LTE Layer 1 (Physical Layer) Interview Questions

1. What is the smallest time measurement unit Ts in LTE? Show the calculation. How many Ts
are there in 1 subframe?
Ts = 1/(15000 X 2048) sec = 32 ns (approx.)

2. In normal cyclic prefix, what is the length of the 0th and 1st symbol CP in Terms of Ts? How
is the length of total time if all 7 CPs are added together in a time slot in terms of Ts and
seconds?
Cp (short) = 144 x Ts and Cp (long) = 512 x Ts
The first symbol of each time-slot has a slightly longer Cp of 160 x Ts

So, slot duration = (160 X Ts + 1/15000) + 6 X [(144 X Ts) + 1/15000]

1st Symbol duration Other symbols duration

= 0.5ms

3. In extended CP. How many resource elements are there in a Resource Block?
Normal CP = 84 RE
Extended CP = 72 RE

4. In DL, how many RS symbols are there in a normal RB in case of 2×2 MIMO?
4

5. What is the difference between OFDMA and SC-FDMA? Why OFDMA is not used in both the
directions?

6. What are the 3 parameters, based on which scrambling code is generated?

7. Cell ID, Reference Signal and ?

8. How many Maximum bits are there for PUCCH of format 1/1a/1b and 2/2a/2b each and they
are spread in how many symbols?
 9. In a group hopping, how many hopping patterns are there and how many sequence shift-
patterns?

There are two different types of hopping and the Hopping Bit field (NUL-hop) in DCI 0 specify which
hopping type should be applied. The mapping between Hopping Bit Value and Hopping Type is as
follows.

System BW Hopping Bit Field Hopping Type

0 Type 1
1.4, 3, 5
1 Type 2
0 Type 1
1 Type 1
10, 15, 20
2 Type 1
3 Type 2

Type 1 : Frequency offset between the first slot and the second slot is explicitely determined by DCI
0.
Type 2 : Frequency offset between the first slot and the second slot is configured by a predefined
pattern. When there is multiple subbands, hopping is done from one subband to another subband.

10. How many PUSCH DMRS RE’s are there in a RB in a subframe?

On the PUSCH, the UE puts the DMRS in the 4th OFDM symbol of each slot for Normal Cyclic
Prefix, and in the 3rd OFDM symbol for Extended Cyclic Prefix. There are 2 slots per
subframe. The DMRS spans all the resource blocks of the uplink grant in frequency.

As to why we do something different on UL vs DL, the eNB is transmitting RS on the

downlink all the time which allow UE to be able to make a wideband assessment of the
channel quality and feed that back to the scheduler.

On the uplink, however, the eNB cannot assess the UE-eNB channel unless the UE actually
transmits on those frequencies. (I'm assuming FDD here), Therefore the Sounding Reference
 Signal is used to allow the UE to transmit across a wide band, (whether in one transmission,
or over time), to measure the channel at frequencies it is not currently using for data.

