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Tue, 24 Apr 2012
A bit of 3G Layer-1

While experimenting with my Node-B, I had the need to generate a RACH message without having to use a phone. Such an approach can for example be used for performance testing of the Node-B receiver or evaluating the RACH handling capacity of the radio network (no, I don't call it RACH DoS ;-)

First a little bit of theory: The RACH in UMTS works different than in GSM, its not just about sending a single RACH burst. Because WCDMA is very sensitive to interference, the phones have to send with a transmit power as low as possible. For the RACH procedure this means that the phone starts to send a short RACH preamble with very low power and looks for the acknowledgement if the preamble has been received by the Node-B on the AICH (Access Indication Channel) channel. If the phone doesn't receive the acknowledgement, it increases the transmission power and resends the preamble. If there is the acknowledgement from the Node-B, the phone sends the actual RACH message. The RACH message itself is not just a few bits containing the access cause and a random reference like in GSM, it is a complete message. "RRC Connection Request" is used for accessing the network but other message can also be sent on the RACH channel (e.g. "Cell Update" which is besides other things used for indicating unrecoverable RLC errors. One can see this message frequently when starting to implement an RNC ;-).

Now where to get a RACH preamble and message without having to use a phone? I started to look at Agilent's Signal Studio for WCDMA which should be able to generate a RACH messages with user defined content which can be replayed with a signal generator. However even after lots of trials I never managed to generate a RACH message which can be properly decoded by the Node-B, only the RACH preamble is detected without errors but the RACH message itself just produces garbage and CRC errors.

So I started to write my own code to generate the RACH message. The relevant 3GPP specification for WCDMA FDD is TS 25.212 (Multiplexing and channel coding) and TS 25.213 (Spreading and Modulation). Basically the steps to create a RACH message requires adding a CRC to the message bits, Convolutional encoding, 1st Interleaving, Rate Matching, 2nd Interleaving, Spreading, Scrambling and finally Modulation. I and Q signal on the Uplink carry different things, Data is on the I signal, Control (pilot bits and transport format information) on the Q signal. Luckily the RACH message does not require any fancy multiplexing and rate matching of multiple transport channels on a physical radio channel. This can get really funny, especially if Turbo Coding is involved which results in multiple bit streams (systematic and parity bits) which are treated differently. After some trial-and-error and lots of experimenting and testing I was finally able to create a well formed signal of a RACH preamble and message which the Node-B can properly decode.

After that I also tried to decode the RACH message generated by Agilent's Signal Studio to find out why it didn't work. It seems that the wrong scrambling code sequence is used (the scrambling code number looks OK, but the offset into the code bits is wrong). I really wonder why no one noticed this problem with Signal Studio before or maybe I am just doing something wrong. Anyway, I can now use my own code to generate RACH messages. Maybe in the future I will also look into generating a signal which a phone will consider as valid signal of a 3G cell, this requires generating the P-CPICH (Primary Common Pilot Channel), P-SCH/S-SCH (Primary/Secondary Synchronization Channel) and P-CCPCH (Primary Common Control Physical Channel) carrying the BCH.

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