Intelligent Frequency Hopping

HELSINKI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
Department of Electrical and Communications Engineering
Riku Ertimo
Planning and performance analysis of intelligent frequency

hopping GSM networks
Thesis submitted for fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of
Science in Technology. Espoo _____________.
Supervisor:
Prof Pertti Vainikainen
Instructor:
Juhani Huttunen DTech
Helsinki University of Technology Abstract of the Master's Thesis
__________________________________________________________________________
Author: Riku Ertimo
Name of the Thesis: Planning and performance analysis of intelligent frequency hopping
GSM networks
Date: 07. Jun. 99 Number of pages: 96

__________________________________________________________________________
Faculty: Department of Electrical and Communications Engineering
Professorship: Radio Engineering Code: S-26

__________________________________________________________________________
Supervisor: Prof Pertti Vainikainen
Instructor: Juhani Huttunen DTech

__________________________________________________________________________
The main objective of this work was to study the capacity and the quality gains achieved by
means of IFH solution. Another important objective was to find out the improvement in the
quality that can be obtained by using computer aided network planning methods, and how
well the computerized network planning supports the actual implementation of the plan in a
real network.
This work concentrates on the analysis of two GSM network capacity enhancement features:
frequency hopping (FH) which is a standard GSM feature, and intelligent underlay-overlay
(IUO) which is a feature proposed by Nokia. Combined FH and IUO is referred to as
intelligent frequency hopping, IFH. In frequency hopping the frequency of the carrier wave
is changed according to predefined spreading code known by the transmitter and receiver.
IUO on the other hand is based on dividing the frequency band into two separate layers
having different reuse patterns. This way the spectral efficiency of network can be improved.
The analysis of the quality and capacity improvements achieved by means of IFH were
studied using simulations, and also a field test trial was conducted in co-operation with one
of Nokia’s customer to verify the gain achieved with IFH. According to simulations IFH can
provide a capacity gain of 35% when compared with pure frequency hopping networks.
Based on the field test trial the capacity gain of IFH is around 39% over FH, which verifies
the simulation results. In all these cases the frequency allocation was performed manually,
thus the real interference was not taken into account in the allocation phase. When using
Nokia’s network planning tool NPS/X, which tries to minimize the interference in the
network in the frequency allocation, the quality of the network was even better in terms of
drop call rate.
In this thesis some guidelines are also given for how the networks utilizing IFH should be
planned. In addition, this work tries to outline how the future data services, HSCSD and
GPRS, will interact with intelligent frequency hopping.
__________________________________________________________________________
Keywords: frequency hopping, IUO, IFH, GSM, radio network planning
__________________________________________________________________________
2
TEKNILLINEN KORKEAKOULU Diplomityön tiivistelmä
__________________________________________________________________________
Tekijä: Riku Ertimo
Työn nimi: Älykkäiden taajuushyppelyä käyttävien GSM-verkkojen suunnittelu ja

evaluointi
Päivämäärä: 07.06.1999 Sivumäärä: 96

__________________________________________________________________________
Osasto: Sähkö- ja tietoliikennetekniikan osasto
Professuuri: Radiotekniikka Koodi: S-26

__________________________________________________________________________
Työn valvoja: Professori Pertti Vainikainen
Työn ohjaaja: TkT Juhani Huttunen

__________________________________________________________________________
Työn päämääränä oli tutkia sitä kapasiteetti- ja toisaalta laatuparannusta, joka voidaan
saavuttaa hyödyntäen älykästä taajuushyppelyä (IFH) GSM-verkossa. Toinen tärkeä tavoite
oli tutkia kuinka tietokonepohjaisia verkkosuunnittelumenetelmiä voidaan hyödyntää itse
verkkosuunnittelussa, ja kuinka suuren laatuparannuksen tietokonepohjainen suunnittelu
tarjoaa.
Työssä tutkittiin kahta GSM-verkoissa käytettävää ominaisuutta, joilla voidaan parantaa

verkon suorituskykyä. Toinen ominaisuuksista on taajuushyppely, joka on GSM-verkkojen
standardoitu ominaisuus. Toista puolestaan kutsutaan IUO:ksi, joka on vain Nokian
käyttämä ominaisuus GSM-verkoissa. Taajuushyppelyssä kantoaallon taajuutta vaihdellaan
ennalta määrätyssä järjestyksessä samaan tahtiin sekä lähetin- että vastaanotinpäässä. IUO
puolestaan perustuu käytettävissä olevan taajuusalueen kahtiajakoon, joista toisella alueella
käytetään perinteistä taajuustoistumaa, mutta toisella paljon perinteistä tiukempaa
taajuustoistumakuviota. Tällä tavoin spektritehokkuutta saadaan parannettua.
IFH:lla saavutettavaa kapasiteetti- ja laatuparannusta tutkittiin simuloimalla. Myös

kenttätestejä suoritettiin erään Nokian asiakkaan verkossa, jotta IFH:sta saatava hyöty
voitaisiin varmemmin näyttää toteen. Simulointien mukaan IFH:n avulla voidaan parantaa
kapasiteettia noin 35% verrattuna vastaavaan taajuushyppelevään verkkoon. Kenttätesteissä
havaittiin, että kapasiteetti todellisuudessa parani noin 39% verrattuna taajuushyppelevään
verkkoon. Taajuussuunnittelu tehtiin kaikissa em. tapauksissa manuaalisesti, jolloin
todellista muiden käyttäjien aiheuttamaa häiriötä verkossa ei voitu ottaa huomioon
taajuusallokoinnissa. Kokeita suoritettiin myös käyttäen taajuussuunnitelussa Nokian
verkkosuunnitteluohjelmaa, NPS/X:ää, jolloin häiriö verkossa pyritään minimoimaan.
Tietokonepohjaisen taajuussuunnittelun antamat tulokset olivat vieläkin parempia
verrattaessa manuaalisesti tehtyyn taajuussuunnitteluun.
Tässä työssä hahmotellaan myös suuntaviivoja, joiden mukaan IFH-verkkoja pitäisi

suunnitella. Samoin esitetään joitakin näkökohtia tulevaisuuden datapalveluiden, HSCSD:n
ja GPRS:n, sekä toisaalta IFH:n vuorovaikutuksista keskenään.
__________________________________________________________________________
Avainsanat: taajuushyppely, IUO, älykäs taajuushyppely, GSM, radioverkkosuunnittelu
__________________________________________________________________________
3
PREFACE
This thesis has been made for Nokia Telecommunications, Radio Network Planning Tools in
Espoo. I would like to thank Nokia Telecommunications for providing the opportunity to
prepare this work. Especially I would like to thank Juhani Huttunen who has been the
instructor of this thesis, and whose assistance and guidance in defining the subject and
contents of this work has been valuable. Also Jari Ryynänen, to whom I am very grateful,
has given me many valuable comments concerning the contents of this thesis. I also owe
special thanks to Jaakko Melamies for co-operation in IUO blocking considerations, and for
providing support in Matlab programming.
Professor Pertti Vainikainen has been the supervisor of this thesis. To him I owe the greatest
thanks for the advice and interest he has shown to this work.
And last, I would like to thank my parents and my fiancée Minna for the support and
understanding during this project.
Espoo, 07. June 1999
Riku Ertimo
4
ABSTRACT
LYHENNELMÄ
PREFACE
CONTENTS
TABLES AND FIGURES
LIST OF SYMBOLS
ACRONYMS
1 INTRODUCTION..............................................................................................14
2 GENERAL OVERVIEW OF GSM ....................................................................16
2.1 GSM system architecture ...................................................................................................................16

2.1.1 Basic network elements ...............................................................................................................16
2.1.2 Frequency band ...........................................................................................................................17
2.1.3 Access method.............................................................................................................................18
2.2 Transmission in air interface .............................................................................................................19

2.2.1 Source coding..............................................................................................................................19
2.2.2 Channel coding............................................................................................................................19
2.2.3 Interleaving..................................................................................................................................20
2.2.4 Ciphering.....................................................................................................................................20
2.2.5 Modulation method .....................................................................................................................20
2.3 Channel organization .........................................................................................................................21

2.3.1 Physical and logical channels ......................................................................................................21
2.3.2 Frame structure in GSM ..............................................................................................................21
2.4 Radio resource management..............................................................................................................22

