Multiple Access Schemes

Joko Suryana
Teknik Telekomunikasi
STEI-ITB

Joko Suryana 1
Outline
• Access schemes in satellite networks
• FDMA implementation
• FDMA properties
• Examples

Page 2
Satellite access
• Two types of access
• Access to transponders (FDMA and polarization)
• Multiuser access to bandwidth of a transponder
• Transponders
• large bandwidth (36, 54 or 72MHz)
• Shared between multiple users using FDMA, TDMA or
CDMA access schemes
• Two types of bandwidth assignment
• Pre-assigned (fixed)
• Assignment on demand

Page 3
Multiplexing vs. Multiple Access
• Multiplexing (Mux) • Multiple Access (MA)
• Common in all long distance communication • Methodology for sharing same
• Aggregation of signals from multiple users communication resource between
multiple users
• Performed on the ground (earth station)
• Implemented at the transponder
• Multiplexed signals are modulated on a
single RF carrier • Satellite systems use combinations of
• Most common: Time Division Multiplexing Mux/MA
(TDM) • TDM-FDMA
• Inverse process: de-multiplexing • TDM-SCPC-FDMA, etc.

Data rates for TDM Mux Standards

Page 4
Example: T1-hierarchy

• Multiplexing on T-1 may be

• Channelized (respects the Mux structure)
• Non channelized (uses proprietary Mux schemes
within T-1 multiplex)
Page 5
Fundamental principles of access schemes
• Three principle transponder access schemes
• Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA)
• Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA)
• Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA)

CDMA principle (separation

in code domain)

TDMA principle
FDMA principle (separation in time domain)
(separation in frequency domain)

Note: it is possible to have

combination between
different access schemes
Page 6
FDMA - implementation
• Historically the first deployed scheme
• Still dominant way of MA
• Signals from earth stations may be either
analog or digital
• Access to transponder bandwidth may be
either channelized or non channelized
• Transmission from earth stations does not
have to be synchronized
• Frequency guard bands are necessary to
prevent signal interference
Note 1: Earth stations may have portions of
spectra that are different in size
Note 2: The received power from different
stations may be different
Note 3. The received powers may change over
time due to rain attenuation
Page 7
FDMA – two approaches
• One carrier per link
• Each ES demodulates only relevant traffic
• Single connection per carrier (SCPC)
• Each ES demodulates all traffic and keeps the relevant one
• SCPC is more efficient (less guard bands, less traffic segmentation, …) – more common in
today’s deployments

One carrier per link example Single connection per carrier

Page 8
FDMA – SCPC example
• A tree station FDMA access

Block diagram of Earth station A

Signals received at the satellite

Note 1: Only portion of demodulated

channels are directed to A. Channels for
C and B are still demodulated by the
receiver, but are discarded.

Assembling the signals at the base

band Page 9
FDMA – Adjacent channel
interference
• Adjacent channel interference – limits on how tight
are the signals sharing a transponder
• To combat ACI – use guard bands
• Function modulation scheme and pulse shape
• Critical in cases when the signal experiences rain fade

Power spectral density of digitally

modulated signal
1
S x  f   S a  f G  f 
2

T
G f  Fourier transform of
pulse shape

Fourier transform of
Sa  f  symbol autocorrelation
function
Page 10
IM example
Consider a case of 36MHz bandwidth transponder operating
between 3705-3741MHz. The transponder caries two un-
modulated carriers at 3718 and 3728MHz. Assuming that
the PA characteristic may be modeled using cubic terms,
determine the frequencies of “in-band” IM products.
A: f31 = 3708MHz
f32 = 3718MHz

Page 11
FDMA – IM products
• Transponder amplifier is a non linear device
• Nonlinearity causes intermediation products
• Intermediation products of wideband signals are wideband – modeled as
increase in noise floor
• For a transponder – bandwidth much smaller than operating frequency
• IM products of order 3 and 5 are important

Typical amplifier transfer function becomes

nonlinear at high gains

Vout  AVin  bVin3

Typically A>>b.

