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The LTE standard defines what are known as antenna ports. These antenna ports do not correspond to physical antennas, but rather are logical entities distinguished by their reference signal sequences. Multiple antenna port signals can be transmitted on a single transmit antenna (C-RS port 0 and UE-RS port 5, for example). Correspondingly, a single antenna port can be spread across multiple transmit antennas (UE-RS port 5, for example).The LTE standard defines what are known as antenna ports. These antenna ports do not correspond to physical antennas, but rather are logical entities distinguished by their reference signal sequences. Multiple antenna port signals can be transmitted on a single transmit antenna (C-RS port 0 and UE-RS port 5, for example). Correspondingly, a single antenna port can be spread across multiple transmit antennas (UE-RS port 5, for example).

The 3GPP TS 36.211 LTE standard defines antenna ports for the downlink. An antenna port is generally used as a generic term for signal transmission under identical channel conditions. For each LTE operating mode in the downlink direction for which an independent channel is assumed (e.g. SISO vs. MIMO), a separate logical antenna port is defined. LTE symbols that are transmitted via identical antenna ports are subject to the same channel conditions. In order to determine the characteristic channel for an antenna port, a UE must carry out a separate channel estimation for each antenna port. Separate reference signals (pilot signals) that are suitable for estimating the respective channel are defined in the LTE standard for each antenna port. FIG 1 shows the antenna ports defined in the LTE standard in Releases 8,9 and 10.

The way in which these logical antenna ports are assigned to the physical transmit antennas of a base station is up to the base station, and can vary between base stations of the same type (because of different operating conditions) and also between base stations from different manufacturers. The base station does not explicitly notify the UE of the mapping that has been carried out, rather the UE must take this into account automatically during demodulation (FIG 2). As far asThe way in which these logical antenna ports are assigned to the physical transmit antennas of a base station is up to the base station, and can vary between base stations of the same type (because of different operating conditions) and also between base stations from different manufacturers. The base station does not explicitly notify the UE of the mapping that has been carried out, rather the UE must take this into account automatically during demodulation (FIG 2).

Let us consider antenna ports used for PDSCH allocations since they probably have the most variations. Initially, the 89600 VSA's LTE demodulator supported only analysis of PDSCH transmitted on Antenna Ports 0, (0 and 1), (0, 1, 2), or (0, 1, 2, 3). These ports are considered C-RS antenna ports, and each port has a different arrangement of C-RS resource elements. Various configurations are defined that use these C-RS antenna ports, including 2- or 4-port Tx Diversity and 2-, 3-, or 4-port Spatial Multiplexing.

Then beamforming support was added and single-layer PDSCH allocations transmitted on Port 5 could be analyzed. The LTE demodulator has since been enhanced to support the LTE Release 9 which added Transmission Mode 8--Dual-Layer Beamforming (i.e. beamforming + spatial multiplexing)--where PDSCH is transmitted on Antenna Ports 7 and 8 (note that single-layer beamforming in Rel 9 can also use port 7 or port 8 in addition to port 5). In Rel 10 of the standard, the new transmission mode 9 (TM9) added up to 8-layer transmissions using Ports 7-14. TM9 is supported by the LTE-Advanced demodulator.

As Ports 0-3 are indicated by the existence of C-RS, so Ports 5 and 7-14 are indicated by the UE-specific Reference Signal (UE-RS). The following is a table that summarizes the various PDSCH mappings that can be used along with the corresponding reference signal and antenna ports.

In a MIMO or Tx Diversity configuration, each C-RS antenna port must be transmitted on a separate physical antenna to create spatial diversity between the paths. Single-layer beamforming, on the other hand, is accomplished by sending the same signal to each antenna but changing the phase of the each antenna's signal relative to the others. Since the same UE-RS sequence is sent from each antenna, the 89600 VSA can compare the received UE-RS sequence with the reference sequence and calculate the weights that were applied to the antennas to accomplish the beamforming.

Multi-layer beamforming adds some complexity to beamforming by transmitting as many UE-RS sequences as there are layers to allow demodulation of each layer's PDSCH data. The UE-RS sequence for each antenna port is orthogonal to the others, either in time/frequency domain or in the code domain. This can be thought of as beamforming of each layer independently. N-layer beamforming is an extension of dual-layer beamforming and supports up to 8 data layers with the ability to beamform each layer separately.