Radio Resource Control: Layer 3

Guided by, Team Members

Mr. Alokmohan Upadhyay Syed Wali Ul Huda
Neha Yadav
Utkarsh Mishra
Rishabh Ojha
 What is UMTS?
➢ UMTS is developed by 3GPP ( 3rd Generation Partnership Project) a joint venture
of several organization.
➢ 3G UMTS is a third-generation (3G): broadband, packet-based transmission of
text, digitized voice, video, multimedia at data rates up to 2 Mbps.
➢ Also referred to as wideband code division multiple access(WCDMA).
➢ Allows many more application to be introduce to a worldwide.
➢ Also provides new services like alternative billing methods or calling plans.
➢ The higher bandwidth also enables video conferencing or IPTV.
➢ Once UMTS is fully available, computer and phone users can be constantly
attached to the Internet wherever they travel and, as they roam, will have the
same set of capabilities.
 Features
➢ It uses FDD/TDD duplexing method. It uses the
Bandwidth of 5 MHz.
➢ The Chip rate is about 3.84 Mbps
➢ It is very much flexible with 100/200 kHz carrier spacing. The Frame

length unit is 10 ms.

➢ It uses BPSK for uplink and QPSK for downlink.
➢ It has variable spreading factor.
➢ The maximum data rat for indoor is 2 Mbps and for mobile it is 384 kbps.
➢ The channel coding is convolution coding, turbo code for high data rate.
UMTS Architecture
1- Mobile Equipment:-
The ME consists of two parts, Terminal Equipment and Mobile
Terminal.
Terminal Equipment is the point where all the data streams start
and end.
Mobile Terminal handles all 3G communication functions.

1.1 USIM(UICC)
USIM is a smartcard that holds the subscriber identity, performs
the security algorithm, and stores the authentication and
encryption key and subscription information.
2. UTRAN:-
UTRAN has two main nodes:
❖ NodeB: It is a physical unit for radio transmission and reception with cells. UE is
connected to the NodeB through the Uu interface, which is a radio interface.
The main task of the NodeB is conversion of data to and from the Uu interface.

❖ RNC(Radio Network Controller):The RNC owns and controls the radio resources
in its domain. It is an intermediate component between NodeB and the CN.
3. Core Network:-
The UMTS core network may be split into two different areas:
• Circuit switched elements:
Carry data in a circuit switched manner, i.e. a permanent channel for the
duration of the call.

• Packet switched elements:

Carry packet data. This enables much higher network usage as the capacity
can be shared and data is carried as packets which are routed according to their
destination.
UMTS Protocol Stack
First three layers of the
protocol stack are part of
UTRAN

