CAS252U/VW low HS throughput

investigation
1 INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................................................3

2 PRELIMNINARY CELLS CHECK:.....................................................................................................3

2.1 Power Admission control...................................................................................................................3
2.2 BLER,................................................................................................................................................4
2.3 RBS power usage by R99 traffic........................................................................................................4
3 HS LEFT POWER:.................................................................................................................................6

4 INCREASING HS POWER....................................................................................................................8

5 CONCLUSION......................................................................................................................................12

6 Appendix 1: Balanced uplink and downlink handover areas...................................................................12

1 Introduction

Despite of having high HS traffic in CAS252U the Hs throughput is still low in this cells
compared to other cells with the same traffic and in which the throughput exceed 3.6 Mbps
thanks to the 2 optional features:

HSDPA Code Multiplexing and HS-SCCH Power Control.

HSDPA Dynamic Code Allocation.

This can be due to many reasons such as high R99 traffic, not enough DL codes, high BLER,
not enough DL power…

This document depicted the investigation done on CAS252.

2 Prelimninary cells check:

2.1 Power Admission control

Three parameters, pwrAdm, beMarginDlPwr and pwrAdmOffset, are related to downlink

transmitted carrier power and are used by Admission Control to decide which admission
requests to admit or reject. The default values that are implemented so far in Meditel network
are: pwrAdm=75, beMarginDlPwr=10 and pwrAdmOffset=10

The power is part of the admission control but this is not working for HSDPA because it is a
best effort treatment every new users is sharing the remaining power that is at least 25% of
the total power.

Figure 1 Admission Control workflow.

2.2 BLER,

The 3 cells were having normal values of the BLER around 10%, cqi adjustment was ON.

Figure 2 BLER evolution on CAS252U.

2.3 RBS power usage by R99 traffic

A suitable way of measuring the R99 traffic load is to monitor the average RBS power usage
in a cluster of cells. This gives a measure of how much power the R99 dedicated and
common channels consume. The average power usage is defined as the RBS load and can
be calculated as:
PR 99
Q RBS  (0)
Pnom

where
PR 99 is the average power used by the R99 dedicated and common channels measured in a
cluster of cells at TX reference point [W].
Pnom is the nominal output power of the RBS at TX reference point [W].

The average power by the R99 dedicated and common channels is measured using the RBS
counter pmTransmittedCarrierPowerNonHs, which gives the transmitted carrier power for
the R99 dedicated and common channels at TX reference point.

Here is a description of the counter: pmTransmittedCarrierPowerNonHs: The transmitted

carrier power for all non high-speed codes in the cell. Every 100 ms the transmitted carrier
power for all non-high-speed codes in the cell are sampled. The value is stored as a PDF
step range with resolution of 0.5 dBm, [52] long (25 - 50 dBm). The first value, [0] - - 25,
and the last value, [51] = 50 - , are exempted from the resolution. The counter type is PDF
and its unit is Number of values in dBm range (PDF)

The nominal output power of the RBS at TX reference point is given by parameter
maxDlPowerCapability.

The maxDlPowerCapability is calculated automatically by the RBS by the following formula:

maxDlPowerCapability = PRAP - DLATMA - DLAAFC (see explanation below)

Figure 3 maxDlPowerCapability calculations.

 for CAS252 the maxDlPowerCapability is calculated as bellow:
PRAP = 43 dBm, Power at RBS Antenna Port (Nominal Output Power per Carrier, typical
values are given per power class of the RBS type)
DLATMA = 0.2 dB, ASC loss (is reported automatically to the RBS by the ASC, typically
this is around 0.4dB)
DLAAFC = 5.4 dB, Antenna Feeder loss (the feeder loss from the RBS to the ASC, typical
values depends on feeder type and length).
maxDlPowerCapability = 43 – 0.2 – 5.4 = 37.4 dBm

Field trials have shown that high R99 traffic load corresponds to roughly 40% RBS load,
measured as average over a cell cluster during busy hour. When the average RBS load in
the cluster starts to exceed 40%, there is a high probability that some cells experience power
limitation due to the fact that the traffic is unevenly spread over the cluster. This may lead to
degraded performance statistics for the R99 traffic in the highly loaded cells and lower
HSDPA throughput.

