IEEE Communications Magazine • August 2010
40
0163-6804/10/$25.00 © 2010 IEEE
INTRODUCTION
People are gradually becoming familiar with
using wireless networks to transfer various forms
of data such as emails, videos, and pictures,
which all benefit from the fast growing wireless
communication technologies. Many enhanced
technologies of wireless networks have been
investigated and contributed by academia and
industry over the past few decades. Along with
carrier aggregation, enhanced multiple-input
multiple-output (MIMO), and coordinated mul-
tipoint processing (CoMP), relay is one of the
most attractive technologies [1, 2]. Consequently,
relay has been included in both candidates for
International Mobile Telecommunications
(IMT)-Advanced (fourth generation [4G]) stan-
dards, Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A)
by the Third Generation Partnership Project
(3GPP) for LTE and IEEE 802.16m (16m) by
the IEEE for WiMAX.
Despite their short history, three relay stan-
dards have been or are being specified for
WIMAX and LTE: IEEE 802.16j, IEEE
802.16m, and 3GPP LTE-A Release 10. IEEE
802.16j was completed in 2009 and published as
IEEE 802.16-2009. The IEEE 802.16m draft
standard, which is an amendment to IEEE
802.16-2009, entered the Sponsor Ballot phase in
June 2010, while its end-to-end protocols beyond
radio interfaces are left in the hands of the
WiMAX Forum to adopt 802.16m into a
WiMAX profile. Finally, after a year of debate
in the 3GPP radio access network (RAN1/
RAN2/RAN3) working groups, the relay study
item was closed in March 2010 with a consensus
on a single LTE-A relay architecture for Release
10, which is expected to be released in 2011.
Relay as discussed in standards can be divid-
ed into two categories, depending on whether
the relay node has the authority to manage the
resources, or more specifically whether the relay
node can generate cell control messages. One
relay category, named non-transparent (NT)
relay by the IEEE 802.16 working group and
type-1 relay by 3GPP, has the features of distinct
cell IDs and generating its own cell control mes-
sages. An NT-relay schedules assigned radio
resources within its own cell. The other relay
category, named transparent (T) relay by IEEE
802.16 working group and type-2 relay by 3GPP,
shares cell IDs and cell control messages with its
serving BS.
The radio link originating or terminating at a
subscriber station (SS) is named the access link
(Uu interface).The radio link between a BS and
a relay or between a pair of relays is called the
relay link (Un interface). In addition, based on
the assigned radio frequency (RF) channels for
the relay link and access link, a relay can be fur-
ther categorized as an inband (TTR) relay or an
outband (STR) relay. The inband relay uses the
same RF channel and the same radio resources
are shared between the relay link and the access
link, whereas the outband relay uses different
RF channels (or the same RF channel but with-
out sharing radio resources) on the relay and
access links.
Figure 1 shows various relay categories in
three standards. 802.16j has the most compre-
hensive relay categories compared to the other
standards. That is, 802.16m and LTE-A Release
10 include only a subset of relay categories
defined in 802.16j. In the subsequent design
trade-off subsection we explain various concerns
within each standard working group that led to
the relay feature down-selection just mentioned.
Table 1 is a terminology cross-reference
between WiMAX and LTE. For brevity, terms
listed in Table 1 are interchangeable in the ensu-
ing discussions.
The article is organized as follows. The next
ABSTRACT
There are two candidates for IMT-Advanced
(4G) standards, LTE-Advanced by 3GPP and
802.16m by IEEE. This article focuses on relay
architectures in 16m and LTE-A, and discusses
design principles and trade-offs leading to deci-
sions in each standards group. Basically, 16m
relay and LTE-A Release 10 relay are very simi-
lar technologies where the relay is essentially an
orthogonal frequency-division multiple access
base station with a wireless backhaul link. How-
ever, some open issues, such as mobility, power
saving, multihop architecture, transparent relay-
ing, multi-arrier transmission, and cooperative
transmission, are still left as challenges for engi-
neers and researchers. This article provides
insights to both relay standards that could be
helpful for readers to fully comprehend practical
ways of incorporating relays into 4G wireless
broadband networks.
WIMAX/LTE UPDATE
Kanchei Loa and Chih-Chiang Wu, Institute for Information Industry
Shiann-Tsong Sheu, National Central University
Yifei Yuan, Mary Chion, David Huo, and Ling Xu, ZTE Corporation
IMT-Advanced Relay Standards
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