2.4.1 Power control ..............................................................................................................................22
2.4.2 Discontinuous transmission .........................................................................................................23
2.4.3 Handover .....................................................................................................................................23
3 PRINCIPLES OF FH, IUO AND IFH ................................................................24
3.1 Properties of radio path .....................................................................................................................24

3.1.1 Large scale path loss....................................................................................................................24
3.1.2 Shadow fading.............................................................................................................................24
3.1.3 Multipath time delay spread ........................................................................................................24
3.1.4 Doppler spread ............................................................................................................................25
3.2 Properties of frequency hopping .......................................................................................................26

3.2.1 Frequency hopping theory ...........................................................................................................26
3.2.2 Frequency diversity .....................................................................................................................28
3.2.3 Interference diversity...................................................................................................................28
3.3 Frequency hopping in GSM...............................................................................................................29

3.3.1 Hopping modes ...........................................................................................................................29
3.3.2 MA lists and Hopping sequences ................................................................................................30
3.3.3 MAIO management .....................................................................................................................30
5
3.3.4 Loading of FH system .................................................................................................................31
3.3.5 Reuse factor of frequency hopping network ................................................................................32
3.3.6 Frequency hopping gain ..............................................................................................................34
3.4 Intelligent underlay overlay ...............................................................................................................36

3.4.1 Principles of IUO ........................................................................................................................36
3.4.2 IUO parameters ...........................................................................................................................38
3.4.3 Intelligent frequency hopping......................................................................................................39
4 NETWORK PLANNING AND IFH SYSTEM SOLUTION.................................41
4.1 Principles of network planning..........................................................................................................41
4.2 Radio link measurements ...................................................................................................................42

4.2.1 Signal strength.............................................................................................................................42
4.2.2 Bit error rate and RXQUAL ........................................................................................................43
4.2.3 Frame erasure ratio......................................................................................................................43
4.2.4 Drop call rate...............................................................................................................................44
4.2.5 Handover success rate .................................................................................................................44
4.2.6 Subjective voice quality measures...............................................................................................44
4.3 Nokia's system solution for IFH-networks........................................................................................45

4.3.1 Nokia's implementation in BSS ...................................................................................................45
4.3.2 Nokia's network planning system (NPS/X) .................................................................................46
4.3.3 Network management system (NMS).........................................................................................47
5 IFH PLANNING STRATEGIES ........................................................................48
5.1 Planning concepts ...............................................................................................................................48

5.1.1 Frequency split between layers....................................................................................................48
5.1.2 TRX configurations.....................................................................................................................48
5.1.3 Effects of traffic distribution .......................................................................................................49
5.2 Blocking of IUO networks..................................................................................................................49
5.3 IFH-planning using NPS/X ................................................................................................................51

5.3.1 Allocation process .......................................................................................................................51
5.3.2 Automatic reference cell generation ............................................................................................53
5.3.3 Interference analysis....................................................................................................................55
5.4 Simulations ..........................................................................................................................................56

5.4.1 Simulator .....................................................................................................................................56
5.4.2 Blocking probabilities .................................................................................................................58
5.4.3 Effect of direct access to super....................................................................................................58
5.4.4 Simulated capacity gain of IFH ...................................................................................................59
6 FIELD TRIAL ...................................................................................................61
6.1 Trial environment ...............................................................................................................................61
6.2 Test cases .............................................................................................................................................61

6.2.1 Pure frequency hopping cases .....................................................................................................61
6.2.2 IFH cases .....................................................................................................................................62
6.3 Measurements .....................................................................................................................................63

6.3.1 Statistics collected in OMC .........................................................................................................63
6.3.2 Walk and drive tests ....................................................................................................................64
6.4 Transitions between regular and super layers .................................................................................64

6.4.1 C/I thresholds ..............................................................................................................................64
6
6.4.2 Quality handovers........................................................................................................................65
6.4.3 Absorption...................................................................................................................................65
6.4.4 Direct access to the super layer ...................................................................................................67
6.5 Quality and capacity improvements..................................................................................................68

6.5.1 Traffic and Handovers.................................................................................................................68
6.5.2 Drop Call Rate.............................................................................................................................69
6.5.3 RXQUAL distributions ...............................................................................................................72
6.5.4 FER .............................................................................................................................................73
6.5.5 Quality gain of IFH .....................................................................................................................75
6.5.6 Quality estimated by NPS/X........................................................................................................76
6.5.7 Capacity gain of IFH ...................................................................................................................77
6.6 Network planning methods for IFH ..................................................................................................78

6.6.1 Manual planning..........................................................................................................................78
6.6.2 NPS/X planning...........................................................................................................................80
6.6.3 Combinations of manual and NPS/X planning ............................................................................81
6.6.4 MAIO management .....................................................................................................................81
6.6.5 Interference caused by the second adjacent channel....................................................................82
6.7 Performance of SDCCH and TCH ....................................................................................................83
7 PERFORMANCE OF IFH WITH OTHER FEATURES.....................................85
7.1 High speed circuit switch data (HSCSD) ..........................................................................................85
7.2 General packet radio system (GPRS)................................................................................................86
7.3 IFH in GSM900/GSM1800 networks ................................................................................................87
8 CONCLUSIONS...............................................................................................90
9 REFERENCES.................................................................................................92
10 APPENDICES ..................................................................................................94
7
TABLES AND FIGURES
Table 3.1 An example of MAIO allocation with synthesized RF hopping. ...........................................................................31

Table 3.2 IUO handover parameters in BSC. ........................................................................................................................39
Table 4.1 Mapping of RXLEV. .............................................................................................................................................42
Table 4.2 Relation between BER and RXQUAL. .................................................................................................................43
Table 4.3 Mapping between FER and subjective speech quality...........................................................................................44
Table 4.4 Correspondences between SQI and MOS classes..................................................................................................45
Table 5.1 Parameter settings used in the simulator................................................................................................................57
Table 5.2 Summary of the simulation results.........................................................................................................................60
Table 6.1 Frequency configurations in the trial. ....................................................................................................................63
Table 6.2 Example of offset planning....................................................................................................................................82
Table 6.3 Examples of manual planning with consecutive and punctured frequency groups................................................83
Table 7.1 The data rates with different channel coding and different number of TSs. ..........................................................85
Table 7.2 Data rates supported by GPRS. .............................................................................................................................87
Figure 2.1 Generic GSM system architecture. .......................................................................................................................17

