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ACCEPTED FROM OPEN CALL

TDD-BASED MOBILE COMMUNICATION SOLUTIONS

FOR HIGH-SPEED RAILWAY SCENARIOS
XIANGQIAN ZHU, SHANZHI CHEN, HAIJING HU, AND XIN SU, CHINA ACADEMY OF
TELECOMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY AND DATANG TELECOM TECHNOLOGY & INDUSTRY GROUP
YAN SHI, BEIJING UNIVERSITY OF POSTS AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS

ABSTRACT to now, the mileage of high-speed railways

that have been put into operation in China is
Mobile communication solutions for high- about 9300 km, which ranks first in the world
speed railway scenarios aim at providing seam- (e.g., the Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Railway and
less coverage, high system capacity and a high the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway with a
data rate for end users, which in turn face the speed of 350 km/h, and the high-speed mag-
challenges of Doppler frequency shift, penetra- netic levitation railway in Shanghai with speeds
tion loss, mobility management and system up to 431 km/h).
capacity planning. Because the scarcity of fre- With the increase in scale and speed of high-
quency resources and increasing wireless broad- speed railways, many new research issues of
band requirements have become very serious mobile communication networking in such sce-
problems worldwide, increasing attention has narios emerge. How to provide seamless cover-
been focused on time-division duplexing based age, higher system capacity, and high data rates
technology, on which we focus in this article. for end users has become one of the major chal-
Time-division synchronous code-division multi- lenges in mobile communications.
ple access based and time-division Long Term
Evolution based solutions are introduced with FEATURES AND CHALLENGES
appropriate technology analysis. The experimen-
tal results of TD-SCDMA-based solutions in the Compared to ordinary low-speed scenarios,
Shanghai maglev high-speed network environ- mobile network coverage and networking in a
ment and the simulation results of TD-LTE- high-speed railway scenario have different char-
based solutions are presented. Finally, to acteristics [25], which are summarized below.
improve performance, we discuss an enhanced
solution based on mobile relays with perfor- DOPPLER FREQUENCY SHIFT
mance evaluation, which is considered as a more Doppler frequency shift (DFS) [2, 3] is caused
comprehensive solution for high-speed railway by the relative movement between the termi-
scenarios. nal (usually called user equipment [UE]) and
the base station (BS). This effect is particular-
INTRODUCTION ly evident in a high-speed scenario, which can
cause data symbol phase rotation and degrade
According to the definition provided by the the accuracy of data demodulation. The maxi-
International Union of Railways, high-speed mum DFS in the uplink will be twice f d after
railways refer to new lines designed for speeds the terminal locks onto the downlink signal
above 250 km/h and upgraded lines for speeds frequency, with the assumption that the maxi-
up to 200 km/h or even 220 km/h [1]. As a mum DFS in the downlink is f d . In the han-
safe, reliable, fast, comfortable, large-volume, dover process, there is also a DFS with a value
and low-carbon environmental protection of twice f d between the link signals of the
mode of transportation, the high-speed railway source and target cells, thus leading to degrad-
has become an important trend in railway ed performances.
development worldwide. Currently, Japan,
France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Hol- PENETRATION LOSS
land, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the Unit- A high-speed train (HST) usually has a fully
ed States, and Russia have put into operation enclosed body structure with good sealing prop-
high-speed railways with speeds above 200 erty. For the 2 GHz band, the high-speed train
km/h. In addition, Switzerland, Austria, Den- body, penetration loss [5] can be as high as 25
mark, Canada, Australia, South Korea, India, dB for UE inside a carriage, and even goes up to
and other countries are actively building or 35 dB in Shanghais high-speed magnetic levita-
planning high-speed railway construction. Up tion train. Typically, the terminals inside the

