3 DIGITAL LINE-OF-SIGHT MICROWAVE RADIOLINKS 3.1 INTRODUCTION The implementation of digital LOS radiolinks is accelerating primarily due to the transition of the telephone network to an all-digital network. Many available texts (Refs. 1 and 2) demonstrate the rationale for the transition in that thermal and IM noise accumulation can be disregarded over the net- work, and noise becomes an isolated problem between points of regenera~ tion. This is an overwhelming advantage over analog transmission, where the primary concern of the transmission engineer is noise accumulation. Other arguments presented for going all-digital are based on its compati- bility with digital information transmission requirements such as telephone signaling, data transmission, digitized voice, programming information, and facsimile. Several very important factors representing the other side of the coin must, also be highlighted. The digital radiolink engineer must not only be cognizant of these factors but also must understand them well. The digital network is based on a PCM waveform, which, when compared to its analog FDM counterpart, is wasteful of bandwidth. A nominal 4-KHz voice channel on a FDM bascband system occupies about 4 kHz of bandwidth (Ref. 1, Chapter 1), On a FDM/FM radiolink, by rough estimation, we can say it occupies about 16 kHz, In conventional PCM baseband system, allowing 1 bit per hertz of band- Width, a 4-KHz voiee channel roughly requites 64 kHz (64 kbps) of band- width. This is derived using the Nyquist sampling rate of $000/s (4000 Hz X 2) and each sample is assigned an S-bit code word, thus 8000 X 8 bits per second or 64 kbps. ‘Radio Stem Design for Telecommunicaions, Third Edition By Roget L. Freeman Copyright © 2007 Tokn Wiley & Sons, Tne 133134 DIGITAL LINE-OF SIGHT MICROWAVE RADIOLINKS RF bandwidth is at a premium and, as a result, it is incumbent on the digital radiolink engineer to select a waveform that consorves bandwidth, achieving, essentially, more bits per hertz. He/she will also find that many national regulatory agencies require a minimum number of digital voice channels per unit of bandwidth. This section first introduces some sample regulatory requirements and then discusses modulation techniques that arc bandwidth conservative so that these national requirements can be met. It then describes methods of link analysis to achieve specified digital network performance. The discussion will rely heavily on previous sections, demonstrating that much of the approach used on analog radiolink design is also applicable to digital radiolink design, The unit of digital radiolink performance is BER rather than S/N and noise accumulation, which were the measures for analog radiolink design. 3.1.1. Energy per Bit per Noise Density Ratio E/N, The efficiency of a digital communication system in the presence of wideband noise with a single-sided noise spectral density N, is commonly measured by the received information bit energy to noise density ratio (,/N,) required to achieve a specified error rate. We can express E;, by relating it to the total received power (RSL or C*). E,, or energy per bit, can be expressed as the RSL divided by the bit rate. In the domain of dBs, we write caswy = RSL ggw — 10log( bit rate) (3a) Example 1. Suppose the unfaded RSL of a certain microwave radiolink was, 81 dBW and the bit rate was 1.544 Mbps. What is E,? E, = ~81 dBW ~ 10log(1.544 x 10°) —81 dBW ~ 61.886 (4B) 142,886 dBW [Nj is simple to calculate. It is the thermal noise level of a perfect receiver in 1 He of bandwidth (in dBW or dBm) plus the noise figure (NF) in decibels. Now we write Ny = —204 dBW + NFjy (3.2) Example 2. The noise figure of a particular receiver front end is 8 dB. What is No? Ny = -204 dBW + 8 dB 196 dBW/Hz *RSL and C (cari level are synonymous for this discussion,REGULATORY ISSUES 135 Now we can write an expression for E,/Ny by bringing together equations Ga) and (G2), Es/No = Exasw ~ Nao E,/Ny = RSLaqw — 10log(bit rate) ~ (—204 dBW + NF) @3) ‘Simplifying, E/N RSL gy — 10log(bit rate) + 204 dBW - NF (3.4) Example 3. A digital microwave radiolink is transmitting at 155.520 Mbps (eg, SONE! ), and the unfaded RSL at the far end receiver front end is —76.3 dBW; the noise figure of the receiver front end is 3 dB, What is the value of E/N, under these conditions? Use equation (3.4) E,/Ng = ~16.3 ABW ~ 10 log( 155.520 X 10° bps) + 208 dBW — 3 dB = ~76.3 — 81.92 + 204 — = 42.78 aB 3.2. REGULATORY ISSUES The US. regulatory agency, the FCC, has long recognized that conventional digital modulation schemes (uch as FSK and BPSK/OPSK) were not bandwidth conservative, requiring in Part 101.141 the FCC Rules, of “Rules and Regulations” (Ref. 3) that: Microwave transmitters employing digital modulation techniques and operating below 25.25 GHz (except for MVDDS stations in the 12,200-12,700 MHz. band) ‘must, with appropriate multiplex