Note: SMS exists on

both circuit switched
and packet switched
side
UTRAN
The UE is the mobile phone and the UTRAN is the base station and the network
intelligence. Both the UE and the UTRAN are composed of different layers.
The four lowest layers are:
▪ Physical layer (PHY): The Physical layer administrates all radio communication. It
handles power control, modulation and measurements. It takes care of coding,
interleaving and the adding of CRC to the packets.
▪ Medium Access Layer (MAC): The MAC layer handles the timing of the packet
releases and the adding of transport entity addresses on the outgoing traffic. The
received traffic is sent to the corresponding transport entity via the MAC layer,
which reads the address and removes it.
▪ Radio Link Layer (RLC): The RLC is responsible for retransmission, segmentation
and reassembly. This layer contains the transport entities, which are created and
deleted dynamically in pairs as services are established or released. One
transport entity handles the incoming traffic and the other handles the outgoing
traffic.
UTRAN
▪ Radio Resource Control (RRC): The RRC layer dynamically establishes and
releases logical communication channels (Transport Entities), which is used by
the various services in the UMTS network. It controls the parameters available, for
example: bit rate, level of retransmission and coding scheme. It can give
commands to each of the other layer through separate communication
channels.
 UMTS Protocol Stack
➢ UMTS protocol stack consists of Access Stratum(AS) and Non Access Stratum(NAS).
Access Stratum supports OSI-layer 1 to 3.
➢ It consists of PHY(layer 1), MAC(layer 2),RLC(layer 2) and RRC(layer 3).
➢ NAS or core network part is divided based on circuit switched(CS) or packet
switched(PS) functionalities.
➢ For CS functions it consists of CM(connection management) and MM(Mobility
Management) layers.
➢ CM layer takes care of CC(Call Control), SM(supplementary Services) and
SMS(Short Message Service). This is for UMTS CS control plane stack.
➢ For UMTS CS user plane stack NAS part do not include CM and MM layers but it
includes application data layer protocol end to end (between UE-NodeB-RNC-
MSC-Remote user).
➢ For PS functions if consists of SM(session Management) and GMM(GPRS Mobility
Management) layers.
 Radio Resource Control
RRC is located at Layer 3 in the control plane of the access stratum (AS). It resides in
the UE and the UTRAN – at the Node B(UE in idle mode) or SRNC (UE in connected
mode), RRC provides signaling transfer services to higher layers through service access
points (SAP). Higher layer signaling messages are encapsulated within RRC messages
for transmission over the radio interface. NAS higher layer entities using the services of
RRC in this way are:
• Call Control(CC), which deals with set-up, maintenance and clear-down of circuit-
switched calls.
• Session Management(SM), which deals with set-up, maintenance and clear-down
of packet-switched sessions.
• Mobility Management (MM), which deals with all mobility issues involving tracking of
UEs as they move from area to area. Related to this is GPRS Mobility
Management(GMM) which does the same for packet-mode operation.
• Short Message Service (SMS), dealing with SMS message delivery.
RRC Architecture
 Radio Resource Control
The RRC layer is the highest layer in the protocol stack and it handles most of the
decisions and supervisory functions. Below follows a sample of the functions:
• Broadcast of information.
• Establishment, maintenance and release of an RRC connection between the UE
and UTRAN.
• Establishment, reconfiguration and release of Radio Bearers.
• Assignment, reconfiguration and release of radio resources for the RRC
connection.
• RRC connection mobility functions.
• Control of requested Quality of Service.
• UE measurement reporting and control of the reporting.
 Radio Resource Control
• Outer loop power control.
• Control of ciphering.
• Paging
• Initial cell selection and cell re-selection.
• RRC message integrity protection.
 The RRC State Machine
The operation of the RRC is guided by a state machine which defines certain specific
states that a UE may be present in. The different RRC states in this state machine have
different amounts of radio resources associated with them and these are the
resources that the UE may use when it is present in a given specific state.

RRC modes of operation:-

There are two types of Mode
1. Idle mode
2. Connected mode
Procedures in Idle Mode:-
When UE is powered on it will be in idle mode. In this mode, UE will perform location
registration. In the idle mode, UE will receive and monitor system information and
paging messages from the UTRAN network. It does this even after camped on the
UTRAN network.

