5 Physical channels for the 3.84 Mcps option

25.2213GPPPhysical channels and mapping of transport channels onto physical channels (TDD)Release 17TS

Sub-clauses 5.1 to 5.7 do not apply to 3.84 Mcps MBSFN IMB. Sub-clause 5.8 describes physical channels for 3.84 Mcps MBSFN IMB.

All physical channels take three-layer structure with respect to timeslots, radio frames and system frame numbering (SFN), see [14]. Depending on the resource allocation, the configuration of radio frames or timeslots becomes different. All physical channels need a guard period in every timeslot. The time slots are used in the sense of a TDMA component to separate different user signals in the time domain. The physical channel signal format is presented in figure 1.

A physical channel in TDD is a burst, which is transmitted in a particular timeslot within allocated Radio Frames. The allocation can be continuous, i.e. the time slot in every frame is allocated to the physical channel or discontinuous, i.e. the time slot in a subset of all frames is allocated only. A burst is the combination of two data parts, a midamble part and a guard period. The duration of a burst is one time slot. Several bursts can be transmitted at the same time from one transmitter. In this case, the data parts must use different OVSF channelisation codes, but the same scrambling code. The midamble parts are either identicaly or differently shifted versions of a cell-specific basic midamble code, see section 5.2.3. Note when in MBSFN operation, a midamble is not necessarily cell-specific.

Figure 1: Physical channel signal format

The data part of the burst is spread with a combination of channelisation code and scrambling code. The channelisation code is a OVSF code, that can have a spreading factor of 1, 2, 4, 8, or 16. The data rate of the physical channel is depending on the used spreading factor of the used OVSF code.

The midamble part of the burst can contain two different types of midambles: a short one of length 256 chips, or a long one of 512 chips. The data rate of the physical channel is depending on the used midamble length. Additionally, when in MBSFN operation a midamble of length 320 chips is used.

So a physical channel is defined by frequency, timeslot, channelisation code, burst type and Radio Frame allocation. The scrambling code and the basic midamble code are broadcast and may be constant within a cell. When a physical channel is established, a start frame is given. The physical channels can either be of infinite duration, or a duration for the allocation can be defined.