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train connect to the BSs along the railway tracks sight (LOS) situation. Along the maglev track, With the increase of
via wireless links, in which the large penetration there are about 17 NodeB sites about 40 m
loss will directly degrade the communication link high, and the distance between the site and the train speeds,
quality and decrease the cell coverage. maglev track is usually between 50 and 350 m.
Test UE devices with full commercial function-
handover will happen
MOBILITY MANAGEMENT ality were employed in the field trials. Round- more frequently, which
In a high-speed railway scenario, the link quality trip tests on various speeds (i.e., 200 km/h, 400
deteriorates due to Doppler frequency shift and km/h, and 431 km/h) were carried out in the will degrade
penetration loss, which will incur relatively limit- Shanghai maglev experiment, and the results handover performance.
ed cell coverage and longer duration of cell are presented below.
selection, reselection, paging, and handover pro- Also, the terminals in a
cedure. With the increase of train speeds, hand- NETWORKING SOLUTIONS
over will occur more frequently, which will Dedicated Network Coverage Technology Dedicated
high-speed train present
degrade handover performance. Also, the termi- network coverage technology needs to configure typical group mobility
nals in a high-speed train present typical group independent network resources, independent
mobility features. They present similar mobility neighbor cell relationships, and dedicated net- features. They present
behavior and perform mobility management work parameters for a high-speed railway sce- similar mobility behavior
operations [4, 5] in a concentrated period of nario, including:
time. Group mobility incurs burst occupancy of Configuration of special frequency resources and perform mobility
radio resources and degrades mobility perfor- to reduce the inter-frequency interference be-
mance. Enhancement to current mobility man- tween the dedicated and public networks, and
management operations
agement solutions is necessary to meet group to alleviate the decline in link perfor- mance in a concentrated
mobility requirements. brought about by penetration loss. In practice,
the frequency resources allocated to the period of time.
SYSTEM CAPACITY PLANNING indoor public network are configured to the
Along with the development of wireless commu- dedicated network, which reduces the interfer-
nication networks and mobile Internet, pro- ence between the dedicated and outdoor pub-
gressively more data services take place in indoor lic networks because the frequency resources
scenarios. The high speed railway scenario is a allocated to the indoor and outdoor public
special case of this and has indoor service fea- networks are usually different. Also, sharing
tures. However, communication link quality the frequency resources between the dedicat-
deterioration in a high speed railway scenario ed and public networks improves the overall
will result in the reduction of system capacity. system capacity.
System capacity planning and design needs to be Configuration of independent neighbor cell
carefully considered for meeting the require- relationships, in which only the entrance and
ments of UE services. exit cells of a dedicated network can be con-
In addition, as mentioned above, group figured with neighboring public network cells.
mobility may result in system overload in a short The entrance and exit cells of a dedicated net-
period of time, which raises greater challenges in work refer to the cells covering the high-speed
system capacity planning. railway stations.
The capacity of the network is not only relat- Dedicated network parameters, such as the
ed to the link quality, but also to the selected broadcast information, cell selection and rese-
radio transmission technology, such as lection parameters, handover parameters, and
GSM/time-division synchronous code-division so on.
multple access/Long Term Evolution [TD- Dedicated network coverage technology is
SCDMA/LTE]) and the system bandwidth. very suitable for a high-speed railway scenario,
and can generally reduce the complexity of net-
TD-SCDMA-BASED SOLUTIONS work planning, network optimization, and later
network expansion, lower the mobility manage-
TD-SCDMA-based solutions for high-speed ment difficulties, and be more conducive to
railway scenarios are typically based on a multi- ensuring the UEs link performance and service
cell combination technology illustrated later, performance in a high-speed railway scenario.
and the UE devices in a high-speed train car-
riage directly communicate with the macro BS, Multi-Cell Combination Technology To solve the
called NodeB or BS, alongside the railway problems of mobility management, multi-cell
track. The key technologies for a TD-SCDMA- combination technology is proposed.
based solution are introduced in this section. A conventional cell usually refers to a single
During 2008 and 2009, these key technologies sector, where the coverage is limited. Multi-cell
were put into field trials within the Shanghai combination technology generally adopts a single
maglev high-speed network environment with baseband unit (BBU) and multiple remote radio
maximum train speeds up to 431 km/h. The resource units (RRUs) covering a cell [6] to
length of the Shanghai maglev railway is about form one logical cell (like the cell array men-
30 km. The maglev train travels at a speed in tioned in [7]) and extend single-cell coverage. As
excess of 200 km/h for 80 percent of the route. shown in Fig. 1, three RRUs cover a cell, and
Speeds exceeding 400 km/h or even up to 431 each RRU covers the two directions of the site,
km/h have been tested for about 1/3 of the so the number of handovers and cell reselections
route. The railway track was built 1213 m as well as the failure rates of handovers and cell
above from the ground. There are no buildings reselections can be dramatically reduced.
or trees within 2030 m from the track. The Taking the circuit switching (CS) 12.2 kb/s
propagation environment is a typical line of service, for example, and assuming that:

