GPRS optimisation and Network visualization

Janne Myllyl

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Topics
What do we need to know? Different types of information available Basics of GPRS capacity optimisation

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Planning
The network elements: type specific information (e.g. family, radiation patterns) current settings Geographic information Land use Building height Statistics Models

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Planning
Using the information we can estimate: Network capacities in different areas Overall service quality Affect of changes in the network Problems: Models work in a perfect world Map information is never up-to-date or accurate Butterfly effect

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Are there more accurate methods?

Network performance can also be measured Field measurements Network measurements

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Optimisation basics
Optimise

Analyse

Nokia NetAct

Provision

Measure

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Measurement types
Call/Session Radio Quality Volume

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Field measurements
+ Basically a modified cellural phone is driven on a route. Reliable information available without much traffic volume Vendor independent Can measure competitors network performance A lot of driving around needed. Measurement sample time is very limited

Janne Myllyl

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Network measurements
+ Almost all possible events are measured. Measurements span over a longer timeperiod Not very standardized. Different vendors measure and collect slightly different data. Moderate traffic volume is needed for reliable measurements. The total amount of data is huge.

Janne Myllyl

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Busy Hour
The distribution of traffic is not even. During weekdays there occurs peaks in the network usage. Radio networks dont generally react well to traffic increase According to common sence: Network behaviour during the busy hour is the weakest link. Heuristics can be used to identify the bh.

Janne Myllyl

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What is visualized
Network static information Locations & directions Parameter values Relations between elements

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What is visualized
There are dozens of raw measurements (Performance Indicator) that are related to GPRS performance. User wants to see the result of a preliminary analysis based on the raw measurements (Key Performance Indicator).

Janne Myllyl

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KPI
Traditional benchmarks ( BER, FER, CSR, HSR ) (E) GPRS data related Reliability, max probability of erroneous RLC Throughput, amount of RLC payload Delay, measured time between SGSN and mobile (E)GPRS load, timeslots utilized by GPRS service And many more

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Visualizing KPI
Snaphot of network state: Performance of network on map List of elements not behaving within thresholds Trend of measurements Time based comparison between different elements / measurements Performance animations on map

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Network capacity balancing

In GSM network the available capacity is defined by timeslots dedicated for different services. It is possible to dimension timeslot usage between SDCCH CS PS

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Visualization of timeslot usage

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Visualizing service performance

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Visualizing cell level performance

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Effect of timeslot redimensioning

%6
5 4 3 2 1 0 3.1 10.1 17.1 24.1 CS PS SDDCH

The relevant analysis of service performance need to be continuous, since without increase of total capacity timeslot dimensioning is always compromise.

Janne Myllyl

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Treatment classes
Assigning GPRS capacity for different service classes PoC Streaming Corporate MMS Diverse DL/UL QoS requirements.

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Capacity and QoS

Capacity Balancing SMS Speech GPRS QoS Priorisation
TREC 3

Capacity offered for various services Priorisation

TREC 2

TREC 1 TREC 0

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Running out of capacity

7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 3.1 10.1 17.1 24.1 CS PS SDDCH

Dimensioning can now only be used to increase CS performance. The only way to improve PS performance is to increase the total capacity.

Janne Myllyl

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How to increase capacity

Some of the traffic volume could be redirected to other cells A new serving cell can be setup TRXs can be added for the current cell(s) to increase total amount of timeslots Impact matrix

Janne Myllyl

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Impact matrix
Also known as Interference matrix All cells whose signal has been measured in serving cells dominance area Handover possibility Used to determine which cells could cause interference with serving cell.

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Interference basics
The frequencies have traditionally been planned using reuse patterns and propagation models In order to increase the traffic capacity, the channel re-use becomes tighter Too tight use of the same and adjacent channels causes a decline of C/I BER and FER increase, worse coding schemes
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Interference without hopping

When no hopping is used some timeslots will constantly have more problems than others. After too much reuse performance deteriorates quickly

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Too tight reuse on map

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Averaging behaviour
Frequency hopping may be used to average network behaviour Main idea is to reduce continuous bad performance between mobile and bss.

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Averaged behaviour on map

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Hopping mode: BB
In BB hopping TRX frequencies dont change, but TRX serving the mobile phone does. Total amount of frequencies in BB hopping is the same as the number of TRXs. Also BCCH timeslots 1-7 are included in the hopping.

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Hopping mode: RF
In RF hopping TRX serving the mobile phone doesnt change, but TRX frequencies do. In RF hopping an allocation list contains frequencies that are used. BCCH TRX is not hopping. N channels enables 64*N different hopping sequences. MAIO offset has as many values as allocation list has channels HSN can be selected from 64 different sequences.

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Hopping mode comparison

TRX-1 TRX-2 TRX-3
BB RF BB RF BB RF

Mobile hops the same frequency pattern in both modes

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Measured performance
3.5

DCR

3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 1 2 3 4 5 BB RF

EFL

Basically RF hopping enables a more tight channel reuse

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Extreme channel reuse

Two types of service areas inside cell: Normal with regular reuse patterns (overlay) Small with extreme reuse (underlay) The same underlay frequencies are used even in neighboring cells. Cell tries to make as much as possible of the traffic volume to use the underlay frequencies.

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Extreme channel reuse

The same traffic volume can be managed with less frequencies. With this example situation 3 underlay TRXs could free 6 frequencies.

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underlay

References
3GPP TS 25.215 V6.0.0 Physical layer measurements 3GPP TS 23.107 V6.2.0 QoS concept and architecture Halonen, Romero, Melero: GSM, GPRS and EDGE performance

Janne Myllyl

T-110.456