W24/00—Supervisory, monitoring or testing arrangements
  • H04W24/08—Testing, supervising or monitoring using real traffic
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04W—WIRELESS COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
  • H04W28/00—Network traffic management; Network resource management
  • H04W28/02—Traffic management, e.g. flow control or congestion control
  • H04W28/0231—Traffic management, e.g. flow control or congestion control based on communication conditions
  • H04W28/0236—Traffic management, e.g. flow control or congestion control based on communication conditions radio quality, e.g. interference, losses or delay
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04W—WIRELESS COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
  • H04W72/00—Local resource management
  • H04W72/04—Wireless resource allocation
  • H04W72/044—Wireless resource allocation based on the type of the allocated resource
  • H04W72/0453—Resources in frequency domain, e.g. a carrier in FDMA
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L27/00—Modulated-carrier systems
  • H04L27/26—Systems using multi-frequency codes
  • H04L27/2601—Multicarrier modulation systems
  • H04L27/2602—Signal structure
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04W—WIRELESS COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
  • H04W24/00—Supervisory, monitoring or testing arrangements
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04W—WIRELESS COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
  • H04W28/00—Network traffic management; Network resource management
  • H04W28/02—Traffic management, e.g. flow control or congestion control
  • H04W28/04—Error control

Definitions

• the present invention relates in general to wireless communication systems, and more specifically to co-channel interference characterization, feedback reduction and interference mitigation in cellular and non-cellular radio communication systems.
• cellular radio communication systems where the present invention may find advantageous, but not limitative application, are for example the so- called beyond-3G (3 rd Generation) cellular radio communication systems, i.e. new generation cellular radio communication systems having a wider transmission bandwidth than 3G cellular radio communication systems, such as for example those known as Third Generation Partnership Project Long Term Evolution (3GPP LTE) cellular radio communication systems.
• 3GPP LTE Third Generation Partnership Project Long Term Evolution
• Non-cellular radio communication systems where the present invention may find advantageous, but not limitative application are for example Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) , and in particular WiMAX, which is defined as Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access by the WiMAX Forum, formed to promote conformance and interoperability of the IEEE 802.16 standard, officially known as WirelessMAN, and which is described by the Forum as "a standard-based technology enabling the delivery of last mile wireless broadband access as an alternative to cable and DSL" .
• WLANs Wireless Local Area Networks
• WiMAX Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access by the WiMAX Forum
• WirelessMAN IEEE 802.16 standard
• FDMA Frequency Division Multiple Access
• IG st generation
• FDMA/TDMA narrowband Frequency and Time Division Multiple Access
• 2G 2 nd generation
• CDMA broadband Code Division Multiple Access
• transceivers When transmission bandwidth increases, transceivers typically show an increase in their circuit complexity, depending on the type of modulation and multiplexing used. When the bandwidth of the transmission systems becomes larger than a few MHz (about 10 MHz) , a multi-carrier modulation is often more suitable to keep the transceivers circuit complexity as low as possible.
• OFDM Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
• OFDM is based upon the principle of frequency-division multiplexing (FDM) , but is implemented as a digital modulation scheme.
• FDM frequency-division multiplexing
• the bit stream to be transmitted is split into several parallel bit streams, typically dozens to thousands.
• the available frequency spectrum is divided into several sub-channels, and each low-rate bit stream is transmitted over one sub-channel by modulating a sub- carrier using a standard modulation scheme, for example PSK, QAM, etc.
• the sub-carrier frequencies are chosen so that the modulated data streams are orthogonal to each other, meaning that cross-talk between the sub-channels is eliminated. This orthogonality occurs when sub- carriers are equally spaced by the symbol rate of a sub- carrier.
• OFDM Orthogonal frequency division multiple Access
• WLANs complying with the IEEE802.il standards family use a 20 MHz channel, and transmit with a 64-subcarrier OFDM modulation. More specifically, in WLANs, transmission is governed by a Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol, called Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA- CA) , that avoids transmission when a given frequency channel is already in use. For this reason, inside a given WLAN cell, there is usually no direct co-channel interference between different transceivers. Moreover, in a hot-spot kind of territory coverage, WLAN cells are usually physically separated, so that other-cell interference is largely limited in most cases.
