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FUNCTIONAL FEATURE DESCRIPTION

Directed Retry Operation in Release B6.2

This document covers the following feature:

15 43 60 (40 11 00) Directed retry (HO SDCCH to TCH from different cells)

and the following features it comprises :

15 43 70 (40 11 10) Internal Directed Retry
15 43 80 (40 11 12) Internal Directed Retry without queuing indication
15 43 90 (40 11 14) External directed retry

This edition differs from the previous one only for the introduction of new feature numbers, the old
ones being shown between parentheses.

Other features referenced in this document and that have modified numbers are the following:

15 51 10 (40 15 00) Support of microcellular and hierarchical cell structure

15 51 20 (40 15 10) Improvement of microcellular and hierarchical cell structure
15 52 70 (40 35 10) 3M control (Maximum multiband mobile control)
15 53 80 (40 18 12) Smooth traffic distribution

Contents

1. REFERENCES................................................................................................................................. 3
2. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................. 4
3. ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................................... 5
4. ALCATEL DIRECTED RETRY STRATEGY .................................................................................... 6
5. DIRECTED RETRY GENERAL OVERVIEW................................................................................... 6
5.1 Directed retry on handover alarms ........................................................................................ 7
5.2 Forced directed retry.............................................................................................................. 7
6. DIRECTED RETRY WITHOUT QUEUING INDICATION................................................................ 8
7. EXTERNAL DIRECTED RETRY ..................................................................................................... 9
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7.1 Queuing and External Directed Retry .................................................................................. 10

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 7.2 External Directed Retry on Handover Alarms...................................................................... 11
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7.3 Forced External Directed Retry ........................................................................................... 11

not permitted without written authorization.

8. OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE .............................................................................................. 12

8.1 Configuration Management ................................................................................................. 12
8.1.1 Internal Directed Retry ............................................................................................ 12
8.1.2 Forced Directed Retry............................................................................................. 12
8.1.3 External Directed Retry........................................................................................... 13
8.2 Performance Management .................................................................................................. 13
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 1. REFERENCES
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GSM 04.08 version 5.4.0 Mobile Radio Interface Layer 3 Specification.

GSM 08.58 version 5.3.0 BSC-BTS interface Layer 3 Specification

ACRONYMS

BSC : Base Station Controller

BSS : Base Station Subsystem
BTS : Base Transceiver Station
EDR : External Directed Retry
ETSI : European Telecommunication Standards Institute
HO : Handover
IDR : Internal Directed Retry
MS : Mobile Station
MSC : Mobile Switching Center
OMC-R : Operation and Maintenance Center : Radio part
SDCCH : Stand-alone Dedicated Control Channel
TCH : Traffic Channel
TRX : Transceiver
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 2. INTRODUCTION
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This document deals with the operation of the “Directed retry” feature in the BSS release B6.2.

The present functional feature description is a complement of the description of the features : 15 43
80 (Internal directed retry without queuing indication) and 15 43 90 (External directed retry) provided
within the document “GSM 900/GSM 1800 BSS B6.2 Feature Description (new Features)”.

The scope of the present document is hereafter detailed :

In section 3, an abstract shows the benefits brought by the feature,

In section 4, the overall directed retry strategy is presented as seen by Alcatel,

In section 5, a general overview of the basic directed retry is presented which corresponds to the
feature 15 43 70 (Internal directed retry),

In section 6, the optimization of directed retry brought by the feature 15 43 80 (Internal directed retry
without queuing indication) is shown,

In section 7, the description of the “external directed retry“ function is given. This corresponds to
feature 15 43 90 (External directed retry),

In section 8, the configuration aspect is shown together with all counters related to directed retry.
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 3. ABSTRACT
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With the booming success of mobile communications, the GSM networks experience increasing
amount of traffic with a limited frequency spectrum available. They must therefore handle more
efficiently the available air interface resources and avoid traffic congestion situations by distributing
the traffic to free resources in neighbour cells. The directed retry procedure meets this requirement
during the call establishment phase. It consists in assigning a traffic channel in a neighbour cell in
case of lack of traffic resources in the serving cell.