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To improve the physical Equivalent BS spacing

link quality in a high-
Cell no. 1 Cell no. 2
speed railway scenario,
RRU RRU RRU RRU RRU RRU RRU RRU RRU RRU RRU RRU
the uplink and downlink
macro-diversity tech- Fiber Fiber Fiber Fiber
nique, Doppler fequency BBU BBU
Handover overlap
shift correction, and pre- Single cell
coverage radius
area length
Doppler frequency shift
correction are proposed Figure 1. Multi-cell combination.

for a TD-SCDMA-based
high-speed railway solu- Configuration Multi-cell combination, with Single-cell, multi-antenna
directional dual polarized beamforming (8 antennas, 15
tion. Coverage (km) antenna (2 antennas, 19.5 dBi) dBi)

Single-cell coverage radius 1.39 1.5

Equivalent BS spacing 7.44 (= 6 * 1.39-0.9) 2.1 (= 2 * 1.5-0.9)

Table 1. Cell coverage radius and equivalent BS spacing for a multi-cell combination and single-cell cover-
age mode (430 km/h).

Three RRUs cover a cell and each RRU cov- quency shift correction (pre-DFSC) are pro-
ers both directions of the site as illustrated in posed for a TD-SCDMA-based high-speed rail-
Fig. 1; hence, the handover overlap area is way solution.
only needed at the border of the two com- According to the actual evaluation and exper-
bined cells named cells nos. 1 and 2. iment, it is more effective to improve the physi-
The train travels at 430 km/h, and the maxi- cal link quality and network performance when a
mum required handover overlap area length is combination of these techniques is used.
then approximately 0.9 km, so one handover
procedure can be completed within a hand - Uplink and Downlink Macro-Diversity Technology A
over overlap area. multi-cell combination technique presents better
The cell coverage radius and equivalent BS conditions for adopting the macro-diversity tech-
spacing are then calculated as shown in Table 1. nique in a single logical cell, and can improve
The equivalent BS spacing means the equivalent link demodulation performance and reduce
distance between two logical cells formed by a unnecessary interference in the system using
combination of multiple cells. The larger the uplink macro-diversity reception (e.g., adaptive
equivalent BS spacing, the less the BS BBUs are reception diversity) and downlink macro-diversi-
needed for continuous network coverage. ty transmission (e.g., adaptive selective transmit
According to Table 1, the equivalent BS spac- and delay diversities).
ing after multi-cell combination is more than The Doppler frequency shift of the transmit-
three times the single-cell case, from 2.1 to 7.44. ting or reception signals from different RRUs
With the expansion of the cell coverage differ, and the uplink and downlink macro-diver-
area, the cell reselection and handover over- sity technique performance is then limited before
lap area can be expanded, and the success the DFSC is introduced.
rate of terminal cell reselection, handover,
and paging can be improved, and can reduce Doppler Frequency Shift Correction Technology To
the terminal call dropout rate. At the same minimize the Doppler effect and guarantee the
time, the cost of network construction and data demodulation performance, Doppler fre-
operation can also be greatly reduced with quency shift or offset estimation for the mea-
less BBU deployment. surement of frequency deviation and phase
It should be noted that when the BS BBU deviation is adopted, and the demodulation deci-
processing ability and network frequency sion is then executed after phase calibration,
resources are limited, the bigger the single logi- which can eventually improve the demodulation
cal cell capacity demand, the smaller the maxi- performance. At present, there is much research
mum number of RRUs that can be combined. on Doppler frequency offset estimation and
DFSC [812]. As for a TD-SCDMA system, the
PHYSICAL LINK DFSC is mainly based on the combination of
midamble code channel estimation and the sym-
QUALITY IMPROVEMENT SOLUTIONS bol hard decision method.
To improve the physical link quality in a high In the case of TD-SCDMA, according to veri-
speed railway scenario, the uplink and downlink fication in the Shanghai maglev high-speed net-
macro-diversity technique, Doppler frequency work environment, the link signal-to-interference
shift correction (DFSC), and pre-Doppler fre- ratio (SIR) obtains a 12 dB enhancement and