A very high RBS power consumption for the R99 traffic would leave limited amount of power
to HSDPA.

CAS252U/V/W have a very low R99 traffic because of the activation of Directed Retry to
GSM which redirect all voice call to GSM. Also video calls are not so frequent in this site.

The results and details of calculations of the R99 traffic load are in paragraph: 4 (Increasing
HS power)

3 HS Left power:

CAS252U/V/W have low HS throughput due to lack of downlink power (which impacted by
too long feeders). The feeder length for CAS252 is 80m. This gives the following values for:

dlAttenuation= ulAttenuation= 54

electricalDlDelay= electricalUlDelay=3120

The ASC introduces also an extra attenuation of 0.2 dB:

ExternalTma.dlAttenuation= 2.

The max transmitted power at the refernce point is: maxDlPowerCapability=374 => 37.4 dBm
=> 7.4 dB => 5.49 Watt

Cpich power: primaryCpichPower = 300 => 30 dBm => 0 dB => 1 Watt

Control channels = 2.5 x [Cpich power] = 2.5 Watt

Total power cpich + common control channels: 3.5 Watt.

Percentage of [Total power cpich + common control channels] / [max transmitted power] =
63.7%

This means that there is not enough left power for HS.

The maxDlPowerCapability is confirmed by OSS statistocs which gives the usage of the total
DL power using the counter “pmTransmittedCarrierPower” described as the transmitted
carrier power measured at the TX reference point. The transmitted carrier power measured at
the TX reference point every 100 ms. The value is stored as a PDF step range, [50] long (25-
50.0 dBm, with 0.5 dBm resolution). The first value, [0] = 25, and the last, [51] = 50- , are
exempt from the 0.5 dBm resolution. The counter type is PDF and its unit is Number of
values in dBm range (PDF)

pmTransmittedCarrierPower doesn’t exceed 37.5 dBm as shown in graph 2.

Figure 4 pmTransmittedCarrierPower graph of CAS252U/V/W.

The above graph has been generated in the BH of each cell on the 24 th of march.

According to the above graph the overall transmitted power of CAS252U is 37 dBm for 75%
of the time.

The importance of the availability of enough power for HS in the reference point can be seen
in the following example of CA050U where the transmitted carrier power was 41.5 dBm for
30% of the time. Which allow the cell to reach 3.8 Mbps thanks also the optional features
HSDPA Code Multiplexing + dynamic code allocation.
 Figure 5: pmTransmittedCarrierPower graph of CA050U.

4 Increasing HS power

A partial solution would be to reduce primaryCpichPower from 300 to 270 for CAS252U/V/W,
the risk of this is to have an unbalanced system during HO (cf appendix 1)

PS: for the sites that exceed 3.6 Mbps the power usage is exceeding 37 dBm it can goes up
to 40 dBm Example (CA052U)

As a result there had been a significant increase of the throughput in CAS252U after
changing the CPICH power from 30 to 27 dBm. However a big improvement of the
throughput is not expected. In fact the change of primaryCpichPower has just changes the
repartition of the same amount of power (5.5 Watt in the antenna entry), the bellow table
gives a comparison before and after decreasing the CPICH power:

Table1: Max HS left power calculation before/after CPICH power changes.

The formulas of calculation of the above parameters are:

 CPICH power [dBm] = PrimaryCpichPower / 10

 CPICH power [dB] = CPICH power [dBm] - 30

 CPICH power [watt] = 10 (CPICH power [dB] / 10)

 CCCH [Watt] = 2.5 * CPICH power [watt]

 CPICH+CCCH [Watt] = CPICH power [watt] + CCCH [Watt]

 MaxDLPower [Watt] = 10 (((MaxDlPowerCapability/10)-30)/10)

 CPICH+CCCH (%) = CPICH+CCCH (Watt) / MaxDLPower (Watt)

 Max HS power [Watt] = MaxDLPower [Watt] – (CPICH+CCCH [Watt])

 Max % HS Power (%) = Max HS power [Watt] / MaxDLPower [Watt]

The evolution of the throughput is displayed in the bellow graph.