Note: Third order term grows

60dB/dec

Page 12
Outline
• IM in FDMA
• Calculation of C/N with IM
• TDMA

Page 13
IM products between wideband
signals
• Satellite signals are broadband
• IM distortion is wideband as well
• As the amplifier is driven into saturation distortion components
grow faster (3dB for 1dB)
• When there are more than two signals, there are many IM
components
• IM distortion raises the noise floor for the satellite signals

Spectrum analyzer plot for

showing IM distortion with 3
signals

Note: IM distortion is
mitigated by forcing the
operation in the linear part
of the PA (back off)
IM distortion spectrum for 2 wideband signals
Page 14
C/N calculation with IM
• Path through transponder – another link degrading C/N
• The overall C/N has three components (uplink, downlink and transponder)
• The overall performance is limited by the smallest of the three
• Optimum reached when all of them are the same

C / N 0 1 C / N up 1  C / N IM1  C / N dn1

Change of C/N at the output as a

Note: In practice analysis of IM becomes complex and function of input power
tools are used to determine optimum operation of the
transponder Page 15
TDMA principle
• Signals from various earth stations are
interlaced in time
• Each signal uses the entire transponder
bandwidth – no IM
• Modulation must be digital to accommodate
intermittent nature of transmission
• Signals are wideband – not well suited for
large number of narrowband signals
• Transmission of the earth stations must be
synchronized
• Each earth station transmits one burst per
frame
• Duration of frame from 125us to few ms
• Earth station received all the transmissions
and just de-multiplexes the desired one – Illustration of TDMA principle
issue of synchronization

Page 16
TDMA burst generation
• TDMA satellite access works well
with landline TDMA systems
• Rate adjustment accomplished
through buffering
• Burst of a satellite earth station
consists of preamble (overhead)
and user data
• Preamble – contains data necessary
for system operation
(synchronization and signaling)
• User data - payload

Burst formation for an individual earth station

Note: Data rate on the satellite link is much larger than data
rate of incoming streams Page 17
TDMA frame structure
• Bursts are organized into
frames
• Guard times are inserted
between burst – ensures that
there is no overlap between
bursts
• One earth station - in charge of
providing reference burst (no
user data)
• Traffic burst – carries user data
• Longer frames – less overhead

Example of frame structure for INTELSAT/EUTELSAT

Page 18
Burst reception

• On the downlink each station receives all the

bursts in the frame
• Beginning of the frame – reference burst
• Beginning of the burst – preamble
• Synchronization with the burst – unique word
• Each station extract the portion of the burst
• Data received discontinuously – to provide rate
matching there is a buffer at the receiver

Example of the burst

reception process Page 19
Outline
• TDMA link capacity calculation
• TDMA efficiency
• Synchronization in TDMA networks
• Transmit power in TDMA networks
• Examples

Page 20
Capacity and efficiency of
TDMA
• Multiple earth station sharing
transponder

TDMA efficiency

Td
 100 %
T frame

Time allocated for data transmission

 T  Tg  T frame  N T p  Tg 
 
Td  T frame  p
 i  Note 1: guard and preamble times
are usually the same for all earth
Total available rate for user traffic stations
T
Ru  d RT Note 2: Rate of transponder depends
T frame on the bandwidth and
Rate for the ith user modulation/coding scheme

Rui 

Ti  T p  Tgi
i
R 
Ti  T p  Tg
RT
T frame
T
T frame Page 21
Example
• Consider a satellite with following parameters
• Frame duration: 2ms
• Preamble duration (reference station): 4.77 us
• Preamble duration (other earth stations): 4.63 us
• Guard time: 1.06 us
• Two reference burst per frame and satellite rate of 120Mbps
• Determine
• Total user data rate (A: 115.89 Mbps)
• Total user data rate if the satellite is shared by 10 equal earth stations (A:
11.59Mbps)
• TDMA efficiency (96.56%)