• MAC Medium Access Control
• CSMA- CA Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance
• OFDM frequency division multiple access
• Inter-cell interference can be mitigated by using for example Radio Resource Management (RRM) mechanisms (i.e. interference coordination) or layer-1 mechanisms, such as spatial suppression by means of multiple antennas and cancellation based on detection/subtraction of the inter-cell interference.
• RRM Radio Resource Management
• layer-1 mechanisms such as spatial suppression by means of multiple antennas and cancellation based on detection/subtraction of the inter-cell interference.
• a classification of these mechanisms can be found for example in 3GPP TR 25.814 "Physical layer aspect for evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA)" sec. 7.1.2.6.
• PRBs PRBs
• the user equipments can perform these sets of measurements for each PRB or can perform a number of sets of measurements lower than the number of PRBs.
• the capability to distinguish which one of the neighbouring cells interference comes from implies that each user equipment should have knowledge of cell-specific training sequences (pilot signal sequences) , and the previous step inevitably leads to the use of memory space, computation resources and consequent power consumption in the user equipment;
• the objective of the present invention is therefore to provide a methodology which can alleviate at least some of the above cited drawbacks, and in particular which allows interference mitigation to be performed with simple algorithms and light computational load. It also allows reduction in uplink signalling bandwidth.
• the present invention relates to a method for characterizing interference in a radio communication system, a method for mitigating interference in a radio communication system, and a system and a computer program product configured to implement this interference characterization method, as defined in the appended claims .
• the present invention achieves the aforementioned objective by mapping and characterizing the interference situation inside a cell of the cellular radio communication system by using vector quantization and without using any information about the position of the user equipments.
• the present invention proposes to utilize, in each or a group of the transceiver stations, generally referred to as Node B, of the cellular radio communication system, a codebook made up of codewords defined by respective representative vectors that represent and characterize, via vector quantization, any interference situation present in the cell served by the transceiver station.
• Each codeword in the codebook is made up of a given number of components (or dimensions) , each representing the interference power of a given interfering transceiver station, and the values assumed by the number of the codeword components at a certain time instant represent a point in a vector space whose dimensions are the interference powers.
• the number of components of each codeword is chosen so that all of the main interfering transceiver stations can be taken into account.
• the user equipments in a given cell send feedback messages to the transceiver station supervising the cell, the feedback messages containing the interference power that the user equipments in the cell receive from each one of the main interfering transceiver stations.
• the codebook can evolve dynamically in time so as to ensure that, in every moment, the interference situation of the cell is represented within an acceptable quantization error.
• a subset of codewords may be kept invariant in time to minimize the quantization error when new user equipments enter the cell.
• the transceiver station can choose one codeword to represent each one of the user equipments in the cell, and a codeword can also represent more than one user equipment .
• the present invention can be used advantageously to develop interference control and reduction algorithms based on a good knowledge of the influence that every interfering transceiver station produces on its neighbouring cells. These algorithms should also be conceived to allow messages between different transceiver stations to be exchanged to negotiate a possible reduction of the radiated interference power over any PRBs when needed.
• the present invention can also be adopted to effectively reduce uplink feedback messages.
• vector quantization can be used to perform the so called user equipment grouping. Specifically, when different user equipments send to the respective transceiver station feedback messages that are represented by the same codeword, then these user equipments can be grouped together.
• the transceiver station can request measurement feedback messages from only one or a few of these user equipments acting as a representative sample of the group, instead of the whole group.
• the user equipments belonging to a given group can also send feedback messages in a round robin fashion until the serving transceiver station estimates that the interference situation sustained by the members of the group diverges.
• Figures Ia and Ib show schematically an FDD-DL and, respectively, an FDD-UL transmission case between two Node Bs of a cellular radio communication system and two user equipments each served by a respective Node B;
• Figure 2 shows a codebook associated with a Node B of the cellular radio communication system of Figure 1;
• Figure 3 shows schematically an interference scenario involving an interfering Node B and three user equipments sending to the Node B feedback messages having the same representative codeword;
• Figure 4 shows schematically inter-Node B network signalling and uplink radio interface signalling between a serving Node B and interfering Node Bs and a user equipment;
• Figure 5 shows a block diagram of the operating principle of the present invention. DETAIT.ttn DESCRIPTION OF PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS OF THE INVENTION
• Node B that is the terminology commonly adopted in 3GPP LTE cellular radio communication systems, will be used.