Connected Mode:-
For UE initiated calls, the higher layers of the UE send a request to RRC layer to
establish a signaling connection establishment. Upon receiving this, the RRC of the UE
initiates a connection establishment procedure with the peer RRC of the UTRAN by
sending an RRC connection request message through the MAC. The UE enters
connected mode once the RRC connection is established.
 RRC States
There are 4 RRC States: Cell_DCH, Cell_FACH, URA_PCH and Cell_PCH.
▪ CELL_DCH: In this state dedicated physical channel is allocated to the UE in UL
and DL active set level
▪ CELL_FACH: No dedicated channel is allocated to UE, But RACH and FACH
cannel can be used, both transferring signaling message and small amount of
data. And in this state UE perform cell re-selection and after a reselection always
send a cell update message to RNC
▪ CELL_PCH: In this state UE perform to monitoring of paging information
▪ URA_PCH: It is similar to CELL_PCH expected that the UE does not execute cell
update after each re-selection, but instead read URA (UTRA registration area)
identities from the broadcast channel.
 RRC Connection Establishment
The NAS in the UE may request the establishment of only one RRC connection.
Upon initiation of the procedure, the UE will:
➢ Set Connection Frame Number(CFN) in relation to System Frame Number(SFN)
of current cell.
➢ Transmit an RRC CONNECTION REQUEST message on the uplink CCCH, reset
counter V300, and start timer T300.
➢ Perform the mapping of the Access Class to an Access Service Class and apply
the given Access Service Class when accessing the RACH.
➢ Set the IE “Establishment cause” reflecting the cause of establishment in the
higher layers.
➢ Set the IE “Initial UE identity” to IMSI or TMSI.
➢ Include a measurement report, as specified in the IE “Intrafrequency reporting
quantity for RACH reporting” and the IE “Maximum number of reported cells on
RACH” in SIB type 11.
 RRC Connection Establishment
Upon receiving an RRC CONNECTION REQUEST message, UTRAN will do one of the
following:
➢ Transmit an RRC CONNECTION SETUP message on the downlink CCCH.
➢ Transmit an RRC CONNECTION REJECT message on the downlink CCCH.
Upon receiving an RRC CONNECTION SETUP message, the UE compares the value
of the IE “Initial UE identity” in the received RRC CONNECTION SETUP message with
the value of the IE “Initial UE identity” in the most recent RRC CONNECTION REQUEST
message sent by the UE. If the values are different, the UE will:
➢ Ignore the rest of the message.
If the values are identical, the UE will:
➢ Stop timer T300, and act upon all received information elements.
➢ Store the value of the IE “New U-RNTI”.
➢ Initiate the signaling link parameters according to the IE “RB mapping info”.
 RRC Connection Establishment
➢ If neither the IE “PRACH info (for RACH)” nor the IE “Uplink DPCH info” is included,
let the physical channel of type PRACH that is given in the system information be
the default in uplink to which the RACH is mapped.
➢ If neither the IE “Secondary CCPCH info” nor the IE “Downlink DPCH info” is
included, start to receive the physical channel of type S-CCPCH that is given in
system information to be used as the default by FACH.
➢ Transmit an RRC CONNECTION SETUP COMPLETE message on the uplink DCCH
after successful state transition.
RRC Connection Establishment
 RRC Connection Release
➢ The purpose is to release the RRC connection including the signaling link and all
radio bearers between the UE and the UTRAN. By doing so, all established
signaling flows and signaling connections will be released.
➢ When the UE is in the state CELL DCH or CELL FACH, the UTRAN may at any time
initiate an RRC connection release by transmitting an RRC CONNECTION
RELEASE message using UM RLC. When UTRAN transmits an RRC CONNECTION
RELEASE message as response to a received RRC CONNECTION RE-
ESTABLISHMENT REQUEST, CELL UPDATE, or URA UPDATE message from the UE,
UTRAN will use the downlink CCCH to transmit the message. In all other cases,
the downlink DCCH will be used, although the downlink CCCH may be used as
well.
➢ UTRAN may transmit several RRC CONNECTION RELEASE messages to increase
the probability of proper reception of the message by the UE. The number of
repeated messages and the interval between the messages is a network option.
➢ The UE will receive and act on an RRC CONNECTION RELEASE message in states
CELL DCH and CELL FACH.
RRC Connection Release
 RRC Signaling Connection
➢ The INITIAL DIRECT TRANSFER procedure is used in the uplink to establish signaling
connections and signaling flows. It is also used to carry the initial higher layer
(NAS) messages over the radio interface.
➢ A signaling connection comprises one or several signaling flows. This procedure
requests the establishment of a new flow, and triggers, depending on the routing
and if no signaling connection exists for the chosen route for the flow, the
establishment of a signaling connection.
➢ The DOWNLINK DIRECT TRANSFER procedure is used in the downlink direction to
carry higher layer (NAS) messages over the radio interface.
➢ The UPLINK DIRECT TRANSFER procedure is used in the uplink direction to carry all
subsequent higher layer (NAS) messages over the radio interface belonging to a
signaling flow.
➢ The SIGNALING CONNECTION RELEASE request procedure is used by the UE to
request from the UTRAN that one of its signaling connections should be released.
The procedure may, in turn, initiate the signaling flow release or RRC connection
release procedure.
RRC Signaling Connection
Thank you !!!