11. How many DMRS are there in a RB in a PUCCH of type 1/1a/1b and of type 2/2a/2b?
12. Which symbol locations are occupied for DMRS in a PUCCH of type 1 and type 2? (Start
counting from 0).
13. Which Channels/Signals are relevant only in Physical layer and they are not needed and not
mapped in Transport or Logical Channels. List them for DL and UL separately.
14. What is a preamble format? How many types are there? Explain when which type of format
is suitable?
15. What is the length of preamble sequence in bits and how many RB’s are required to send?
16. Preamble sequence is of 6 Bits which makes total preamble 2^6=64. 6 RBs are required to
send it.
17. What is the smallest and largest RB size in LTE and how much Mhz bandwidth does that
correspond to?
18. What is REG?
19. What is CCE? How many CCE’s are required to carry PDCCH? Explain different
configurations.
20. What are Cyclic delay diversity (CDD) and spatial diversity and difference between them?
21. What is CSI and what are the values transmitted as CSI?
22. CSI stands for Channel State Information. It is sent in uplink by UE to eNodeB. The CSI
parameters are Rank Indicator (RI), Channel Quality Indicator (CQI) and Precoding Matrix
Indicator (PMI)
23. What is UE specific reference signal and when/how is it used?
24. What is SRS and where is it physically mapped? Explain.
25. What is DCI? What is sent in DCI format 0?
26. What is CFICH and where is it mapped? How many symbols and REGs does it occupy?
27. What is PHICH and how many REGs does one PHICH occupy and where in the DL Physical
Resource?
28. How many mobiles PHICH can be sent in the same symbol and how are they multiplexed?
29. How many types of Ref Signals are transmitted in DL? Mention and explain.
30. How many types of Ref Signals are transmitted in UL? Mention and explain.
31. How is PHICH and CFICH allocated in different cells so that they avoid interference. Show it
pictorially to explain.
32. In case of 4×4 MIMO, how many reference signals are there in an RB? What is the %tage
occupied by Ref signals in this case?
33. What is MBSFN and MBSFN region?
34. What is PSS and SSS? What information is derived out of these signals? Where are they
mapped in Physical resources?
35. Where is PBCH mapped? How many RB’s do they occupy?
36. What si the minimum bandwidth required for LTE system and why?
37. Which are the Physical channels UCI and DCI are sent?
38. What is the valid CRC length in bits?
39. For a buffer of length 6140 from MAC (TTI), what is the number of segments? Why?
40. Describe briefly how, where and how many padding “0” bits are inserted in code
segmentation.
41. Which channel case Turbo coding is used? And which channel case Bit Repetition Coding is
used?
42. What is the smallest and biggest segment size for Encoding?
43. For Turbo Encoder – If block size is 80, what is the number of output bits?
44. For Convolutional Encoder- If block size is 80, what is the number of output bits?
45. What is Trellis Termination for Turbo Encoder? How many bits are additional terminated
with and with which streams?
46. Total Number of bits G and mapped onto G’=G/(L*M) symbols. What is L and M?
47. For Turbo coding rate matching, data block is to be spread in how many columns?
48. What is the control information multiplexed with data of PUSCH? And what are the control
information interleaved together with PUSCH?
49. How many Symbols are used for PUSCH in a SRS subframe per subcarrier, including
multiplexed CQI.
50. What is the control information encoded in UCI (PUCCH)?
51. Can control information be sent on PUSCH without UL-SCH data?
52. What is the CRC length, total number of segments, Encoder type and Modulation for PBCH?
53. For DL-SCH, PMCH and PCCH, what is CRC length, number of segments, Encoder type and
modulation?
54. What is the CRC length for CFICH and HICH respectively? What kind of encoder is used for
them?
55. What is Q(in) and Q(out) in Radio Link Monitoring process? Explain each in 1 sentence.
56. For RAR, how many bits is TA? If the TA is 25 in the RAR, what is the TA adjustment required
in microseconds?
57. How many bits is TA adjustment for non-RAR. If the TA value is 25(decimal), how much milli/
microsecond timing is to be adjusted? Is the timing to be increased or decreased?
58. Normally, when should the TA adjustment should take place, if you receive it in subframe x?
59. If you receive a Scell Activation or De-activation in subframe x, when should that be
effective?
60. What is EPRE? In EPRE calculation what is the relationship with Cyclic Prefix?
61. What are the main factors in calculation of Power for PUSCH? List them.
62. What is TPC and TPC accumulation? What is the max accumulation(dbm) value in both +ve
and -ve direction?
63. Range of TPC can be from
64. What is power headroom and Power scaling factor?
65. Cell Parameter P(B) is denoted by ρ(B)/ρ(A). What are these 3 parameters w.r.t. symbol
EPRE? What is the maximum?
66. List the parameters UE must have before Random Access?
67. What are the factors which determine the initial RA power?
68. After getting RAR, What do you send to eNB and after how long delay?
69. If you do not receive RAR within RAR window, after/before what delay would you
retransmit?
70. What is the significance of “UL delay” and “hopping flag” in RAR?
71. What is the max number of DL HARQ processes for FDD and TDD in UL/DL both?
72. What is Transmit Diversity and Cyclic Diversity? Explain each in a sentence.
73. Explain difference between Resource allocation type 0 and 1?
74. What is RBG(Resource Block Group) and size of each RBG?
75. What are the parameters defining the TBS size?
76. What is the minimum (with minimum modulation) and Maximum(with maximum
modulation) TBS (Transport Block Size) for one layer.
77. If for single layer TBS size is “X”, will the TBS size be n.X for n layers? Why?
 78. What is RV (redundancy version)?
79. What is CSI elements? What is Periodic and Aperiodic CSI? In which case PUCCH and PUSCH
is used?
80. What is TTI Bundling? Max how many MACs can be configured for this?
81. What are PMI and RI?
82. For every subframe of PUSCH/PDSCH, when/how is the (N)AKnowledhement sent?
83. What is RNTI? List the types of RNTI (with their default values, if any).
84. What is Sounding Procedure? Explain briefly. What are parameters defining SRS?
85. What is the difference between type 1 and type 2 hopping?
86. What is difference between intra-subframe and inter-subframe?
87. What is the difference between BPSK, QPSK,16QAM and 64QAM. Describe briefly.
88. Ans= All these are digital Modulations BPSK can carry one bit per symbol
89. OPSK can carry two bits per symbol, 16 QAM four bits per symbol and 64 QAM carry 6 bits
per symbol.
90. What are the 4 configurations of CCE? How will you find number of PDCCH accomodatable in
a subframe?
91. What is Common and UE-Specific Search Space?
92. How is PHICH assigned on the control region?
93. How is CFICH assigned in the control region?
94. Where are DMRS mapped on the PUSCH RB in a subframe?
95. What is cyclic shift and how is it used for PHICH or other control information among UE’s?
96. What is the spreading factor used for PHICH after repeat encoding and what is the total
symbols occupied?
97. What is semi-persistent scheduling? How is it utilised w.r.t. Scheduling Requests?
98. How many bits are used to send SR in PUCCH? How is SR sent and multiplexed with other
control information?
99. How many users PDCCH can be multiplexed for format 1 and format 2 respectively on the
same physical resource?
100. In rel-10 how many antenna max assumed for UE and eNB?
101. How many types of reference signals are there in Downlink? List them.
102. In case of 4 antennas with 4x4MIMO, maximum how many codewords and layers can be
configured?
103. How do you get the Physical Cell ID from eNB even without reading BCH?
104. Explain why a mobile with speed more than 500Km/Hour will fail to remain connected with
LTE? What is the limit?