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the link block error ratio (BLER) is reduced by

10 percent. Parameter Assumption
According to the principle of power control,
the reduction in BLER will directly reduce the Single cell and single UE with con-
transmission power of a UE device, and subse- stant Doppler frequency shift
Cell topology
quently reduce the power consumption. (determined by the train speed
listed below)
Pre-DFSC Technology For a single cell, a NodeB
uses a certain frequency to transmit or receive Rural macro model with line of
Channel model
signals, and a UE device automatically adjusts its sight (RMA_LOS) (ITU M.2135 )
oscillator to trace the signal frequency vibration
using automatic frequency control (AFC). As Single antenna, uniform linear
Antenna configuration (UE)
mentioned above, in the handover process, twice array (ULA)
the DFS exists between the link signals of the
source and target cells. At this point, UE AFC 8 antennas, ULA, antenna spacing
Antenna configuration (eNodeB)
takes a long period of time to enter into a stable is l/2, where l is the wavelength
state, which will lead to link performance deteri-
oration and handover failure. Bandwidth 20 MHz
To solve this problem, we can increase the
two BS transmission delays and adopt the trans- Number of physical radio blocks (PRBs) 25
mit diversity method. Preferably, we can adopt
pre-DFSC to reduce or eliminate the frequency
Train speed (UE speed) 450 km/h
shifts of each link to improve the link perfor-
mance. The basic principle of pre-DFSC is that
Modulation and coding scheme (MCS) MCS 28
NodeB adjusts the downlink transmission fre-
quency using the Doppler frequency shift esti-
mated from the uplink, which can eliminate a Adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) OFF
part of downlink DFS in advance. Then the car-
rier frequency of the reception signal of a UE Allowed maximum number of hybrid
device can gradually stabilize at the NodeB car- automatic repeat request (HARQ) 3
rier frequency (ideal condition). retransmissions
In the case of TD-SCDMA, according to veri-
fication in the Shanghai maglev high-speed net- Table 2. TD-LTE link-level simulation assumptions with/without DFSC.
work environment, the Pre-DFSC technique can
dramatically improve the handover success rate
from 61 to 100 percent (based on limited field
trial results) for the CS 12.2 kb/s service. Backhaul link

MOBILITY MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS Mobile relay eNB1 eNB2

Network Parameter Optimization Technology In a

high-speed railway environment, there is a need
to accelerate cell selection, reselection, and
handover to select, reselect, or hand over to the
proper cell in the shortest possible time and Mobile relay
hence to improve the mobility performance. Access link
UE1 UE2
Available methods include:
Simplify the broadcast channel content, such
as reducing neighbor cell information in the
broadcast channel, and hence shorten the Figure 2. Deployment of mobile relay on a train.
period of reading the broadcast channel.
Adjust the thresholds of inter-frequency and
intra-frequency measurements so that a UE the call drop rate and call QoS should be con-
device can start measurement as soon as pos- sidered.
sible. We verified the cell selection duration in the
Adjust the parameters of cell reselection and Shanghai maglev high-speed scenario, with 12
handover, such as the cell reselection and neighbor cells and 2 neighbor cells information
handover hysteresis thresholds, to reduce the in the broadcast channels configured. As a result,
cell reselection and handover time delay. the average duration of cell selection is 1.452 s
Reduce the call dropout rate by optimizing when 12 neighbor cells are configured and 0.988
radio link monitoring and link synchronization s when 2 neighbor cells are configured. The cell
parameters (e.g., the consecutive out of syn- selection duration is shortened because less
chronization indication N_OUTSYNC_IND neighbor cell information is configured.
can be modified to a higher value), which can We also optimized the handover parameters
improve the tolerance of out of synchroniza- time to trigger and hysteresis. The experimental
tion and reduce the call drop rate. However, if results show that when we properly reduce time
N_OUTSYNC_IND is modified to too high a to trigger and hysteresis from 1.28 to 0.32 s/1 dB
value, the link quality may suffer for a longer separately, the handover duration can be short-
time because of deteriorated transmission ened from 1.26 to 0.93 s, the broadcast channel
conditions, which may degrade the quality of received signal code power (RSCP) can be
service (QoS). Hence, the balance between improved by 2 dB, the dedicated channel (DCH)

