Tag Archives: RLC

IMTx: NET02x (4G Network Essentials) – Radio Interface – 5. RLC Protocol

EUTRAN, LTE, Mobile Networks, Notes, RF, , , , , , ,

These are my lecture notes from IMT’s NET02x (4G Network Essentials) course, I thought I’d post them here as they may be useful to someone. You can find my complete notes here.

As we just discussed the MAC layer multiplexes streams from the RLC layer. This allows mutliple streams of data to share the same radio connection, but different streams may have different requirements in terms of latency or reliability, aka different QoS requirements.

The Radio Link Control (RLC) layer sits above the MAC layer and can manage:

  • Re-sequencing of blocks held up by HARQ
  • Concatenates / segments messages to fit into the size defined by the MAC layer
  • Re-transmits lost blocks (independent of ARQ)

These functions are set out and managed based on which of the 3 RLC Modes used based on QoS requirements of the traffic type.

RLC Modes

RLC has 3 services or modes that can be used depending on the type of data transmitted:

Transparent Mode (TM)

  • Does not offer any RLC features / services
  • Can only be used for short messages (As no segmentation to fit MAC requirements)
  • Mainly used for signaling messages

Unacknowledged Mode (UM)

  • Re-Sequences data if received out of order
  • Segments data according to MAC needs / limitations
  • Low latency but no re-transmission on the RLC layer
  • Suitable for VoLTE / real time communications
  • Does not re-transmit lost packets

Acknowledged Mode (AM)

  • Like UM but adds re transmission of lost packets
  • Higher latency but more reliable
  • Suitable for web browsing, file transfer, etc.
  • Upon valid receipt of a message the receiver sends an ACK on the data channel.

Several different RLC modes/services can be used at the same time by a single UE, as we saw in the last post:

The MAC layer takes packets from each of the different RLC streams and packs them into MAC SDUs.

Here we can see 3 different RLC SDUs being packet into MAC SDUs.

RLC SDU 1 is packed into the a RLC PDU along with RLC SDU2. These two are concatenated together. RLC also adds a header to delineate the start of RLC SDU 1 and the start of RLC SDU 2.

The header allows the receiver to determine where each RLC SDU starts and ends and the sequence number of each RLC SDU.

Part of RLC SDU 3 is also packed into the first RLC PDU, and the second part is packed into the next RLC PDU. RLC is said to have segmented or fragmentedthis message as it splits it across multiple RLC PDUs for transmission. Again the RLC PDU adds headers to define that the data it contains is split across multiple RLC PDUs.

IMTx: NET02x (4G Network Essentials) – Radio Interface – 4. Transmission Reliability in Radio

EUTRAN, LTE, Mobile Networks, Notes, RF, , , , , , , , ,

These are my lecture notes from IMT’s NET02x (4G Network Essentials) course, I thought I’d post them here as they may be useful to someone. You can find my complete notes here.

Radio is always subject to interference, we talked before about how coding is used on the physical layer to try and correct these errors.

The MAC layer (Media Access Control) handles error correction, and performs multiplexing of services to the same UE at the same time (multiplexing).

Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ)

When data is sent a CRC (Cyclic Redunancy Check) is added, containing a checksum equivalent of the data contained in the message.

The receiver runs the same CRC calculation on the data, and if the CRC value is not equal to the CRC value it received it knows the data is not correct/complete.

There are 3 scenarios shown below:

Scenario 1 – Data is sent and the CRC calculated by the sender matches the CRC calculated by the reciver.
An ACK is sent to confirm the data was received correctly.

Scenario 2 – Data is sent and the CRC calculated by the sender does not match the CRC calculated by the receiver.
The receiver sends a NACK (Negative Ack),
The sender sends the data again, the CRC this time matches, so an ACK is sent to confirm the data was received correctly.

Scenario 3 – Data is sent by not ACK or NACK was received. This could mean the data was not received, or the ACK/NACK was not received.
The sender then sends the message again.
This process is repeated a set number of times after which if no response is received the sender gives up.

Acknowledgement

This technique is called Send and Wait ARQ, because the sender must send the data and wait for an ACK/NACK, and will automatically request re-transmission.

Because CRC may take some time to calculate the ACK/NACK is given time to process by the receiver and the ACK/NACK is sent 4ms after it was received.

If a NACK is received the data is re-transmitted 4ms after receipt of the NACK.

This means all up it takes up to 8ms (8 subframes) to send the data, wait for the response and send again if needed. During this time no other data would be sent.

As you can imagine this isn’t a particularly efficient use of time or resources, so the EUTRAN specs define 8 Send and Wait processes in parallel.

While the first process is blocked waiting for an ACK/NACK, another process can transmit. This is called Parallel Send and Wait.

The problem with this is it can lead to data being received out of sequence, as if data is sent and a re-transmission is needed (NACK received by sender) that data will be received after the data sent 8 frames after it.

Here we can see Block 2 was lost, a NACK was sent and a re-transmission occurs 8 subframes later, long after Block 3 and Block 4 were received.

The MAC layer does not deal with re-sequencing, this is managed by the RLC layer above the MAC layer.

Hybrid ARQ

LTE relies on Hybrid ARQ. To increase redundancy and increase the possibility of decoding a corrupted message correctly.

We talked about coding – sending multiple copies of the same data and comparing them to find the common features that would indicate correct data, Hybrid ARQ functions in much the same way.

To increase error correction performance the receiver keeps the invalid/corrupt messages it sends a NACK for, so it can compare it to the re-transmitted version and hopefully correctly decode the message even if the re-transmission is corrupted.

It is called Hybird because the MAC layer has to communicate to the physical layer to let is know this is a re-transmission and not a new transmission.

Multiplexing on the MAC Layer

You may use your smartphone (UE) for a voice call while looking up something online and getting push notifications, while these are 3 distinct streams of data, there is only one stream of data to and from the eNB <-> UE.

These different types of data all need to be combined into one “pipe” between the eNB and UE, this is known as multiplexing.

The RLC layer has multiple types of data arranged in logical channels, but this data has to be put into a MAC PDU and sent over the air.

In the standard networking model, data in an upper layer is called SDU “Service Data Units”, and data in a lower layer is called a PDU “Protocol Data Units”.

To form the transport blocks the MAC layer must take each of the SDUs from the RLC layer, and put it into the transport block, as show in the image above.

The MAC header contains the delineation of what data is for which SDU on the RLC layer.