WHAT ARE THE PHYSICAL CHANNELS AND SIGNALS USED IN LTE?

The following physical channels and physical signals are defined in LTE:

PHYSICAL CHANNELS

1. Physical Downlink Shared Channel (PDSCH) and Physical Uplink Shared Channel (PUSCH), used for transmission of the DL-SCH and UL-SCH transport channels, respectively.
2. Physical Control Format Indicator Channel (PCFICH), Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH) and Physical Hybrid ARQ Indicator Channel (PHICH), used for downlink L1/L2 control signalling.
3. Physical Broadcast Channel (PBCH), used for transmission of the Broadcast channel (BCH) transport channel.
4. Physical Multicast Channel (PMCH), used for transmission of the Multicast channel (MCH) transport channel.
5. Physical Random Access Channel (PRACH), used for uplink transmission of the random access preamble as given by the RACH transport channel.

PHYSICAL SIGNALS

-Reference signals are to support coherent demodulation in uplink and downlink and uplink channel sounding.

-Synchronization signals are defined in the downlink only and used in the cell search procedure.