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SIR can be improved from 8.1 to 9.2 dB, and the directional handover (FDH) method is adopted
link BLER can be reduced from 17.3 to 1.2 per- according to the feature that a UE device moves
cent. sequentially across the cells one by one in a
However, ping-pong handover may occur high-speed railway scenario.
when time to trigger and hysteresis are config-
ured with too small values. In a high-speed rail- Fast Directional Handover Technology In a high-
way scenario, once ping-pong handover happens speed railway scenario, the moving route of a
the call may be dropped easily, thus degrading UE device is usually fixed, and the target hand-
the service quality. To solve the high-speed envi- over cell is simply the next cell the UE is
ronment ping-pong handover problem, the fast approaching. FDH here is a handover method to
generate a one-way target handover cell rela-
tionship list for each UE device based on the
Bandwidth 10 MHz devices moving direction and the current serving
cell information to avoid unnecessary ping-pong
Carrier frequency 2.0G Hz handover. For example, when a UE device is
moving from cell A to cell B and then cell C in
Cell layout Refer to Fig. 2 high-speed areas, a handover from cell B to cell
C has been completed, the handover back from
Inter-site distance 1000/1500 m (Table 4) C to B will not be carried out unless the UEs
moving speed is below a certain threshold. At
eNB-railway distance 50/100 m (Table 4) the same time, the handover parameters men-
tioned above can also be optimized to shorten
eNB: 4Tx, cross-polarized 45, antenna spacing is
the handover duration.
Antenna l/2 where l is the wavelength In the Shanghai maglev high-speed scenario,
configuration Relay: 4Tx, 4Rx, cross-polarized 45, l/2 the handover performance with or without FDH
UE: 2Rx, ULA, l/2 was verified, and the handover performance can
be improved with the FDH technique; for exam-
ple, the handover delay changes from 1.16 to
Relay height 5m
1.03 s, the dedicated physical channel (DPCH)
SIR changes from 9.2 to 10 dB, and the BLER
Number of UE
120 changes from 8.7 to 3.2 percent.
devices
The FDH technique can be used more flexi-
bly, such as setting only the cells deployed in the
Vehicle width 3m
high-speed zones of the railway with a one-way
handover relationship, while a bidirectional han-
Vehicle speed 350 km/h
dover relationship can still be set for the cells in
low-speed zones ( such as near a railway station
Relay: 5 dB or the UEs moving speed is below a certain
Noise figure
UE: 9 dB
threshold).