• Figures Ia and Ib show schematically two Node Bs, designated by Node Bl and Node B2, of a 3GPP LTE cellular radio communication system and two user equipments, designated by UEl and UE2, each served by a respective Node B.
• Figure Ia shows an FDD-DL (Frequency Division Duplexing-Downlink) transmission case
• Figure Ib shows a FDD-UL (Frequency Division Duplexing-Uplink) transmission case.
• the solid lines represent useful signals
• the dashed lines represent inter-cell interference.
• a codeword can be expressed as follows:
• Each one of the Q components in a codeword represents the interference power of a specific Node B interfering with the serving Node B under consideration.
• interfering Node Bs of the serving Node B we intended those Node Bs that could use the same set or subset of frequency resources of the serving Node B.
• the components of each codeword are numbers representing quantized interference power .
• each user equipment in the cell measures the interfering power coming from Q different interference sources.
• the k-th user equipment periodically feeds back to the serving Node B a vector of Q ordered values, which can be represented as follows:
• n is a time instant and the dependency of from n and k has been dropped for the sake of simplicity of notation.
• Vector quantization is then used to find one representative (codeword) of the feedback ⁇ nlc in the codebook. If a quantization based on the Euclidean norm is adopted, then the representative codeword can be expressed as follows:
• norms are also applicable to the invention, as an example, a different type of norm is also proposed, where it is possible to distinguish two groups of interferers, having different weights OC and ⁇ .
• VQhJ C 1 ( 4 ' )
• the dimensions (components) relative to the first group of interfering Node Bs are , while those relative to the second group are ⁇ p Q+l ,...,p Q ⁇ .
• Implementers can choose to select only the interfering Node Bs of the serving cell that on average have the strongest influence on the serving cell.
• the values assumed by the components of a codeword at a certain time instant represent a point in the vector space whose dimensions are interference powers. It is important to stress that the codewords do not contain any information about geographical positioning of a specific user equipment, but only information about the interference power sustained by the user equipment.
• n there is a correspondence between geographical positions of the user equipments inside the cell and the codewords, but this is not in general, a bi-univocal correspondence. This concept is illustrated in Figure 3, where it is assumed to have a single interfering Node B that has the same path-loss towards three different user equipments.
• the three user equipments although geographically located in different points of the cell, are sustaining the same interference power and hence send to the Node B feedback messages having the same representative codeword.
• the interference situation seen by two user equipments represented by the same codeword do not need to be very close to each other, but can be somewhat different, meaning that the two feedback vectors have a certain respective distance.
• the number of codewords M in a codebook can be fixed or variable in time, a higher M in general leads to a smaller average vector quantization error.
• M should be designed in such a way that the average quantization error for every interference situation (intended as power vector) sustained by the user equipments in the cell is below a given threshold, where the quantization error may be defined as follows:
• the respective codebook is pre-set to standard values.
• some examples of convenient initialization are given:
• a collection of many measurements of interference power of different interfering cells can be used as vector space to be partitioned in subsets (as well-known from the theory of vector quantization) , and the centroids of the partitions (subsets) then constitute the codebook for initialization.
• the codebook obtained in this way could likely depend on cell shape and as such, at least one codebook should be available for every shape. If the measurements are relative to the specific cell the codebook will be used in, then it means that the network adopts a policy including a cell- specific training phase.
• the initial codebook could be determined such as to represent very strong interference situations, for example, the interference experienced by user equipments when the path loss from interfering Node Bs is very low.
• this kind of codebook could make the Node B initially adopt a large frequency re-use factor, at least in the cell periphery;
• the initial codebook could be pseudo-randomly generated; • the initial codebook could be such as to represent equal interference power of all the interfering Node Bs. For example, a certain number of codewords could have the same value in all of their rows or a part of the rows, which should correspond to the first tier of interfering Node Bs. Otherwise, each codeword could have only one row different from zero (as to represent interference contributions from a specific Node B only) ;
• the initial codebook could be such as to represent a wider dynamic range in the values describing the interference powers of the strongest interfering Node Bs, which could coincide with the Node Bs that are geographically closer.