Time of the
change

Figure 6: Evolution of HS throughput before/after CPICH power changes.

Figure 7: PR 99 before and after CPICH power changes on CAS252U.

We can note from this graph is the following:

1st conclusion:
- The total non HS power in CAS252U was between 33 and 33.5 dBm for 83% of the time
on the 24th of march (before CPICH power changes from 30 to 27).
- The total non HS power in CAS252U was between 30 and 30.5 dBm for 77% of the time
on the 24th of march (before CPICH power changes from 30 to 27).
- This means that the change was useful to reduce the non HS power.

2nd conclusion:
- From calculation above Pnom (watt)= maxDlPowerCapability (watt)= 5.49 watt.
- Before the change the total PR 99 (nonHS power) was between [33 dBm-33.5 dBm]=[2
watt-2.23 watt] which means a percentage to Pnom (5.5 watt) of: [36% - 40%] for 83 % of
the time.
- After the change the total PR 99 (nonHS power) was between [33 dBm-33.5 dBm]=[1
watt-2.12 watt] which means a percentage to Pnom (5.5 watt) of: [18% - 20%] for 77 % of
the time.
- This confirms that the change has reduced the % of non HS power, second conclusion is
confirmation of low R99 traffic (a high R99 traffic could lead to load of 75% set by the
parameter pwrAdm).

This is confirmed by the following graph which displayes pmNoOfPowLimSlots agregated for
all sectors of CAS252.

Here is a description of the counter: The number of power-limited slots during a GP. This
counter is only applicable for configurations with one carrier for each Transmitter (TX)
antenna. Each power-limited slot detected on the DL power-clipping device increases the
count by 1. This occurs when the traffic load for each antenna branch is too high. Counter
Unit: Number of
 Date of changes

Figure 8: pmNoOfPowLimSlots before and after CPICH power change.

Figure 9: pmNoOfPowLimSlots after CPICH power change.

pmNoOfPowLimSlots has been reduced after reduction of CPICH power however according
to figure 8, however it is still high after the change.
5 Conclusion

In all cases the left power for HS is still low even if we decreased the cpich power to 27dBm
because the maxDlPowerCapability is already reduced to 37.4 dBm (5.5 watt).

The proposed solution are physical optimizations on CAS252:

- Changing the feeder type from 7/8 inch to 1''-1/4 inch which will include a gain of 1.4 dB.

- Increase the transmitted power of the RBS to 30 watt.

- Move the node B into the roof to make it close to the pylon.

- Installation of IBS in Meditel premises.

6 Appendix 1: Balanced uplink and downlink handover

areas

A balanced system in this context means that the uplink and downlink handover regions
coincide. More precisely, a balanced system is achieved when uplink and downlink path loss
in a cell is equal at the handover border, and that this equality is valid in every cell. The path
loss value may still vary from one cell to another.

However, as is seen below, this will not normally be the case. The handover region and the
serving cell are determined by the received pilot power from the cells in the area. The uplink
is not considered in the decision. In Figure 3 and in Figure 4, an example of unbalance and
balance is given. Note that the primary CPICH power is defined at the reference point.

Figure 10. Example of an unbalanced system where there is a mismatch between uplink path
loss between cell A and cell B at the cell border
Figure 11. The same system as in Figure 3, but after balancing. Uplink and downlink ideal
handover regions coincide

At initial deployment it is recommended to balance the system, i.e. to configure so that uplink
and downlink handover areas coincide. This will create a base for system stability and will
eliminate the risk that some sites are having problems due to large imbalance. After initial
deployment, activities can then be pursued in order to tune the pilot setting according to
coverage or traffic variations. With this approach it is easier to trace consequences due to
pilot tuning. It is important to stress that large unbalances need to be corrected, whereas
smaller imperfections are not critical.