Shadowing standard
Backhaul: 6 dB(LOS)
Access: 3 dB(LOS), 4 dB(Non-LOS)
TD-LTE-BASED SOLUTIONS
deviation eNB -> UE: 8 dB Without changing the TD-LTE network archi-
referred to 3GPP 36.814 Table A.2.1.1.2-3 tecture and without introducing new network
nodes, the TD-LTE-based solution is still based
Backhaul: RMA, LOS on a multi-cell combination macrocellular cover-
Fast fading
Access: indoor/hotspot (InH), LOS/non-LOS age scheme, which faces the same problems and
challenges as those of a TD-SCDMA-based solu-
Relay -> UE: reference to 3GPP 36.814 TableB.1.2.1-1 tion.
eNB -> UE: Pl(d) = Pl1(d) + 0.5 * dim, where Pl1(d) is Compared to the TD-SCDMA system, the
Path loss computed according to RMA mode (R1-111937) TD-LTE system has the following characteristics
eNB -> Relay: reference to 3GPP 36.814 Table [13, 14]:
B.1.2.1-1 Larger network bearing bandwidth can provide
a higher data rate, and the problem of system
Penetration loss 20 dB capacity is solved to some extent.
The TD-LTE system is based on orthogonal
Backhaul: beamforming based on direction of arrival frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) tech-
Transmission nology and is more sensitive to large Doppler
(DoA)
schemes frequency shifts, and TD-LTE pilot symbols
Access: spatial-division multiplexing
are used to carry out Doppler frequency offset
Feedback period 5 ms estimation and phase calibration.
The TD-LTE system pilot symbols in the time
Scheduler Proportional Fair (PF), Max 20 PRB per UE domain are of higher density, and can support
more accurate channel estimation and further
Vehicle length 25 m improve the link performance of a high-speed
railway scenario.
Maximum power at Here, we focus on providing the link-level
10 dB performance simulation of the TD-LTE physical
the relay
uplink shared channel (PUSCH) with DFSC.
Table 3. System-level simulation assumptions (3GPP TR36.814). The simulation assumptions are described in

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Case no. L D SF of 5% cell edge UE Average SF of access link Average SF of backhaul link

1 50 m 1000 m 0.0161 b/s/Hz/UE 2.3283 b/s/Hz /

2 50 m 1500 m 0.0141 b/s/Hz/UE 2.1333 b/s/Hz /

3 100 m 1000 m 0.0162 b/s/Hz/UE 2.3513 b/s/Hz /

4 100 m 1500 m 0.0156 b/s/Hz/UE 2.2109 b/s/Hz /

5 50 m 1000 m 0.0249 b/s/Hz/UE 3.0843 b/s/Hz 3.1181 b/s/Hz

6 50 m 1500 m 0.0250 b/s/Hz/UE 3.0863 b/s/Hz 3.0875 b/s/Hz

7 100 m 1000 m 0.0240 b/s/Hz/UE 3.0220 b/s/Hz 3.1015 b/s/Hz

8 100 m 1500 m 0.0239 b/s/Hz/UE 3.0195 b/s/Hz 3.0709 b/s/Hz

Table 4. System-level simulation results.

Table 2, where the rural macro channel model mobility problem still exists. The following solu-
with LOS has been chosen as the typical channel tion based on mobile relay is a comprehensive
model usually adopted as the simulation assump- solution to the above problems.
tion in the standardization process.
The simulation results show that the data
rate of PUSCH using DFSC technology can AN ENHANCED SOLUTION BASED ON
reach 80 percent of the peak data rate when MOBILE RELAY
moving at a velocity of 450 km/h, but can only
reach 16 percent without DFSC, and the effect MOBILE RELAY SOLUTION
is obvious.
The other key techniques of TD-SCDMA- Mobile relays (relays) are BSs/access points that
based high-speed solutions, such as dedicated are normally mounted on high-speed trains.
network coverage technique, multi-cell combi- They connect wirelessly to a donor eNodeB
nation, network parameter optimization, and (DeNB) and provide wireless connectivity ser-
fast directional handover, are also applicable to vice to UE devices inside trains, as illustrated in
a TD-LTE-based high-speed solution and can Fig. 2.
meet the requirements with proper adjustment The following benefits can be achieved with
according to the detailed TD-LTE system relays:
design. Network signaling overhead can be greatly
reduced where excessive handover signaling is
DISCUSSION OF REMAINING ISSUES avoided by performing a group mobility proce-
dure instead of individual mobility procedures
On the whole, the existing TD-SCDMA- and for each UE device. As only a few relay nodes
TD-LTE-based high-speed railway coverage are scheduled directly by the evolved NodeB
solutions can partly solve the mobility manage- (eNB), much less L1/L2 control signaling over-
ment, penetration loss, and Doppler frequency head is required over the backhaul link.
shift problem, and can ensure UEs service Separate antennas for communication on
requirements, but there are still some shortcom- backhaul and access link can be used to elimi-
ings, including: nate the penetration loss through the vehicle.
Penetration loss: Based on a multi-cell combi- It is possible to save operators costs by sup-
nation macro cellular coverage scheme, the porting multiple radio access technologies in
penetration loss problem is only partly allevi- the relays, which means using LTE on the
ated through the uplink and downlink macro- backhaul link and providing different air inter-
diversity technology. face technologies (e.g., LTE/3G/2G/Wi-Fi) on
Doppler frequency shift: It can be well solved the access link.
by introducing DFSC and pre-DFSC. Howev- Scheduling and adaptive techniques can be
er, to ensure the performance of downlink exploited to provide perfect coverage for users
phase calibration, UE should also support inside the carriages of the HST. With UE con-
high-speed frequency shift estimation and nected to a nearby relay on a board, the
phase calibration, which increases the imple- required transmit power of the UE is much
mentation cost of a terminal. less, leading to significant UE power saving
Group mobility: Problems exist in a high- and increased UE battery life.
speed railway scenario, and there is a need to Because of the demodulation and decoding at
consider the introduction of optimization the relay, noise and interference are sup-
solutions to reduce unnecessary signaling pressed at the relay using the decode-and-for-
overheads and system loads. ward (DF) scheme.
Using the repeater scheme [15] can solve the The Doppler frequency shift in the HST sce-
problem of penetration loss, but the group nario can also be mitigated by the relay.