equipment, comply with the following additional requirements: 1. The bit rate, in bits per second, must be equal to oF greater than the bandwidth specified by the emission designator in Hertz (e.g, to be acceptable, equipment transmitting at a 20 Mb/s rate must not require a bandwidth of greater than 20 MHz), except the bandwidth used to calculate the minimum rate may not include any authorized guard band, 2. Equipment to be used for voice transmission placed in service, authorized, ‘or applied for on or before June 1, 1997 in the 2110 to 2130 and 2160 to 2180 MHz bands must be capable of satisfactory operation within the authorized bandwidth to encode at least 96 voice channels, Equipment placed in service, authorized, or applied for on or before June 1, 1997 in the 3700-8200, $925-6425 (G0 MHz bandwidth), and 10,700-11,700 MHz (30 and 40 MHz bandwidths must be capable of satisfactory operation within the authorized bandwidth to encode at least 1152 voice channels:136 DIGITAL LINE-OF SIGHT MICROWAVE RADIOLINKS 3. The following capacity and loading requirements must be met for equipment applied for, authorized, and placed in service after June 1, 1997 in the 3700-4200 MHz, 5925-6425 and 6525-6875 MHz (6 GHz), 10,550-10,680 ‘MHz (10 GHz), and 10,700-11,700 (11 GHz) bands: Minimum trafic loading Nominal Minimum payload (as channel payload percent of bandwidth capacity payload ‘Typical a (Mibis/s) capacity) —— ization 0.400 1st N/A 0.300 308 N/A 125 308 N/A 180 617 NYA 250 17 N/A 35 123 N/A 50 185 N/A DSA 100 487 30° 1DS.3/STS1 200 04 sot 2D83/STS-1 30.0 (11 GH») 4 s0* 2D8-3/STS-1 30065 G11) nat 50! 3DS.3/STS-1 “0 1341 50° 3D8.3/STS-1 The FCC has the following rule on emission limitation (Part 101.111) (Ref. 3). (For operating frequencies below 15 GHz, in any 4 kHz band, the center frequency of which is removed from the assigned frequency by more than SO percent up to and including 250 percent of the authorized bandwidth: As specified by the following equation but in no event less than $0 decibels A= 354 OS(P — 50) + 10]og;9 B (Attenuation greater than 80 decibels or to an absolute power of less than ~13 dBBm/1MHz is not required.) where: ‘A= Attenuation (in decibels) below the mean output power level P= Percent removed from the eenter frequency of the transmitter bandwidth B = Authorized bandwidth in MHz. (ii) For operating frequencies above 15 GHz, in any 1 MHz band, the center frequency of which is removed from the assigned frequeney by more than 50 percent up to and including 250 percent of the authorized bandwidth: As specified by the following equation but in no event less than 11 decibels Ax 114 04(P ~ 50) + 1010839 B. (Attenuation greater than 56 decibels or to an absolute power of less than —13 4.5 bits per Hz. 3.3 MODULATION TECHNIQUES, SPECTRAL EFFICIENCY, AND BANDWIDTH 3.3.1 Introduction ‘The goal of the FCC was to achieve similar information transmission prop. ties between conventional FM transmitting a FDM wavelorm (Chapter 2) and a digital radio transmitting conventional 8-bit PCM. Thus such # digital radio must provide a minimum of 45 bits per hertz of radio bandwidth for 99% spectral power containment. This would be a practical value. ‘We must explain the difference between theoretical bit-packing values and the practical. The theoretical and practical would essentially be equal if we could design efficient filters where their effective bandwidth equated to the baud rate.’ We call that the Nyquist bandwidth. As we shall point out, this is impractical and the required bandwidth is almost always greater than the so-called Nyquist bandwidth except for partial response systems. These latter are more often called OPRS, standing for quadrature partial response systems, What we gain in smaller bandwidth requirements, we pay for in increased output power to maintain a certain bit error rate with OPRS techniques. 3.3.2 Bit Packing We sometimes estimate the required bandwidth for a binary transmission system by assuming 1 bit/Hz. In most practical cases this is somewhat optimistic. Our goal, remember, is to achieve better than 4.5 bits /Hz, For digital transmission, phase modulation has a number of excellent attributes, Among these are robustness and improved noise immunity. When we describe “phase,” we usually employ a circle to represent 360° of phase. In the case of BPSK (binary phase-shift keying), we describe two phase states. ‘The first phase state we can call a binary and the second, a binary 0, The decision “distance” should be as large as possible. In the binary phase case, this distance is 180°, For instance, 0° can be assigned the value of binary “Section 3.3 is based on Res. 4,5, and 6. “By baud rate we mean transitions per second or changes of state per second Some call this the “eymbol rate,” but I don't care for that definition. [like tose “symbol rat” asthe pulse rate at the output of a FEC coder,