Figure 2.2 GSM bands...........................................................................................................................................................18
Figure 2.3 Multiple access methods used in GSM. ...............................................................................................................18
Figure 2.4 Principles of the burst forming in GSM (Speech/FS)...........................................................................................20
Figure 2.5 Frame structure in GSM. ......................................................................................................................................22
Figure 3.1 Different signal multipaths. ..................................................................................................................................25
Figure 3.2 Graphical presentation of rms delay spread..........................................................................................................27
igure 3.3 Frequency correlation as a function of frequency spacing......................................................................................28
Figure 3.4 Difference between BB- and RF-FH. ...................................................................................................................29
Figure 3.5 An example of frequency load in an RF hopping cell. .........................................................................................32
Figure 3.6 Frequency reuse of 7 and 3. .................................................................................................................................33
Figure 3.7 Frequency diversity gain of frequency hopping link against co-channel interference compared to a non-hopping
link [Sal98]. ................................................................................................................................................................35
Figure 3.8 Values of the averaged on a call C/I ratios, not exceeded at an outage probability equal to 10%, against the
carried traffic per cell (Erl) [Sal98].............................................................................................................................36
Figure 3.9 Frequency reuse in IUO network. ........................................................................................................................37
Figure 3.10 Handover hysteresiseris area in an IUO cell.......................................................................................................38
Figure 4.1 Different hopping schemes...................................................................................................................................45
Figure 4.2 NPS/X block diagram ..........................................................................................................................................47
Figure 5.1 Different schemes to share frequencies. ..............................................................................................................48
Figure 5.2 Blocking probabilities of the regular layer as a function of offered load with different direct access to super (DA)
probability factors. ......................................................................................................................................................50
Figure 5.3 Blocking probabilities of the super layer as a function of offered load with different direct access to super (DA)
probability factors. ......................................................................................................................................................51
Figure 5.4 Relations between different hierarchical structures..............................................................................................52
Figure 5.5 Actions prior to frequency allocation [Nok98f]. ..................................................................................................53
Figure 5.6 Interference Calculation Area definition. .............................................................................................................54
Figure 5.7 Simulated BER as a function of C/I. ....................................................................................................................56
Figure 5.8 BER as a function of I/C. .....................................................................................................................................56
Figure 5.9 Call dropping procedure in the simulator.............................................................................................................57
Figure 5.10 Comparison of simulated and calculated blocking probabilities with 1+1 TRX configuration of IUO. ............58
Figure 5.11 Dropped call versus direct access to super threshold .........................................................................................59
Figure 6.1. Principle of the reuses in RF hopping cases........................................................................................................62
Figure 6.2 Reuse patterns in easy IFH cases..........................................................................................................................62
Figure 6.3 Reuse patterns in heuristic IFH cases...................................................................................................................63
Figure 6.4. Absorption in different IFH cases. ......................................................................................................................66
Figure 6.5. Minimum and maximum absorption. ..................................................................................................................67
Figure 6.6 Failed and unsuccessful handovers due to lack of resources in all the test cases. ................................................68
Figure 6.7 The number of call and handover attempts in all the test cases............................................................................69
Figure 6.8 Drop call rates with effective reuses in different FH cases...................................................................................70
Figure 6.9 Drop call rates with effective reuses in different IFH cases. ................................................................................70
Figure 6.10 Drop call rate as a function of effective frequency loading in IUO, FH and IFH cases. ....................................71
Figure 6.11 The proportion of RXQUAL classes 6 and 7 with effective reuse in different FH cases. ..................................73
Figure 6.12 The proportion of RXQUAL classes 6 and 7 with effective reuse in different IFH cases. .................................73
Figure 6.13 FER distribution within each RXQUAL class for BCCH frequency layer.........................................................74
Figure 6.14 FER distribution within each RXQUAL class for hopping regular layer...........................................................75
8
Riku Ertimo: Planning and performance analysis of intelligent frequency hopping GSM networks
Figure 6.15 FER distribution within each RXQUAL class for the super layer......................................................................75
Figure 6.16 Drop call rate as a function of effective frequency loading in modified IUO, FH and IFH cases. .....................76
Figure 6.17 RXQUAL 1-7 distributions estimated using NPS/X interference analysis tool, and measured in the actual
network. ......................................................................................................................................................................77
Figure 6.18 Capacity gain as a function of DCR. ..................................................................................................................78
Figure 6.19 TCH and SDCCH success rates with different effective reuses. ........................................................................84
9
Chapter 1: Introduction
LIST OF SYMBOLS
α angle between MS and BS

β wave number
δ(t) impulse function
λ wavelength
λ call arrival probability
µ call ending probability
ρ correlation
τ mean excess delay
∆ω difference of angular velocities
A offered traffic
a(i)n,m transition probability coefficient
ai reflection coefficient of the ith path
Bc coherence bandwidth
BER(C/I) BER as a function of carrier-to-interference ratio (C/I)
C number of channels in system
c speed of light
D frequency reuse distance
DTX discontinuous transmission factor
ds rms delay spread
e(t) received resultant impulse signal
Erl(PC,NTCH) cell traffic
f frequency
H average call holding time
IV interference value
J0(⋅) Bessel function of first kind and zero order
K frequency reuse pattern
Leff effective frequency load
Lfrac fractional load
Lfreq frequency load
LHW hardware load
LMA1 length of the interfered MA list
LMA2 length of the interfering MA list
load frequency load factor
m number of super layer channels
m number of burst over which the interleaving is performed
NC number of common channels in MA list pair
Ncells number of cells
Nf number of hopping frequencies in the serving cell
Nfreqs number of available frequencies
NMA number of frequencies in an MA list
NTCH number of traffic channels
NTRX number of hopping TRXs in a cell
n absolute radio frequency channel number
n number of bits to be interleaved
n integer in data speeds
n number of regular layer channels
Pbl blocking probability
10
Phit hit probability

PI interference probability
Pn state probability
pixD number of pixels in the dominance area
pixI number of interfering pixels
p direct access probability
R radius of a cell
Reff effective reuse
Rfa frequency allocation reuse
r distance
r regular layer transition probability
s super layer transition probability
s0(t) impulse signal
T time delay
TErl traffic in a cell
v speed
11
ACRONYMS
AFE Antenna Filter Equipment

AGCH Access Grant Channel
ARFCN Absolute Radio Frequency Channel Number
AuC Authentication Center
BB-FH Baseband Hopping
BCCH Broadcast Control CHannel
BER Bit Error Rate
BSC Base Station Controller
BSIC Base Station Identity Code
BSS Base Station Subsystem
BTS Base Transceiver Station
CDMA Code Division Multiple Access
CSAC Cell Service Area Class
DA Direct Access to Super
DCR Drop Call Rate
DTX Discontinuous Transmission
EDGE Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution
EGSM extended GSM
EIR Equipment Identity Register
FACCH Fast Associated Control Channel
FCCH Frequency Correction Channel
FDMA Frequency Division Multiple Access
FER Frame Erasure Ratio
FG Frequency Group
FH Frequency Hopping
GMSK Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying
GPRS General Packet Radio Service
GSM Global System for Mobile communication
HCL Hierarchical Cell Layer
HLR Home Location Register
HO Handover
HSCSD High Speed Circuit Switched Data
HSN Hopping Sequence Number
IFH Intelligent Frequency Hopping
IUO Intelligent Underlay-Overlay
LOS line of sight
MA Mobile Allocation
ME Mobile Equipment
MOS Mean Opinion Score
MRP Multiple Reuse Pattern
MSC Mobile Services Switching Center
NMS Network Management System
NPS/X Nokia's network planning system
NSS Network Subsystem
NT Non-Transparent
OMC Operation and Maintenance Centre
PC Power Control
PCH Paging Channel
PSTN Public Switched Telephone Network
RACH Random Access CHannel
RBER Residual Bit Error Rate
RELP-LPT Residually Excited Linear Predictive Coder-Long Term Predictor
12
RF-FH Radio Frequency Hopping