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Challenges Corresponding solutions Main benefits

Doppler frequency shift Minimize the Doppler Effect and improve the data demodulation performance
correction and link throughput
Doppler frequency
shift
Eliminate a part of downlink DFS in advance and improve the link performance
Pre-DFSC technology
and handover success rate

Uplink and downlink Partly alleviate the penetration loss problem and improve link demodulation per-
macro-diversity formance, reduce unnecessary interference
Penetration loss
Eliminate the penetration loss with separate antennas and improve system spec-
Mobile relay solution
tral efficiency

Reduce the complexity of network planning and optimization, lower the mobility
Dedicated network
management difficulties, and be more conducive to ensuring the UEs link perfor-
coverage
mance and service performance in a high speed railway scenario

Improve the success rate of terminal cell reselection, handover and paging, and
Mobility Multi-cell combination can reduce the terminal call dropout rate and the cost of network construction
management and operation

Network parameter Accelerate cell selection, reselection and handover, and improve the success rate
optimization and link quality

Fast directional handover Reduce the handover delay and improve link performance

Dedicated network Sharing the frequency resources between the dedicated and public networks also
coverage improves the overall system capacity

System capacity Larger network bearing bandwidth can provide a higher data rate and the prob-
LTE-based solution
planning lem of system capacity is solved to some extent

Greatly reduce network signalling overhead and solve the problem of group
Mobile relay solution
mobility

Table 5. Summary of challenges and solutions.

Therefore, the relay can take advantage of ly, while in other cases UE devices communi-
the better channel qualities at both access and cate with the eNB using the assistance of the
backhaul links to improve the signal-to-interfer- mobile relay.
ence-plus-noise rate (SINR) for HST users and In cases 14, it is shown that cases 2 and 3
guarantee total performance. have the worst and best performance, respective-
ly, as a result of the sector beamforming. As L
PERFORMANCE EVALUATION grows, the area under the beamforming gain
To show the advantages of the mobile relay, a grows. The simulations of the backhaul link did
system-level simulator was programmed in C not consider the interference from the access
language. In this section, the system-level simu- link, so the impacts of D and L on the access
lation results are provided. Throughout the and backhaul links differ. The comparison
simulation, it was assumed that UE devices between cases 14 and cases 58 is most note-
dropped out uniformly within the carriage, and worthy. With the mobile relay technology, the
were served by a mobile relay mounted on the system throughput is significantly improved by
ceiling. The mobile relay node on the roof of a about 3040 percent.
high-speed train is covered by a series of In addition, we compared the control signal-
DeNBs deployed along the railway. The leak- ing overhead (CSO) between the relay and the
ages of the backhaul signal will interfere with L1 repeater. The CSO particularly refers to the
the reception of UE devices inside a carriage. consumption of the resource elements (REs) in
However, the penetration loss of approximately the physical layer channel. Such comparison is
20 dB isolates the access and backhaul links. made in a typical scenario with a normal cyclic
The detailed simulation assumptions are listed prefix (CP), where one eNB transmits signals to
in Table 3. N UE devices via a relay or a repeater. Every
The simulation results of the access link are subframe contains the required information for
shown in Table 4, where D denotes the dis- all UE. The compared results demonstrate that
tance between eNBs, and L denotes the dis- the relay mode requires 1/N of the physical layer
tance between an eNB and the railway. resources used by the repeater mode.
Performance inspection is mainly from the Considering the characteristics of the high-
view of spectral efficiency (SF). In cases 14, speed railway scenario, the mobile relay can be
UE devices communicate with the eNB direct- optimized based on the existing framework in