Note: in satellite networks TDMA efficiency is above 90%

Page 22
TDMA synchronization
• Synchronization stages Preamble example
• Carrier recovery – required for coherent
demodulation
• Symbol synchronization – required for
matched filter operation
• Burst synchronization – required for
decoding of individual earth stations
• Frame synchronization – required for
proper operation of TDMA
• Synchronization data is embedded in
the burst preamble
• CBTR (Carrier and Bit recovery) and
• UW (Unique Word)
• TTY – teletype
• SC – service channel
• VoW – voice over wire
Block diagram of QPSK RX

Note: CBTR usually has two parts: un-modulated part – carrier recovery,
modulated part for bit sync Page 23
Unique word decoding
• Unique word – modulated sequence of
noise like autocorrelation properties
• Two approaches
• Station identified – different unique
word (few earth stations)
• Station identified – unique word +
signaling (many earth stations)
• Unique word determines the beginning
of the frame at the receive side
• It is important that unique word has
• High probability of detection
• Low probability of false alarm
• If unique word is not detected – earth
Detection of UW sequence
station misses the entire frame

Page 24
 Synchronization between earth
stations
• All earth station burst need to arrive in proper times
• For earth station n the burst needs to arrive at the offset dn
with respect to reference burst
• The path traveled by each signal is different
• Define
• SOTFn (Start of Transmit Frame) – time when the earth
station needs to transmit so that its burst is arriving at
the time of reference burst
• SORFn (Start of receive Frame) – time when the earth
station receives reference burst

Example of burst time plan

(SOTF = start of TX frame)

SOTFn  SORFn Dn mTF  2 Rn / c

Relationship between
SOTF and SORF Note: earth station needs to Page 25
estimate Dn
 Determination of SORF-SOTF – closed loop
• Step 1. Earth station sends a
shortened burst at the best estimate
of SOTFn
• Step 2. The shortened burst is echoed
by the satellite
• Step 3. Earth station observes the
error between desired and actual
arrival of the burst
• Step 4. SOTF is adjusted for the error

Note: shortened burst needs to contain only

preamble
Time diagram for closed loop SOTF
estimation

Page 26
 Determination of SORF-SOTF –
• open
Three stations loop
determine round trip
time to the satellite (one is reference
and two are auxiliary)
• Based on three round trip times
satellite is located
• Times Dn are calculated and
distributed to earth station using
signaling

Note: open loop is used frequently in

systems that have assignment on
demand
Time diagram for open loop SOTF
estimation

Page 27
Transmit power in TDMA
networks
• Earth station access entire transponder bandwidth
• Noise bandwidth is large
• To maintain S/N ratio large signal power is required
• Suitable for systems with large data throughput
• Not suitable for small earth stations – high power difficult to achieve

Note: ES2 uses the same

power even though the
amount of data is much
smaller

Page 28
Outline
• CDMA principles
• CDMA transmission and reception
• DS-SS CDMA capacity
• Examples

Page 29
CDMA – basic principle
• Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA)
• Users are transmitting co-time and co-frequency
• The signals from different users are separated by codes

w ell, see you

tom orrow
hello, how hello, how
w ell, see you
are you are you
tom orrow m y salary,
doing? doing?
sir... m y salary,
w hat?!...raise sir...
again? bye! w hat?!...raise
again?
bye!

FDMA TDMA

Hello, how 3 PABO

JA !! ! j
are you
doing? . j
O bAP AH
M AJA!
Common analogies used for the
access schemes

CDMA Page 30
CDMA TXC and RX (single link)

• At the TX - signal multiplied by a spreading sequence

• Spreading sequence – code with higher data rate and good
autocorrelation properties
• Spread signal send to satellite and received by all earth stations
• Received signal correlated with the same spreading code
Page 31
CDMA example – 2 T w o signals coexist in
tim e and frequency
X x C1
0+0+2+2 = 4 > 0
0 0 2 2
S1 x C1 1 w as
S1= 1 x X Integrate sent
X = S 1 C 1 +S 2 C 2
1 1 1 1