RXLEV Received Signal Strength
RXQUAL Received Signal Quality
SACCH Slow Associated Control Channel
SCH Synchronization Channel
SDCCH Stand-alone Dedicated Control Channel
SID Silence Descriptor
SIM Subscriber Identity Module
SQI Speech Quality Indicator
T Transparent
TC Transcoder
TCH Traffic Channels
TDMA Time Division Multiple Access
TEMS Test Mobile System
TRX Transceiver
TS Time Slot
VAD Voice Activity Detector
VLR Visitor Location Register
WWW World Wide Web
13
1 INTRODUCTION
The history of mobile communication systems begins in the late 1940s when the first public
mobile telephone system was introduced in the US markets. The system used high power
amplifiers, and was able to cover distances of over 50 km. However, it took many decades
before the mobile systems became commercially important. In the late 1970s and in the
beginning of 1980 several analog cellular systems were introduced around the world. In the
Scandinavian countries a lot of effort was put on the development of one of the analog
cellular systems (NMT). In the beginning of 90s digital cellular systems were introduced in
addition to the analog systems. The digital cellular standard developed in Europe (GSM) has
gained a worldwide acceptance as the first universal mobile system.
Wireless communication is enjoying its fastest growth in its history. This is due to the fact
that the prices of the mobile terminals have decreased dramatically in the past five years.
Because of this the tendency seems to be that the majority of the new subscribers is expected
to be private users. Typically private users have lower airtime demands than business users,
thus the airtime usage per subscriber is expected to decrease slightly in the next few years.
However, the total population of the users is expected rise significantly in many countries,
thus the overall traffic to be supported by mobile networks will rise during the next few
years. Also, the airtime usage per subscriber can be affected by, eg, tariff schemes and
changing user habits, and the effect of this fact can be difficult to foresee. To further increase
the airtime usage of private users the operators have approached individually different
market segments (ie business or private users) with a tariff package fitted to their needs.
There are many ways to increase the capacity of GSM network. In this thesis one possibility
that will hopefully provide extra capacity without excessive hardware investments is
presented. The method can be divided into two separate GSM capacity enhancement
features. First one of these features is Frequency Hopping (FH), which is actually one of the
standard GSM features. The other one is referred to as Intelligent Underlay-Overlay (IUO),
which is a capacity enhancement feature proposed by Nokia. The work is mainly
concentrated on the capacity and quality analysis when introducing combined FH and IUO in
the network. The combined FH and IUO is referred to as Intelligent Frequency Hopping
(IFH). Some suggestions how networks utilizing IFH should be planned are also given in
this thesis.
In Chapter 2 the general system architecture of GSM networks is described. The basic
information prior to transmission, as well as the channel and frame structures in GSM are
provided. Basic cellular network concepts, such as handover and radio resource management
in general are discussed in this chapter.
Chapter 3 is concentrated on the basic functionality of frequency hopping and IUO. First, an
overview of the electromagnetic propagation is provided. Frequency hopping is discussed as
one of the spread spectrum systems, and then the implementation of the frequency hopping
in GSM is described. Principles of IUO/IFH, and parameters related to IUO/IFH are also
included in the chapter.
Chapter 4 outlines the problem related to the network planning process. Network
performance indicators to be observed in IFH networks are described in this chapter. Nokia’s
system solution for IFH is also presented here.
14
Chapter 5 deals with IFH planning strategies, ie how the frequencies should used in IFH
networks, and which are the feasible hardware configurations for IFH. Some aspects of using
computerized planning of IFH networks are provided. In this chapter the problem related to
the dimensioning of the blocking probability in IUO/IFH network is discussed. The
performance of IFH networks is analyzed by means of simulating the various factors
affecting the ability of the network to absorb traffic.
The results of the field test trial conducted in co-operation with one of Nokia’s customer are
presented in Chapter 6. The suitable parameter sets, and their effect on the performance of
IFH networks are presented. The guidelines for the planning of IFH networks based on the
trial experiences are provided in this chapter.
Chapter 7 presents some other features available in GSM networks, and how these features
and IFH interact with each other. The emphasis of the consideration is on the future data
services, and their co-existence in the network with IFH.
The conclusions are provided in Chapter 8. Also the possible improvements to evolve the
performance of IFH networks are discussed. Some ideas related to IFH to be further tested
are also given in the last chapter.
15
2 GENERAL OVERVIEW OF GSM
The acronym GSM stands for Global System for Mobile communication. The development
of GSM started in early '80s in Europe, when it was realized that many European countries
used different incompatible mobile systems. Due to this, a special group was founded to
develop a new mobile system for Western Europe. Later GSM has been adopted also in
many countries outside Europe.
2.1 GSM system architecture
2.1.1 Basic network elements
A GSM network can be divided into three different subsystems, which are called Network
Subsystem (NSS), Base Station Subsystem (BSS) and Network Management System (NMS).
The actual network needed for call establishment consists of NSS and BSS. The latter is
responsible for radio path control, while NSS takes care of the call control functions. NMS is
needed for operational and maintenance purposes.
In NSS the call controlling is managed by Mobile Services Switching Center (MSC). It
identifies the origin and the destination of the call, as well as the type of the call. In Home
Location Register (HLR) subscriber related information is stored permanently, whereas
Visitor Location Register (VLR) contains a copy of HLR. A VLR database is always
temporary, and it has more information eg about subscriber's location compared with HLR.
Usually VLR is integrated with MSC. Authentication Center (AuC) is responsible for
authenticating the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM), and Equipment Identity Register (EIR)
takes care of identifying the Mobile Equipment (ME).
In BSS Base Station Controller (BSC) is the central network element controlling the radio
network. Base Transceiver Station (BTS) can be considered to be a slave of BSC
maintaining the air interface. In air interface the effective standard bit rate is 13 kbit/s, while
it in Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) is 64kbit/s. Thus a converter is needed to
change the data rates. In GSM this is called Transcoder (TC).
The purpose of NMS is to monitor various functions and elements of the network. Its major
tasks can be divided into three parts: fault management, configuration management and
performance management. The generic GSM network architecture is depicted in Figure 2.1.
16
Chapter 2: General overview of GSM
BTS TC
BSC EIR AuC OMC

BTS
PSTN
MSC ISDN
BTS
TC
VLR HLR
BTS BSC
BTS
AIR Abis A NMS - Network

Management
BSS - Base Station Subsystem NSS - Network Subsystem System
Figure 2.1 Generic GSM system architecture.
2.1.2 Frequency band
Normal GSM900 uses two frequency bands of 25 MHz. The positioning of these bands are
890-915 MHz for subscriber-to-base station transmissions (uplink direction) and 935-960
MHz for base station-to-subscriber transmissions (downlink direction) [ETS92a]. The usage
of two different frequency bands allows simultaneous radio transmission and reception
between the mobile and the base station. This is also called full duplex. Corresponding
uplink and downlink channels are always related to each other in a very simple manner:
fixed frequency gap of 45 MHz, duplex separation, separates the channels. The channels are
also separated in time domain, ie transmission and reception do not happen at the same
instant of time. If the Absolute Radio Frequency Channel Number (ARFCN) is known, the
corresponding frequency can be calculated for uplink direction using Equation (2.1) and for
downlink using Equation (2.2).
fUL (n) = 890 + 0.2n MHz, n=1,2,… ,124 (2.1)

f DL (n) = fUL (n) + 45 MHz (2.2)
In Equations (2.1) and (2.2) n corresponds the ARFCN. In some countries it may be possible
to allocate an extra frequency band of 10MHz below the normal GSM900 frequencies. The
new frequency band is called extended GSM (EGSM), or also tri-band. This arrangement
increases the capacity. However, in order to utilize this extra capacity new kind of mobiles
supporting this feature are needed. The ARFCNs between 880-890MHz are 975-1024, and
the frequency for uplink can be calculated using Equation (2.3). Equation (2.2) applies also
here for downlink.
fUL (n) = 890 + 0.2(n − 1024) MHz, n=975,… .,1024 (2.3)
Frequency bands of 75 MHz have also been allocated for GSM around 1800MHz with
duplex separation of 95MHz. All the above mentioned bands are depicted in Figure 2.2.
Later in the future ETSI will specify frequency bands around 450MHz for GSM.
17
45MHz 95MHz
UPLINK DOWNLINK UPLINK DOWNLINK
EGSM900 (880-890) EGSM900 (925-935) GSM1800 (1710-1785)
GSM900 (890-915) GSM900 (935-960) GSM1800 (1805-1880)
Figure 2.2 GSM bands.
2.1.3 Access method
Different kinds of access methods are used to allow the users to share the finite frequency
resources. The most widely used multiple access methods are Frequency Division Multiple
Access (FDMA), Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) and Code Division Multiple
Access (CDMA). In FDMA a unique frequency is assigned to an individual user. During the
call no other user is able to use that particular frequency, thus one FDMA channel can
accommodate one call at a time. In TDMA the resources between the users are shared in
time domain, meaning that at the certain time only one user is able to either transmit or
receive. So in TDMA systems the transmission is based on bursts making it very attractive in
digital communication systems, whereas FDMA is widely used in analog communication.
GSM uses the combination of FDMA and TDMA [ETS92a]. The difference between FDMA
and TDMA methods is depicted in Figure 2.3.
code code code
time time time
f4 f4
f3 f3
f2 f2
f1 f1
TS0 TS1 TS2 TS3 TS4 TS5 TS6 TS7 TS0 TS1 TS2 TS3 TS4 TS5 TS6 TS7
frequency frequency frequency
FDMA TDMA FDMA and TDMA
Figure 2.3 Multiple access methods used in GSM.
The carriers in GSM900 are positioned every 200kHz giving the total number of
independent frequencies of 125 (25 MHz band for both up- and downlink). The duration of
one burst is 0.577 ms (more precisely 15/26 ms). One carrier contains always 8 time slots,
thus one TDMA frame lasts for 60/13≈4.615 ms. There are thus 992 physical channels
available in GSM-band when we take also into account that at the both ends of the band
there exists a guard band of 100kHz (124 times 8 = 992).
18
2.2 Transmission in air interface
2.2.1 Source coding
The speech coder in GSM is based on the Residually Excited Linear Predictive Coder-Long
Term Predictor (RELP-LPT) [ETS92b]. In the coding process the speech is first quantized
with 8 bits using the A-law sampling rate being 8 kHz. The result is a digital signal of 64
kbit/s. The data is then converted to 13 bit samples corresponding to linear representation of
the signal amplitudes instead of A-law. The output of RELP-LPT coder provides 260 bits
every 20ms yielding to a data rate of 13 kbit/s. In the air interface the total bit rate is about
33.9 kbit/s, and if the speed rate after source coding and air interface are compared the
efficiency is only 13/33.9≈38.4%.
2.2.2 Channel coding
The signal suffers from different kind of perturbations when transmitted through the air
interface. These distortions can be caused eg by noise when the received signal level is low,
interference from other transmitters, Doppler shifts or multipath propagation delays. Thus,
countermeasures are needed in order to avoid the perturbations.
Channel coding is a very useful method in digital communication systems to improve the
performance of the system. However, it is always trade-off between the data speed and
system performance. In channel coding some redundant information calculated from the
source data is added to original data block. The decoding process takes advantages of the
redundant bits allowing it to detect and even correct the errors occurred in the transmission.
In GSM many kind of coding schemes are used depending on the transmitted type of data.
Here only one type of data, ie full speed speech, is handled in a bit more details. More
information about the channel coding can be found eg in [ETS92c].
The source-coded data of 260 bits is first divided into 3 groups (type Ia, type Ib and type II)
depending on the importance of the data: the more important the bits are the better they are
coded. The most important 50 bits (type Ia) have a parity check for the detection of the non-
correctable errors. Type Ib bits and 4 tail bits are then concatenated to these 53 bits resulting
to a data block of 189 bits. The tail bits are included to initiate the convolution encoder.
Next the convolutional code is applied for error correction purposes. The rate of the
convolution encoder is ½ having constraint length K=5. The resulting data block has a length
of 378 bits. The rest 78 bits (type II) are not coded at all, and they are appended to the
existing sequence as they are giving the total number of 456 bits. This corresponds to the
data rate of 22.8 kbits/s. The ratio between speeds of channel coded data and air interface is
22.8/33.854≈67.3%. The graphical representation of error detection and correction for full
speed speech in GSM can be seen is Figure 2.4.
19
Type Ia, 50 bits Type Ib, 132 bits Type II, 78 bits
Parity bits Tail bits
50 3 132 4
Convolutional Code, rate 1/2, constraint length 5
378 78
456 bits/20ms speech frame
Figure 2.4 Principles of the burst forming in GSM (Speech/FS).
2.2.3 Interleaving
The convolutional coding is not very efficient in the error protection when several
consecutive bits are in error. On the other hand, the errors tend to occur in bursts, thus
interleaving is used to ease the error correction and so to improve the performance of the
system.
Basically interleaving is based on spreading the n bits of a code word into the m bursts. The
bigger the value of n is, the more randomly the bits (also errors) are positioned in the burst
after de-interleaving. The gain of the interleaving increases when the value of n is increased.
However, the bigger the value of m is the longer is the decoding delay time of the system,
thus compromise between them have to be made. In order to simplify the implementation,
the choice of n and m should be made so that n/m is an integer. The length of the code work
in GSM is 456 bits for speech, thus allowing the value of m to be eg 4, 8, 24 or 76. In
normal speech a value of m=8 is used resulting to 57 bits, each filling up half a burst (one
burst being 144+2 bits, as will be explained later). As an example it can be mentioned that
the interleaving depth is 19 for data services, 4 for General Packet Radio Service (GPRS),
and 8 (ie the same as in speech) for High Speed Circuit Switched Data (HSCSD).
2.2.4 Ciphering
The encryption of the data is accomplished by performing an exclusive-or operation between