28 IEEE Wireless Communications December 2013

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the LTE standardization process of the physical [9] M. Luise and R. Reggiannini, Carrier Frequency Recov-
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Considering the charac-
layer. More gain could be obtained by designing
new reference signal patterns and multiple-input
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[10] U. Mengali and M. Morelli, Data-aided Frequency
teristics of the high-
multiple-output (MIMO) transmission schemes
in future work.
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[11] P. Bertrand, Frequency Offset Estimation in 3G LTE,
IEEE VTC 2010-Spring, 2010.
the mobile relay can be
SUMMARY [12] L. H. Yang, G. Ren, and Z. Qiu, A Novel Doppler Fre-
optimized based on the
quency Offset Estimation Method for DVB-T System in
For clearer presentation, the challenges, corre- HST Environment, IEEE Trans. Broadcast., vol. 58, no.
1, Mar. 2012.
existing framework in
sponding solutions, and main benefits for high-
speed railway scenarios discussed in this article
[13] Y. M. Wang and S. H. Sun, TD-LTE Principles and Sys-
tem Design, Posts and Telecom Press, Jun. 2010.
the LTE standardization
are summarized in Table 5. [14] S. Z. Chen et al., Technical Innovations Promoting
Standard Evolution: From TD-SCDMA to TD-LTE and
process of the physical
CONCLUSION Beyond, IEEE Wireless Commun., vol. 19, no. 2, Feb.
2012, pp. 6066.
layer. More gain could
In this article we introduce the TD-SCDMA-
[15] L. F. Zeng and H. B. Li, Study on a Scheme for In-
Train Repeaters in High-Speed Trains, Study on Optical
be obtained by design-
and TD-LTE-system-based mobile communica- Commun., Jan. 2012.
ing new reference signal
tion solutions for a high-speed railway scenario.
The technical analysis, performance evaluation, BIOGRAPHIES patterns and multiple-
X IANGQIAN Z HU ([email protected]) received his B.S.
and verification are presented. Moreover, a
mobile-relay-based solution is discussed with the
degree from Xidian University, Xian, China, in 2003, and input multiple-output
his M.S. degree from Beijing University of Posts and
evaluation of spectral efficiency and control sig- Telecommunications (BUPT), China, in 2006. From 2006 to (MIMO) transmission
naling overhead. It is reflected from the simula- 2010, he worked in the System Standard Department of
tion and analysis that the capability of the mobile Datang Mobile, CATT, Beijing. In 2011, he joined the State schemes in future work.
Key Laboratory of Wireless Mobile Communications (CATT).
relay to ensure the transmission quality and cov- His current research interests include TD-SCDMA/TD-LTE
erage in a high-speed railway scenario makes it a networks and terminal solutions.
promising technique.
SHANZHI CHEN [SM04] ([email protected]) received
ACKNOWLEDGMENT his Ph.D. degree from BUPT in 1997. He joined the Datang
Telecom Technology & Industry Group in 1994, and has
This work was supported in part by the Major served as CTO since 2008. He was a member of the steer-
National Science and Technology Special Project ing expert group on information technology of the 863
Program of China from1999 to 2011. He is vice director of
(No. 2013ZX03001025-001 and No. 2011ZX03005- CATT and a board member of the Semiconductor Manufac-
004-02). turing International Corporation (SMIC). He has made great
contributions to TD-SCDMA 3G industrialization and TD-
LTE-advanced 4G standardization. He received the State
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