The directed retry brings the following advantages to an operator :

- it improves the call success rate and increases the capacity by serving more requests,
- it distributes traffic from congested cells to less loaded cells,
- it reduces the call waiting time for the end-user who is served by the neighbour cell instead of
waiting for a resource of its serving cell to be freed,
- it is seamless for other on-going calls in the cell which are not impacted and thus not disturbed.

The effect of directed retry is particularly important in a micro-cellular system where the calls can be
moved from the underlayer to the upper layer (see feature 15 51 10 “Support of microcellular and
hierarchical cell structure” and 15 51 20 “Improvement of microcellular and hierarchical cell
structure”). More generally, the directed retry appears as a traffic distribution algorithm particularly
suitable in dense networks which feature a high percentage of overlapping areas.

That is the reason why Alcatel has implemented this feature in its BSS very soon and further
enlarges its scope in the release B6.2 in two directions :

- the existing “internal directed retry“ is optimized to be more widely used, even when no
queuing is required by the MSC,
- it is extended to the case where the target cell is an external cell (cell of another BSC) and is
called the “external directed retry”.

The “external directed retry“ is particularly useful when a microcellular layer must be installed under
the normal macrocell layer because the two layers are usually managed by different BSC. This
becomes even more a key feature in a multivendor context where the two BSC may be provided by
different suppliers and also because the MSC is involved.

The Alcatel BSS meets this challenge with the following strong points of its “external directed retry“
solution :
- it interworks with any MSC and therefore suits to a multivendor context,
- it enables to maintain queuing after an unsuccessful directed retry attempt,
- it provides a flexible tuning of the internal and external candidate cells.
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 4. ALCATEL DIRECTED RETRY STRATEGY
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The directed retry can be seen as a special kind of intercell handover that will be applied to maintain
the call set-up process if a radio cell is congested by traffic load. The channel is directly carried out
from the SDCCH of the current cell to a TCH of the neighbour cell that is estimated the best suitable
one after a selection process.

The immediate advantages brought are the following :

- better traffic distribution mainly perceived by the operator,

- reduction of the queuing phase perceived by both operator and subscriber.

This process must be considered as complementary of other main congestion solutions in the BSS
which aim preventively at a better traffic distribution. Indeed, the Alcatel Strategy is primarily to
distribute the traffic in advance so that no congestion situation occurs. These main congestion
solutions are the following in release B6.2 :

- load consideration in the handover selection of target cell,

- load management in multilayered or multiband structures (see feature 15 52 70 3M Control),
- ”smooth traffic distribution” (see feature 15 53 80 : the BSS continuously evaluates the load in
the cells and triggers handover when it becomes high).

These algorithms back the Alcatel strategy and prevail on directed retry (for further information refer
to functional feature description “Intelligent Traffic Management” 3DC 21144 0007 TQZZA).

Directed retry on congested serving cell should thus occur in a second step when no ongoing call
can be moved any more to neighbour cell (whole network heavily loaded, no MS under another
coverage, second band cell full).

For example, once the feature 15 53 80 has been extensively used preventively on ongoing calls and
congestion appears anyway, the directed retry will start to operate on new call attempts.

5. DIRECTED RETRY GENERAL OVERVIEW

Directed retry algorithms are not defined by GSM standards. The Alcatel BSS provides basically two
kinds of directed retry :

- directed retry on handover alarms based on same mechanism as classical handover,

- forced directed retry based on specific mechanisms.
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 5.1 Directed retry on handover alarms
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The directed retry on handover alarms is based on the intercell handover procedure. The detection
process is the same as for intercell handover. This also means that only intercell handover alarms
are considered.

If a handover alarm is detected during queuing, then the BSS will perform a directed retry. The
detection process is performed every SACCH measurement reporting period provided the two
prerequisite :

- directed retry is enabled,

- the queuing state is reached.

Then the cell selection process takes place and is also similar to the one of the intercell handover. It
will take into account the TCH traffic load situation of candidates.

Because directed retry is performed like a classical handover, the MS is very likely in the best cell
after the directed retry. The best cell is the one where both required BS and MS transmitted powers
are minimized and consecutively the induced interference in the network.