the burst and a pseudo-random sequence. The length of the sequence is 114 bits. The
ciphering sequence is generated from the burst number and the encryption key transmitted in
the beginning of the session by means of signaling. The deciphering is done using the same
operation, since performing an exclusive-or operation twice generates the original data flow
[Mou92].
2.2.5 Modulation method
The modulation method used in the radio interface in GSM is Gaussian Minimum Shift
Keying (GMSK) with the normalized bandwidth product BT of 0.3. GMSK can be
considered to be a derivative of MSK, where Gaussian pulse shaping smoothens the phase
trajectory of the MSK resulting to lower sidelobe levels in the transmitted power spectrum.
This gives quite high spectrum efficiency while at the same time the demodulation is not too
complicated. The modulation rate is about 270 kbit/s. More information about the used
20
modulation method can be found in [ETS92d].
Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) has been proposed by ETSI in order to
evolve data services in GSM reusing as much of the physical layer as possible. EDGE is
based on a new modulation technique with the current working assumption for EDGE being
8PSK. There three consecutive bits are mapped into one symbol on the I/Q diagram. With a
symbol rate of 270 kbit/s data rates from 22.8 kbit/s to 69.2 kbit/s can be achieved depending
on the channel coding [ETS98].
2.3 Channel organization
2.3.1 Physical and logical channels
The combination of certain frequency and Time Slot (TS) form one physical channel. It can
contain a varying amount of logical channels. The logical channels, on the other hand, can be
divided to control and traffic channels.
There are six different Traffic Channels (TCH) in GSM. They vary depending on the speed
and the transmitted data type (speech or user data). One traffic channel may carry either
speech or data, and it has the same functions and formats on the uplink and downlink
directions.
The number of control channels is even greater. They carry signaling and synchronizing
information between the base station and the mobile stations. Different kinds of
functionalities exist depending on the link direction. Frequency Correction Channel (FCCH)
allows the mobile user to synchronize itself to the frequency of the base station.
Synchronization Channel (SCH) gives the necessary synchronization information to the
mobile. Broadcast Control CHannel (BCCH) is used to provide the mobile station with the
information such as network identity, current control channels, channel availability and
congestion situation. Paging Channel (PCH) carries paging signals from base station to
mobile stations notifying a certain mobile of an incoming call. After responding to paging a
physical channel (ie ARFCN and TS number) is assigned to the mobile using Access Grant
Channel (AGCH). All the above mentioned logical channels are transmitted in the downlink
direction using TS0 at the BCCH carrier having certain ARFCN. In the uplink direction at
that same particular frequency only one channel called Random Access CHannel (RACH) is
transmitted. RACH is assigned for acknowledging the paging from PCH, and mobiles to
originate a call also use it.
In dedicated mode there are three different kind of dedicated control channels being all bi-
directional. Stand-alone Dedicated Control Channel (SDCCH) is used to carry the necessary
signaling information before TCH assignment. Slow Associated Control Channel (SACCH)
is used to transmit the supervisory data between the mobile and the base station during the
call. If the capacity of SACCH is insufficient more signaling capacity is arranged via Fast
Associated Control Channel (FACCH). This is accomplished by means that frames
originally allocated for TCH are now used by FACCH [ETS92c].
2.3.2 Frame structure in GSM
The smallest transmission quantum in GSM is called a burst. There are several different
burst types in GSM [ETS92a], but here only normal burst is dealt with in a bit more details
21
as an example. An actual normal burst begins and ends with 3 bits called tail bits. In the
middle of the burst is a 26 bit midamble, or training sequence, which is exploited in the
synchronizing and in determining the coefficients for channel correction device. The bits
positioned on both sides of the training sequence are called "stealing flag". Those bits are to
indicate that instead of speech this frame is used for FACCH purposes. That kind of
situation might happen eg in handover where more signaling is required. Next to the stealing
flags are the actual 57 data bits giving the total number of 114 data bits in one burst. In the
very end of the burst is a guard period of 8.25 bits to make the practical implementation of
the TDMA frame structure possible.
In Figure 2.5 is shown the way in which the different frames are connected to each other in
dedicated mode. One TDMA frame consists of 8 bursts containing 8*156.25=1250 bits. A
TDMA frame forms a multiframe, where every 13th and 16th frame is used for signaling
instead of speech. A multiframe is then grouped into superframe and hyperframe; the later
forming the basis for frame numbering which is important in GSM since the encryption
algorithm relies on particular frame number. Security can only be maintained by using a
large number of frames (26*51*2048=2 715 648 TDMA frames)
HYPERFRAME
0 1 2 3 4 5 2042 2043 2044 2045 2046 2047 2048*6.12=3h 28min 53s 760ms
SUPERFRAME
0 1 2 48 49 50
120*51=6.12s
0 1 24 25
26 MULTIFRAME 51 MULTIFRAME
0 1 24 25 0 1 49 50 26*8*15/26=120ms
TDMA FRAME
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8*15/26=4.615ms
NORMAL BURST
3 57 1 26 1 57 3 8.25 15/26=0.577ms
Tail Encrypted Stealing Midamble Stealing Encrypted Tail Guard