C1 C1
0 0 2 2 1 1 1 1
S
1 1 1 1
X x C2
0 0 -2 -2
0+0-2-2 = -4 < 0

-1 w as
S 2 = -1 X X Integrate
sent
-1 -1 1 1
S2 x C2

C2 C2
1 1 -1 -1

1 1 -1 -1

Rc
PG Processing gain (PG) is the ratio of chip and bit rates
Rb
Note: codes in this example are synchronized in time
Page 32
CDMA access
• Signals from different earth stations are
co-spectrum and co time
• Signals are spread using codes that are
orthogonal even when not synchronized
• All signals are amplified by the
transponder and send towards the
ground
• Transmission from the earth stations
must me power managed so that the CDMA scheme
product of processing gain and power is
constant – for all earth stations
• If the earth stations have same
processing gain – they should be
received at the same power

Page 33
PN sequences (AKA M-
sequences)
• Have “noise like” auto-correlation properties
• Generated as output of shift registers that have taps indicated by primitive polynomials
• Taps need to be in “special places”
• Location of taps for different code lengths:
http://www.newwaveinstruments.com/resources/articles/
m_sequence_linear_feedback_shift_register_lfsr.htm

Remember:
1 maps into -1
0 maps into 1

Shift register for generation of binary sequence

Page 34
M sequences - properties
1. An m-bit register produces an m-sequence of period 2 m-1.
2. An m-sequence contains exactly 2 (m-1) ones and 2(m-1)-1 zeros.
3. The modulo-2 sum of an m-sequence and another phase (i.e. time-delayed version) of the same sequence yields
yet a third phase of the sequence.
3a. (A corollary of 3.) Each stage of an m-sequence generator runs through some phase of the sequence. (While this
is obvious with a Fibonacci LFSR, it may not be with a Galois LFSR.)
4. A sliding window of length m, passed along an m-sequence for 2 m-1 positions, will span every possible m-bit
number, except all zeros, once and only once. That is, every state of an m-bit state register will be encountered,
with the exception of all zeros.
5. Define a run of length r to be a sequence of r consecutive identical numbers, bracketed by non-equal numbers.
Then in any m-sequence there are:
1 run of ones of length m.
1 run of zeros of length m-1.
1 run of ones and 1 run of zeros, each of length m-2.
2 runs of ones and 2 runs of zeros, each of length m-3.
4 runs of ones and 4 runs of zeros, each of length m-4.
…
2m-3 runs of ones and 2m-3 runs of zeros, each of length 1.
6. If an m-sequence is mapped to an analog time-varying waveform, by mapping each binary zero to 1 and each
binary one to -1, then the autocorrelation function for the resulting waveform will be unity for zero delay, and -
1/(2m-1) for any delay greater that one bit, either positive or negative in time. The shape of the autocorrelation
function between -1 bit and +1 bit will be triangular, centered around time 0. That is, the function will rise
linearly from time = -(one-bit) to time 0, and then decline linearly from time 0 to time = +(one-bit).

Page 35
Circular autocorrelation of PN
sequenceN xn 
PN sequence of length :

Circular autocorrelation:
N
1
R p v    xn xmod(n  v, N ) Note: PN sequences are
N n 1
practically orthogonal to their
For PN sequences delayed versions

 1 , v 0
R p v   1
 , v 0
 N

Consider N=15 sequence in the attached spreadsheet Microsoft Office

Excel 97-2003 Worksheet

Page 36
CDMA capacity
On the ground S/N ratio for a given link (in dB)

 
S / N out C / N SS  10 log Rc 
 Rb 

Consider Q identical earth stations using a transponder in a CDMA mode

 C  R 
S / N i 10 log   10 log c 
 N T  Q  1C   Rb 

For large Q

 C   C 
10 log  10 log   10 logQ  1
N
 T  Q  1C   Q  1C 

Therefore

S / N i 10 log M 
 Solving for Q
 Q  1 
Rc  0.1S / N out Max number of earth
Q 10
Rb stations Page 37
Example
1.Consider DS-CDMA system with processing gain of
1023. Required S/N at the output of the earth station
receive is 12dB. Estimate the number of the earth
stations that can be supported in the system
Q 1023 10  12 /10 64.54  64

2. Example 6.8.1

Page 38