5.2 Forced directed retry

The forced directed retry is based on the received signal strength of the neighbour cells. If during
queuing, an internal neighbour cell is reported with a sufficient signal strength and has free TCH,
then the BSS will perform a directed retry.

This detection process (reporting) is performed every SACCH measurement reporting period under
the following conditions :

- directed retry is enabled,

- forced directed retry is enabled,
- the queuing state is reached,
- the average receive level of at least one configured neighbour cell is higher than the threshold
L_RXLEV_NCELL_DR.

The forced directed retry actually captures the MS as soon as acceptable by the target cell that is to
say when it is located at the edge of the handover area of this cell. The traffic for forced directed retry
has therefore a high probability to be located inside the emergency zone of the previously serving
cell. Therefore it might modify the interference pattern.
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 The threshold L_RXLEV_NCELL_DR, set at OMC-R, fixes the size of the overlapping area where
forced directed retry can be performed in the serving cell. It therefore also controls the interference
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level in the network.

Once a forced directed retry alarm has been raised, it is sent with the list of cells fulfilling the
condition to a specific cell selection process. This process is carried out and selects the cell which
fulfills the following conditions :

- the MS receives this cell with at least the minimum required signal strength to communicate,
- the cell has more than the minimum number of TCH channels free FREElevel_DR (this
condition controls the amount of directed retry traffic),
- among candidates the best power budget is obtained with this cell.

The minimum threshold of free TCHs in neighbour cell n for forced directed retry FREElevel_DR is a
parameter set by O&M for each neighbour cell n.

It can be noticed that the handover alarms have priority over the forced directed retry conditions. If
both are simultaneously met, the first ones prevail and a directed retry on HO alarms will be
attempted.

6. DIRECTED RETRY WITHOUT QUEUING INDICATION

The directed retry is initiated when the request is queued. Therefore it is linked with the queuing
procedure. The directed retry has been optimized in release B6.2 in relation with the queuing
procedure.

The queuing procedure is decided and triggered by the MSC. All kinds of behaviour may be
supported depending on the MSC :

- some MSC ask for queuing for all calls,

- some MSC ask for queuing on a call basis,
- some MSC never ask.

Accordingly, two kinds of BSS behaviour are possible in release B6.2 :

- the BSS attempts directed retry only when queuing is required, which is the basic behaviour
provided with feature 15 43 70 (Internal directed retry),
- the BSS performs directed retry in all cases, queuing required or not which corresponds to
feature 15 43 80 (Internal directed retry without queuing indication).
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 The first behaviour consists in performing directed retry only when there is queuing because there is
sufficient time to be worth doing it. This may be judged acceptable and will already bring an actual
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capacity increase in the network.

The second behaviour will further increase the directed retry efficiency because it enlarges its range
of applications. In this case, directed retry will be attempted in all cases, that is to say systematically.

More precisely, the technical implementation of 15 43 80 (Internal directed retry without queuing
indication) is as follows : when queuing is asked, a free TCH resource is sought in neighbour cell for
the queuing time duration; when queuing is not asked by the MSC, the resource is sought for a
shorter time fixed in relation with the time of BSS answer expected by the MSC.

At the end, if no free resource has been found, the BSC will terminate the assignment in the same
way as before, independently of queuing asked or not. On the contrary, if a directed retry attempt
occurs with an ongoing queuing, the request is dequeued. This means that if this directed retry
attempt fails, the assignment procedure will be terminated.

The selection of the desired BSS behaviour by the operator will be done with the parameter
QUEUE_ANYWAY.

If the operator wishes to operate as feature 15 43 70 (Internal directed retry), the parameter will be
set to false.

If the operator chooses an enhanced flexibility and interworking with all MSCs as feature 15 43 80
(Internal directed retry without queuing indication), the parameter will be set to true.

For example, when interworking with MSCs which queue national terminating calls and not
international ones for obvious charging considerations, the Alcatel BSS could perform directed retry
in all cases.