bits data flag flag data bits period
Figure 2.5 Frame structure in GSM.
2.4 Radio resource management
2.4.1 Power control
Power Control (PC) has two main functions: Firstly, its aim is to reduce the interference
level in the network by adjusting the transmitter power while still maintaining the acceptable
quality level defined by the operator [ETS95]. Secondly, it is used in conserving the MS
battery power. This, of course, applies only power control in uplink direction and is widely
used by operators. On the other hand, DL PC is not widely used. This is due to the fact that
frequencies have to be assigned to base stations in such a manner that sufficient C/I value is
achieved in the highest interference situation usually occurring at cell borders. Since PC in
GSM is relatively slow, response time being around 2 seconds, utilizing DL PC may in some
cases endanger calls at cell borders. Also baseband frequency hopping (explained in Section
3.3.1) may cause problems in DL PC because some mobiles have problems dealing with
22
large changes in signal level.
Based on the previous trial is has been concluded that the average interference reduction
gain achieved with PC is around 1.0-1.5 dB. However, if the majority of the mobiles are
positioned at cell edges the gain of PC is reduced.
2.4.2 Discontinuous transmission
Discontinuous Transmission (DTX) is another GSM specific optional feature to improve the
quality or the capacity of the network and to increase the battery life. Basically DTX, when
activated, will reduce the amount of transmission and consequently overall interference in
the network. Namely, during a normal conversation the participants alternate so that each
direction is occupied about 50% (or less) of the time. When using DTX the transmitter is
switched on only for those frames containing useful data. [ETS92e]
The overall DTX mechanism requires the following functions. A Voice Activity Detector
(VAD) on the transmitter side decides whether each speech frame of 20 ms contains speech
or not. If VAD detects that there is no speech present the next step is the evaluation of the
acoustic background noise on the transmitter side in order to transmit the characteristic
parameters to the receiver side. After determining the parameters Silence Descriptor (SID)
frame is encoded conveying information on the acoustic background noise. At the receiver
side comfort noise must be generated based on the SID frames during those periods where
the radio transmission is cut. The above mentioned procedure is due to the fact that when the
connection is cut the noise level drops to a very low level. The noise step would be
perceived as very annoying by users and some countermeasures must be introduced. A SID
frame is sent at the beginning of every inactive period, and is then repeated at least twice a
second as long as the inactive period in speech lasts. In addition, the measurement done by
the mobiles have to be reported, and thus SACCH frames are always transmitted no matter if
DTX is used or not.
2.4.3 Handover
Making the traffic connection between BS and moving MS is possible with the help of
Handover (HO). The basic concept is quite simple: when the subscriber moves from the
coverage area of the cell in charge to another, a connection with the new cell has to be set
up, and the connection with the old cell has to be released in order to avoid loosing the call
in progress. In practice there are also other reasons than coverage area itself affecting the
decision whether the handover is to be performed or not.
Handover due to measurements occurs if the quality or the field strength of the radio signal
falls below certain level defined by specific parameters in BSC. The deterioration of the
signal is detected by constant signal measurements carried out by both the MS and BTS.
Even if the handover is triggered the transmission quality can still be adequate. It can happen
that the global interference situation can be improved by means of performing a handover.
The second kind of handover is referred to as a traffic handover. It can occur that the traffic
is unevenly distributed in the network one cell being in congestion while another cell is still
having free capacity. A traffic peak in one cell can be eg due to a sport event taking place in
that particular area. In such a case the mobile stations near the edges of the cell may be
handed over to neighboring cells which have smaller traffic loads. However, this kind of
handover has to be handled with great care, since usually the target cell is not the best
possible cell if the quality of the connection is considered.
23
3 PRINCIPLES OF FH, IUO AND IFH
In this chapter we concentrate on the basic functionality of frequency hopping, IUO and IFH.
Frequency hopping is discussed as one of the spread spectrum systems, and then the
implementation of frequency hopping in GSM is described. Principles of IUO/IFH, and
parameters related to IUO/IFH are also included in this chapter.
3.1 Properties of radio path
Contrary to wired communication systems where the behavior of the channel can be
comparatively easy to predict, radio channel is usually not due to its random nature. The
transmission path between transmitter and receiver can vary from line of sight (LOS) to the
path that is severely obstructed by eg buildings, hills and foliage. For that reason the analysis
of radio channel is complicated, and a lot of effort has been put to develop propagation
models that are accurate enough.
3.1.1 Large scale path loss
The propagation mechanisms of the electromagnetic waves can in general be attributed to