• a smaller dynamic range can be put in the values describing the Node Bs further away, e.g. those ones in the second tier of interfering Node Bs.
• This arrangement can be understood thinking that the movement of a user equipment inside a cell means a larger relative variation in distance for the interfering Node Bs closer to the cell.
• the variation of the received interference power is as such in general large for an interfering Node B in proximity of the cell border.
• the variation is on the other hand smaller for a interfering Node B farther away from the cell border;
• the Node B After initialization, the Node B then updates the codebook based on feedback messages from the user equipments in the cell supervised by the Node B.
• Feedback messages contain the interference power that the user equipments in the cell receive from each one of the main interfering Node Bs .
• the codebook can be modified so as to limit the average vector quantization error. Algorithms to dynamically update a codebook have been used in the past, e.g. in the field of voice recognition and are described in the literature (e.g. in Allen Gersho, Robert M. Gray, Vector Quantization and Signal Compression, Kluwer Academic Publishers, page 602, page 620) .
• the speed at which the codebook converges to the observed measurements depends on the type of algorithm that is used for interference control and on the overall organization of the feedback chain. For example, if user equipment grouping is performed, codebook convergence cannot be too fast, otherwise this would cause instability in user equipment grouping itself (because fast convergence implies large gradients in the codewords with respect to which grouping is performed) . However, the overall effect of the dynamic codebook evolution is that a larger number of codewords converge towards those regions of the vector space where the measurement density is higher.
• a subset of the codewords in the codebook may be kept fixed, i.e. they do not take part to the dynamic evolution of the codebook, or they could be not strictly invariable but rather could have a limited range of variability.
• these invariable or quasi-invariable codewords may be initially distributed in all of the regions of the cell (because they should be relatively close to any user equipment that powers up in any location inside the cell or enters the cell) . Their function is especially important in the transitory phase until the codebook converges towards them.
• the foregoing description is based on the assumption that the user equipments can measure the interfering power coming from all of the main interfering Node Bs, i.e. the long-term average interference power which is not affected by the rapid variations of the fast fading.
• the interference power measurements are made possible by the knowledge in the user equipments of cell-specific pilot signals, which are separable based on orthogonality (e.g. code, frequency or time orthogonality) .
• the Node Bs could be organized with a "chessboard pattern" transmission scheme (a transmission scheme where specific time instants exist when inter-cell interference is limited to the second tier of interferers or less) to guarantee that the interfering power from each interfering Node B can be measured.
• a Node B enters a tracking mode, where it should be able to constantly represent all of the interference situations of the user equipments it is serving within a limited quantization error.
• the system is supposed to work as follows:
• each user equipment that is scheduled for feedback sends to the Node B a set of measured values, relative to the most recent measurement period;
• the Node B performs a vector quantization of the feedback message to find the representative codeword for the feedback message; • the Node B stores in an interference database representing all served user equipments only indexes for the codewords identified after vector quantization, the stored indexes representing the position of the identified codewords in the codebook, thus requiring a limited quantity of memory;
• Node B dynamically updates the codebook according to a predetermined criterion described for example in Allen Gersho, Robert M. Gray, Vector Quantization and Signal Compression, Kluwer Academic Publishers, page 602, page 620.
• the Node B can decide to group those user equipments. The Node B can then request a feedback message not to all of the user equipments in a group, but only to one or a few representative user equipments. After a maximum time interval has expired, anyway, up- to-date feedback messages are then requested to all of the user equipments;
• the method described in the previous point can be further improved by requesting feedback messages from user equipments in a group in a round robin fashion.
• the group is modified when one or more user equipments start to diverge from the average interference situation of the group;
• the method detailed in the previous points can be optionally restricted to those user equipments having low mobility.