7. EXTERNAL DIRECTED RETRY

The feature 15 43 90 provides the “external directed retry“ in release B6.2. This enables to perform
the directed retry in a congested cell when the free resources are available in a cell belonging to
another BSC. As this point is not fully standardized, Alcatel has developed an enhanced solution
which offers the following options to the operator :

- it offers to maintain queuing during EDR (section 7.1),

- it supports the two types of “external directed retry“ (directed retry on handover alarms and
forced directed retry) in section 7.2,
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- it allows a flexible tuning (see section 8).

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 7.1 Queuing and External Directed Retry
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The Alcatel BSS freely offers to maintain queuing or not during the EDR procedure is being carried
out. This enables to serve the request in the serving cell after an EDR attempt failure if some free
resource in the serving cell have been freed in the meantime.

The triggering of the “external directed retry“ follows the same conditions as the “internal directed
retry“ as regards queuing.

However, the “external directed retry“ is a little bit more touchy due to two main reasons :

- it involves the MSC and the complete protocol between MSC and BSC has not been
standardized,
- the serving BSC has no traffic load information about the target cell because this one belongs
to another BSC.

As regards the first point, Alcatel provides a full answer even in a multi-vendor context : the Alcatel
algorithm is flexible enough to match any protocol supported by the connected MSC.

More precisely, the MSC may have three types of behaviour :

- some MSC expect the queuing maintained during the EDR procedure,
- some MSC expect the BSS to dequeue the request without being notified,
- some MSC expect the BSS to dequeue the request and notify it before the EDR procedure.

On the other hand, the operator may have different preferences for the BSS, mainly :

- follow MSC requirement (and keep queuing when it is asked for),

- never maintain the request in the queue.

The Alcatel BSS implementation allows to be compatible with any of the above-mentioned MSC
behaviour and BSS preference at same time.

This can be summed up in four behaviours for the BSS :

b1 : the MSC and the operator expects the BSS to maintain queuing : the BSS will not cancel the
assignment procedure,
b2 : the MSC expects queuing by the BSS but the operator does not : the BSS will cancel the
assignment procedure as if queuing had expired just after the EDR is triggered,
b3 : the MSC expects dequeuing with notification : the BSS will cancel the assignment procedure
and notify the MSC before EDR is triggered,
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 b4 : the MSC expects dequeuing without being notified : the BSS will cancel the assignment
procedure without sending the ASSIGNMENT FAILURE message to the MSC.
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The operator can set any of these four behaviours b1, b2, b3, b4 in the BSS by the proper definition
of the parameters :

- EDR_SEND_ASSIGN_FAIL
- EDR_MSG_ORDER
- EDR_ASSIGN_FAIL_CAUSE
- EDR_QUEUING_MAINTAINED

7.2 External Directed Retry on Handover Alarms

“External directed retry“ may be triggered on handover alarms. It then follows the classical handover
detection procedure as explained in section 5. Because some internal and external cells may
simultaneously fulfill the detection conditions, the cell list sent to the cell selection process may
comprise cells of both types.

Then the cell selection process will be also similar to the classical handover with the only difference
that the cell load (LOADfactor(n) ) is not taken into account for the external cells because it is not
known.

7.3 Forced External Directed Retry

The Alcatel BSS features also the forced directed retry towards an external cell, which is a more
efficient solution for traffic distribution as explained in section 5.

The detection is performed with a high receive level in the external cell as for internal cells. Because
some internal and external cells may simultaneously fulfill the detection conditions, the cell list sent to
the cell selection process may comprise cells of both types.

The cell selection process is then carried out the same way as for internal forced directed retry in two
parts : filtering of cells and then ranking according to power budget (see section 5). The only
difference is that the load of the external cell is no more taken into account in the filtering process
because it is not known. It has been replaced by a mark that the operator can set per external cell
and that will prevent any incoming external forced directed retry in this cell. This mark is associated
with the configuration of the parameter FREElevel_DR (see section 8).
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 8. OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE
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8.1 Configuration Management

not permitted without written authorization.

The Alcatel BSS provides a flexible tuning at OMC-R and an adaptable behaviour which can be
tailored to the customer’s network at installation.