reflection, diffraction, scattering, ducting and attenuation [Lin94]. The surrounding obstacles
and morphographic types, ie buildings, roads, lakes, foliage etc. affect the propagation of the
radio wave causing severe distortion to the signal. The simplest case is the free space
propagation in which the path loss can be calculated using Equation (3.1).
 4πrf 
2
L= , (3.1)
 c 
where c is the speed of light, f frequency and r the distance between transmitter and receiver
antennas.
In the environment where mobile phones traditionally are used the exponent of r can be on
the order of 3.5, or even higher, meaning that the signal attenuates much faster than
predicted by Equation (3.1). Thereby, free space propagation model does not give very
accurate predictions for mobile telecommunication systems, hence more sophisticated
methods have to be used. Commonly used prediction methods are eg Okumura-Hata and
Walfish-Ikegami models [Rap96].
3.1.2 Shadow fading
Shadow fading is caused by large obstacles, such as hills and buildings. The received signal
strength is attenuated by these obstacles resulting to fluctuations of the signal level as the
mobile moves. Shadow fading, also referred to as slow fading, can statistically be modeled
with log-normal distribution [Lee89]. The fluctuation of the signal can be compensated by
using adaptive power control. This means that the output power of the BS and/or MS is
changed based on the received power level at the other end.
3.1.3 Multipath time delay spread
The fading effects (also referred to as fast fading) due to the multipath time delay spread can
be classified either as a flat or frequency selective fading depending on the time dispersion
24
Chapter 3: Principles of FH, IUO and IFH
characteristic of the channel. If the amplitude response is constant and the phase response is
linear over the bandwidth, which is greater than the bandwidth of the transmitted signal, the
channel is said to be a flat fading channel. In the flat fading channel the spectrum of the
received signal is preserved. However, the gain of the channel is time dependent due to
fluctuations in the amplitude response of the channel. Flat fading channels may also be
referred as narrowband channels. The amplitude fluctuations of a flat fading channel can be
modeled using Rayleigh distribution [Rap96].
If the amplitude response is constant and the phase response is linear over the bandwidth
which is smaller than the bandwidth of the transmitted signal, frequency selective fading
occurs in the channel. In that case the received signal consists of copies of the transmitted
signal, which are attenuated and delayed in time resulting to distortions in the received signal
spectrum. The received electromagnetic field is the vector sum of all the signal copies with
different amplitudes and phase shifts, thus countermeasures are needed to overcome this
problem. Frequency selective fading channels can also be referred to as wideband channels
since the bandwidth of the transmitted signal is wider than the channel impulse response.
3.1.4 Doppler spread
Doppler spread is due to the fact that the properties of the radio channel vary depending on
the motion of the receiver relative to the transmitter and obstacles [Rap96]. Different
multipaths have different Doppler shifts, and the received signal consists of copies of the
transmitted signal each one having different Doppler shifts. If the transmitter is assumed to
be fixed, the maximum Doppler shift of the channel is
2v
fD = cosα , (3.2)
λ
where v is the speed of the MS, λwavelength and α the angle between MS and BS in case of
LOS signal. The multipath propagation and the generation of Doppler shifts are illustrated in
Figure 3.1.
BS
S
LO
v
v
MS
Figure 3.1 Different signal multipaths.
A channel can be divided into fast or slow fading channels depending on rate the transmitted
baseband signal changes compared with the channel characteristics. If the impulse response
of the channel changes within a symbol duration the channel is classified as a fast fading
channel. However, this occurs only for very low data rates. If the impulse response of the
channel, on the other hand, changes much slower than the transmitted baseband signal it is
considered as a slow fading channel.
25
3.2 Properties of frequency hopping
3.2.1 Frequency hopping theory
Frequency hopping is one of the spread spectrum techniques. It means that the bits are first
modulated using certain modulation scheme, eg GMSK in GSM, and then the frequency of
the carrier wave is changed according to predefined spreading code known by the transmitter
and receiver. In general, frequency hopping systems can be divided into two different
categories: fast and slow frequency hopping. In slow frequency hopping the hopping rate is
smaller than the symbol rate. On the other hand, in fast frequency hopping the frequency is
changed faster than the symbol rate. GSM utilizes slow frequency hopping.
When considering frequency hopping two concepts, rms delay spread and coherence
bandwidth, must be introduced. Let s0(t)=aoδ (t) be the impulse signal where δ
(t) is the Dirac
delta function. Now the received resultant impulse signal e(t) is spread in time due to
multipath scattering and it can be expressed [Lee93] in
N
e(t ) = a0 ∑ aiδ(t − Ti )e − jω t
, (3.3)
i =1
where Ti is the time delay and ai is the coefficient of the ith path. The rms delay spread is
defined as [Rap96]
__
ds = τ − (τ ) 2 ,
2
(3.4)
where the mean excess delay τ is the first moment of the power delay profile defined as
∑eτ 2
k k
τ =k
(3.5)
∑e k
2
k
__
and τ is the second moment of the power delay profile
2
__ ∑eτ 2 2
k k
τ 2
= k
. (3.6)
∑e k
2
k
The rms delay spread can thus be considered to be the standard deviation of the mean excess
delay time. In order to clarify the situation a principle of rms delay spread concept is
depicted in Figure 3.2.
26
A[V/m]
S0(t)=a0δ(t)
e(t)=|a0ai|
ds ds
_
t=0 t0 τ t[s]
Figure 3.2 Graphical presentation of rms delay spread.
Coherence bandwidth is a statistical measure of the range of the frequencies over which the
channel response remains the same, ie all the spectral components pass the channel with
equal gain and linear phase. This means that the potential correlation between two signals at
adjacent frequencies is strong. The coherence bandwidth depends on rms delay spread, and
the correlation coefficient between two received signals as a function of frequency
separation and time separation can be calculated to be [Lee89]
J 02 ( βvτ )
ρr ( ∆ω ,τ ) = , (3.7)
1 + ( ∆ω ) 2 δ2
where ∆ω=2π∆f, τ is time separation, J0(⋅) the Bessel function of first kind and zero order,
β=2π/λ,v velocity of the vehicle and δrms delay spread. If the frequency correlation
function is set to be 0.5 the coherence bandwidth Bc can be derived to be
1
Bc = , (3.8)
2πδ
if τ is supposed to be zero. However, it should be noted that any exact relationship between
time delay spread and coherence bandwidth does not exist, and this is purely a theoretical
model. In Figure 3.3 is depicted the frequency correlation as a function of frequency spacing
with different time delay spread values in order to illustrate the Equation (3.7). The time
separation τ is again supposed to be zero.
27
100%
90% rms time
Frequency correlation
80% delay
70% spread / µs
60% 0.2
50%
0.3
40%
0.5
30%
20% 1
10% 2
0% 3
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
Frequency spacing/kHz
Figure 3.3 Frequency correlation as a function of frequency spacing.
The coherence bandwidth is highly depended on the propagation environment since the
signal delay spread values vary case by case. In rural environment the time delay spread is in
order of 0.2 µs while in urban areas is can be as high as 3 µs. In Figure 3.3 it can be seen that
a frequency spacing of 800 kHz corresponding 4 GSM frequencies will give adequate
frequency diversity in rural areas if the requirement for frequency correlation is set to 50%.
However, in urban environment a frequency spacing of 50-150 kHz is enough with the same
criteria.
3.2.2 Frequency diversity
The received signal is a vector sum of number of copies of the initial signal having different
phases and amplitudes. The sum varies depending on the frequency and the location of the
disrupting obstacles relative to the receiver. Since the resultant signal is frequency depended
at some locations there may occur very low field strengths, called fading dips, while at some
other frequency the field strength can be on its maximum value. However, it is most unlikely
that two fading dips occur at a certain location on another frequency supposing that the
spacing between the two separate frequencies is big enough determined by the coherence
bandwidth.
Frequency hopping takes advantage of the fading dips not occurring at two uncorrelated
frequencies at the same location. The frequency is changed burst by burst, hence only some
of the bursts are affected by the deep fade while most parts of the bursts are received
properly. This enables the reconstruction of the original signal by taking advantage of
interleaving and utilizing error correction techniques.
3.2.3 Interference diversity
Due to the limited bandwidth assigned for GSM networks the same frequencies must be
used several times in order to obtain the required coverage and grade of service. This causes
degradation in the quality of the network depending on how intensively the frequencies are
reused. The longer the distance between two base stations transmitting on the same
frequency the better carrier to interference ratio (C/I) can be obtained.
28
However, the interfering signals are not uniformly distributed in the network, hence at some
locations C/I-value can be high while somewhere else it can be very low, ie the quality of the
connection is poor. In a conventional non-hopping network a frequency having low C/I-
value can be assigned for a user resulting to degraded quality for that particular connection.
If FH is utilized, the mobile will be using the severely interfered frequency only a small
portion of time, and probably the bursts on other frequencies will experience lower
interference level so that the quality of the connection remains satisfactory. Thus the
interference is averaged among all the users in the network. In practice it means that the
number of good and bad quality samples will decrease leading to better average quality.
3.3 Frequency hopping in GSM
3.3.1 Hopping modes
From BSS point of view frequency hopping feature can be implemented using either
Baseband Hopping (BB-FH) or Radio Frequency Hopping (RF-FH). The choice of the
hopping mode does not affect the functionality of the mobiles in frequency hopping
networks [Nok96].
In baseband hopping the Transceiver (TRX) transmits on a fixed frequency. The call is
switched burst by burst to be transmitted on a different TRX. Two different hopping groups
have to be generated in each cell. Time slots 1 to 7 belong to hopping group 1 and all the
time slot 0s excluding the BCCH timeslot belong to group 2. This is due to the fact that the
information BCCH frequency contains must be transmitted continuously to allow the
mobiles to be able to attach to the base station. In other words TS0 of the BCCH frequency
cannot hop, and although the other time slots are allowed to hop the power has to be
transmitted continuously on every time slot on the BCCH frequency. In BB-FH the number
of frequencies to hop over is equal to the number of TRXs.
RF-FH differs in many ways from BB-FH. In RF-hopping mode the TRX contains a
frequency synthesizer allowing rapid frequency changes. Also a wideband combiner is
needed. In theory the frequencies over which one TRX can hop is 63, so the number of
frequencies over which to hop in one cell can be much bigger than the number of TRXs. For
that reason, in RF-FH the BCCH TRX cannot hop because BCCH frequency must be
transmitted continuously. The rest of the TRXs belong to the same hopping group. The
difference between BB- and RF-FH is clarified in Figure 3.4.
Radio frequency hopping Baseband hopping

TS0 TS1 TS2 TS3 TS4 TS5 TS6 TS7 TS0 TS1 TS2 TS3 TS4 TS5 TS6 TS7
TRX-1 B f1 TRX-1 B f1
f2 f2
f3 f3 TRX-2 f2
. .
. .
. . TRX-3 f3
fn fn
TRX-2 TRX-4 f4
B=BCCH timeslot. TRX-1 does not hop. B=BCCH timeslot. TS0 of TRX-1 does not hop. TS1-TS7 are hopping over f 1- f 4 .
TRX-2 is hopping over f 1 - f n . TS0 of TRX-2, TRX-3 and TRX-4 hop over f 2 , f 3 and f 4 .
Figure 3.4 Difference between BB- and RF-FH.
29
3.3.2 MA lists and Hopping sequences
In a non-hopping network the channel assignment is quite straightforward. The number of