• An estimate of the mobility of a user equipment can be performed based on the Doppler shift of the pilot signals sent by the user equipment. This is based however on the assumption that each user equipment has a precise carrier frequency reference. Otherwise, a coarse estimate of mobility can be carried out based on the representative codeword for each user equipment: in fact, if the representative codeword changes slowly, a limited mobility can be assumed.
• the interference database is the basis for the Node B to decide what actions to try with the purpose of interference limiting/control.
• a codebook could exist for each PRB or group of PRBs.
• block 40 represents the vector quantization carried out based on an initial codebook (block 10) obtained after a training step (block 20) or based on a alternative cell- independent initial codebook (block 30)
• block 50 represents the codebook update
• block 60 represents the database update for the description of the interference situation
• block 70 represents the execution of an interference mitigation/control algorithm and the corresponding network signalling (requests from neighboring Node Bs and outputs towards neighboring Node Bs)
• block 80 represents the execution of actions for interference mitigation
• block 90 represents the uplink signalling, namely the feedback messages sent by the user equipments to the Node Bs.
• the user equipment does not measure the interference power in a specific PRB for every interfering Node B. It instead measures only the interference power on a common
• each interfering Node B informs neighboring Node Bs about what PRBs it is actively using and possibly what power it is transmitting on every PRB. In this way, the serving Node B is able to estimate what interference power is sustained by each user equipment in its cell, for every PRB.
• the interference power for a specific PRB is the sum of the contributions of all interferers .
• the contribution of one interferer is the transmitted power for a specific PRB, less the attenuation measured for that interferer by the specific user equipment. More specifically, these can be expressed as follows.
• ⁇ p represents the pilot signal power at the transmit antenna
• ⁇ is an optional term, used for the power normalization in the system, which should also take into account a possible power control mechanism on the pilot signal.
• the k-th user equipment periodically feeds back the vector A nk to its serving Node B.
• N is the total number of PRBs
• the interference power sustained by the k-th user equipment in the m-th PRB can be estimated by the serving Node B as (in logarithmic units) :
• the interference power sustained by the k-th user equipment in the m-th PRB and originated by the i-th Node B can be estimated by the serving Node
• This embodiment enables a reduction in uplink feedback by a factor N without a significant performance loss, the reason being that while fast- fading attenuation depends on the PRB, long-term attenuation is essentially constant over the whole bandwidth. Moreover, this embodiment permits a simplification of the hardware of the user equipments and reduced power consumption.
• a second embodiment is based on a pessimistic estimate of interference power and allows a significant reduction of the overall signalling among Node Bs to be obtained.
• this second embodiment which may be regarded as a simplification of the first embodiment, an assumption is made that neighboring Node Bs do not signal the vector P 1 or that only the closest ones (first tier of interferers) do.
• equation (7) may be substituted by the following expression :
• 7U 1113x is the maximum power value that can be transmitted on one PRB. It is also possible to define interference power contributions specific for one interfering Node B.
• the interference power sustained by the k-Vn user equipment in the m-t ⁇ i PRB and originated by the i-th Node B can be estimated by the serving Node B as (in logarithmic units) :
• a third embodiment which may be regarded as an extension of the first embodiment, measurement and feedback is performed like in the first embodiment, with one codebook used to vector-quantize the measurements, and the results of vector quantization can in turn be used for grouping the user equipments and other purposes
• PRB which are used to vector-quantize the vectors whose components are defined in equation (8) .
• the results of vector quantization are useful in the interference mitigation process.
• one single codebook could exist to vector quantize the vectors whose components are defined in equation (7) .
• the results of vector quantization is useful in the interference mitigation process. What is important to notice is that this third embodiment retains fully the advantages of uplink feedback bandwidth reduction and reduction of hardware complexity and power consumption in the user equipment.
• the higher number of codebooks present in the Node B only means increased hardware complexity for the Node B.
• one codebook is used to vector-quantize the measurements, and the results of vector quantization can in turn be used for grouping the user equipments and other purposes. Then, additional codebooks exist for each PRB and are used to vector quantize the vectors whose components are defined in equation (10). Additionally or alternatively, one single codebook could exist to vector quantize the vectors whose components are defined in equation (9) ..
• this fourth embodiment fully retains the advantages in terms of reduced uplink feedback and hardware complexity in the user equipments.

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