The general directed retry functionality can first be activated / inhibited in the BSS by the parameter
EN_DR. This parameter can be set on a cell basis at the OMC-R.

As the directed retry detection can be considered as part of handover, the parameter
HO_INTERCELL_ALLOWED must be also set to enable in order to enable directed retry detection
(included forced directed retry).

8.1.1 Internal Directed Retry

Outgoing “internal directed retry“ is possible as soon as EN_DR is set to “enable” from the OMC-R.
Two timers will be also available to tune the directed retry duration T11 and T11_forced (see section
6).

To benefit from the IDR (internal directed retry ) without queuing indication so that the BSS attempts
directed retry not only when queuing is required but in all cases (see section 6), the parameter
QUEUE_ANYWAY must be set to true.

8.1.2 Forced Directed Retry

Four parameters are mainly involved in the operation of forced directed retry :

- A_PBGT_DR is the averaging window size for level of neighbour cell,

- EN_FORCED_DR must be set to allow both forced IDR and EDR. It is also assumed that
EN_DR is also set to enable,
- L_RXLEV_NCELL_DR is the threshold above which an average receive level of neighbour cell
triggers a forced directed retry,
- FREElevel_DR has a different action depending on whether IDR or EDR is involved.
For IDR, FREElevel_DR gives the minimum number of TCHs that must be free in the
neighbour cell n for forced directed retry.
For EDR, the operator has the possibility to inhibit or not external outgoing directed retry
towards this cell. If FREElevel_DR is set to the value 255, they will be inhibited, if it is set to
any other value, they will allowed.
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 8.1.3 External Directed Retry
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Outgoing “external directed retry“ will be allowed if both EN_EXT_DR is set to true and also EN_DR
set to enable at the OMC-R.

The operator can flexibly set the behaviour of its BSS in terms of queuing. The behaviour obtained
will be b1, b2, b3 or b4 as described in section 6 with the tuning of the parameters :

- EDR_MSG_ORDER : determines the order of transmission of ASSIGNMENT FAILURE and

HO REQUIRED on the A interface : if it is set to false, the assignment is first.
- EDR_SEND_ASSIGN_FAIL : determines wether ASSIGNMENT failure is sent to the MSC or
not. If it is set to false, it is not sent.
- EDR_ASSIGN_FAIL_CAUSE : determines the cause filled in ASSIGNMENT FAILURE
message. It is meaningful only if EDR_SEND_ASSIGN_FAIL is true.
- EDR_QUEUING_MAINTAINED : determines wether or not the assignment request is
maintained in queue. If it is false, the request is not maintained.

8.2 Performance Management

Performance measurement counters are completed according to the new features. Here is the
complete list of counters in B6.2 respectively for outgoing directed retries and incoming directed
retries.

For outgoing directed retries :

- number of outgoing forced IDR success,

- number of outgoing forced EDR success,
- number of outgoing normal IDR success,
- number of outgoing normal EDR success,
- number of outgoing forced IDR execution failure with reversion to old channel,
- number of outgoing forced IDR execution failure without reversion to old channel,
- number of outgoing forced EDR execution failure with reversion to old channel,
- number of outgoing forced EDR execution failure without reversion to old channel,
- number of outgoing normal IDR execution failure with reversion to old channel,
- number of outgoing normal IDR execution failure without reversion to old channel,
- number of outgoing normal EDR execution failure with reversion to old channel,
- number of outgoing normal EDR execution failure without reversion to old channel,
- number of outgoing forced IDR requests,
- number of outgoing forced EDR requests,
- number of outgoing normal IDR requests,
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- number of outgoing normal EDR requests,

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 - number of outgoing forced IDR attempts,
- number of outgoing forced EDR attempts,
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- number of outgoing normal IDR attempts,

- number of outgoing normal EDR attempts.

For incoming directed retries :

- number of incoming IDR successes,

- number of incoming IDR execution failures due to MS access,
- number of incoming IDR requests,
- number of incoming IDR attempts,
- number of incoming IDR preparation failure due to congestion,

End of Document
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