different cases is only 124 in GSM900, and the channel number to be used in that particular
connection can easily be encoded and transmitted form BS to MS by means of signaling
[Mou92]. However, when frequency hopping is exploited, the situation becomes more
complicated. The number of different frequency combinations explodes dramatically, and
some other means have to be introduced to overcome this problem.
MA stands for Mobile Allocation. It is a list containing the frequencies to be used during the
connection between MS and BS if frequency hopping is utilized. MA-list is a subset of the
channels allocated to a cell. The maximum number of frequencies in GSM900 in one MA-
list is 63.
Hopping Sequence Number (HSN) defines in which order the frequencies assigned in MA
list to a mobile must be used in frequency hopping case. There are 64 different hopping
sequences, ie HSN can take a value between 0-63. HSN 0 is reserved for a sequential
sequence. This is also referred to as cyclic hopping. The rest of the hopping sequence
numbers are pseudo random sequences. They are usually referred to as random hopping
since the frequencies appear randomly instead of cyclic order. The use of cyclic hopping is
usually not preferred since random hopping gives in some cases better interference diversity.
3.3.3 MAIO management
There is no GSM system limitation on allocating the same MA-list to TRXs in different
sectors in sectorised cell. Because the sectors usually have the same HSN some means has to
be introduced to avoid the collisions between the frequencies of the different sectors. This is
accomplished with MAIO offset and MAIO step [Nie98]. MAIO offset gives each of the
cells sharing the same MA-list a unique offset, or a starting point where the hopping is
started. This ensures that the cells will not use the same frequencies simultaneously. To
avoid the collisions between TRXs, MAIO step will separate the frequencies within a cell. If
the MAIO step is 2, the MA list needs to include at least twice as much frequencies as there
are TRXs sharing the same MA list to avoid the usage of the same frequency simultaneously
within the site. Generally, if NTRX is the number of the frequencies sharing the same MA list
and MAIOSTEP the size of MAIO step the minimum number of frequencies NMIN can be
calculated to be
N MIN = NTRX MAIOSTEP . (3.9)
MAIO concept can be used provided that synthesized RF-hopping is used, the sectors
sharing the same MA list are synchronized and the MA list contains at least as many
frequencies as given by Equation (3.9). An example of MAIO concept is presented in Table
3.1. For simplicity reason the HSN is N=0, ie cyclic hopping is used. The MA list consists of
consecutive frequencies MA={1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12}. With MAIO step 2 it is possible
to avoid adjacent channel interference.
30
Table 3.1 An example of MAIO allocation with synthesized RF hopping.

HSN MAIO offset MAIO step MAIO Hopping sequencies
Sector 1 N 0 2
TRX 1 BCCH frequency 1
TRX 2 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
TRX 3 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2
Sector 2 N 4 2
TRX 2 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4
TRX 3 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6
Sector 3 N 8 2
TRX 2 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
TRX 3 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
3.3.4 Loading of FH system
When contemplating the factors limiting the capacity in a frequency hopping network two
different phenomena can be found, ie hard blocking and soft blocking. By hard blocking is
meant that the whole radio resource offered by the base station is in use. At that instant of
time no more calls can be established. If the capacity is limited by hard blocking the
maximum traffic the cell can support can be found using the Erlang B table. The Erlang B
table gives the maximum offered load that the system can tolerate if the number of available
channels and blocking probability are known. A typical design criteria is 2 % blocking,
meaning that 2 % of the incoming calls will be blocked due to lack of hardware resources of
the base station. If the cell becomes soft blocked the capacity of an individual cell is not
limited by lack of hardware resources but interference. Soft blocking is usually dominating if
the way that the frequencies are reused is very aggressive, ie that the same frequencies are
used in adjacent cells. In case the network becomes soft blocking limited there has to be a
mechanism by which the interference of the network can be controlled. If a certain threshold,
soft blocking limit, has been exceeded the establishment of a new call will result to
increasing number of dropped calls or bad quality. In practice only RF-hopping networks can
be interference limited.
When considering the load concept in a frequency hopping network two different load
factors can be distinguished. First of them is called fractional loading. A cell is said to be
fractionally loaded when the number of frequencies assigned to a hopping cell exceeds the
number of TRXs equipped into the cell. The fractional load is given by Equation (3.10)
[Sal98]
N TRX
L frac = , (3.10)
N MA
where NTRX is the number of hopping TRXs in a cell, and NMA is the number of frequencies
in the MA list. Fractional loading has two benefits compared with the conventional
implementation of frequency hopping. The interference diversity achieved by means of
fractional loading is bigger since the bigger is the number of frequencies over which to hop
31
the better is the interference averaging. This actually yields also the second advantage, since
proper hopping gain can be achieved even with small number of TRXs as more frequencies
can be allocated to one cell. In practice, the implementation of fractional loading requires
RF-hopping. In BB-hopping each frequency needs its own TRX which makes the
implementation of fractional loading uneconomical. For that reason the fractional load is in
BB-hopping case Lfrac=1.
Hardware load, on the other hand, is determined as a relation of the Erlangs carried by the
cell, TErl , to the number of the traffic channels, NTCH :
TErl
LHW = , (3.11)
N TCH
Frequency load Lfreq is determined as a product of hardware and fractional load, Equation
(3.12)
N TRX TErl
L freq = L frac LHW = (3.12)
N MA N TCH
and it actually tells the degree of utilization of the hopping frequencies. Frequency load is
illustrated in Figure 3.5. Since 3 TRXs are hopping over 5 frequencies the fractional load is
Lfrac= 3/5=0.6. HW load is LHW=18/24=0.75 leading to the frequency load of Lfreq=0.45.
TS0 TS1 TS2 TS3 TS4 TS5 TS6 TS7

TRX-1 BCCH f1
TRX-2 f2 f3 f4 f5 f6
Active slots Empty slots
Figure 3.5 An example of frequency load in an RF hopping cell.
If the frequencies are reused very intensively some of the bursts are necessarily lost due to
collisions occurring between the bursts. However, by lowering the frequency load the hit
probability that two bursts collide can be made so small that when exploiting the error
correction techniques available in GSM the lost bits can be recovered in spite of collisions.
In practice it means that the length of the MA list must be long enough.
3.3.5 Reuse factor of frequency hopping network
The internationally allocated frequency band to GSM is limited and further it is nationally
shared between operators by local authorities. For that reason an individual frequency cannot
be assigned to every cell, thus in order to fulfil the required Grade-of-Service (GoS) same
frequencies must be reused in distant cells. A given radio channel can be reused if the two
base stations sharing the same frequency are so far away from each other that the two
occurring signals do not cause too severe co-channel interference in the cell border areas.
In order to obtain the full coverage in a certain area, in the theoretical analysis the area may
be substituted with hexagonals. For hexagonal cells the Equation (3.13) holds [Lee89]
32
D = R 3K , (3.13)
where R is the radius of the cell, D is the frequency reuse distance and K is the frequency
reuse pattern defined by shift parameters i and j. K must satisfy the condition K=i2+j2+ij
where i and j are integers. The situation is depicted in Figure 3.6. By increasing K the
frequency reuse distance D also increases resulting to the reduction of the co-channel
interference.
R
1 D
2
6
7
i 5 3
4 1 1 1 1
1 6 2 2 2 2
6 7 3 3 3
2
7 5 3 1 1
5 3 4 2 2
4 3 3
j
K=7 K=3
Figure 3.6 Frequency reuse of 7 and 3.
Defining the frequency reuse factor in a frequency hopping network is a bit more
complicated than in a conventional non-hopping network. When the frequency reuse
distance in a conventional non-hopping network becomes too small the, quality of the
network is not satisfactory at the cell border areas due to the severe interference caused by
the neighboring base stations. The same applies to BB-hopping networks, but because of
frequency hopping gain a bit smaller reuse distance can be used. However, in case of RF-
hopping the reuse distance can be set as small as wanted. This is due to the fact that an RF-
hopping cell can accommodate more frequencies than there are TRXs. Thus, the frequencies
are only fractionally loaded as presented in Figure 3.5 leading to two different reuse
definitions: effective reuse and frequency allocation reuse [Sal98].
Effective reuse is determined as
N freqs N freqs
Reff = = , (3.14)
1
N cells
∑N
cells
TRX
NTRX , ave
where Nfreqs is the number of available frequencies, Ncells is the number of cells and NTRX is
the number of TRXs in cells. Frequency allocation reuse, on the other hand, can be
calculated as
N freqs N freqs
R fa = = , (3.15)
1
N cells
∑
cells
N MA N MA, ave
33
where Nfreqs is the number of available frequencies, Ncells is the number of cells and NMA is
the number of frequencies in MA lists. In non-hopping and BB-hopping cases NTRX,ave=
NMA,ave.
3.3.6 Frequency hopping gain
Frequency hopping gain is achieved by two means, which are interference and frequency
diversity gain. If frequency hopping is implemented in a non-hopping network without
changing frequency reuse pattern better quality can be obtained. However, usually it is not
worth having the quality in the network above certain minimum threshold, and the improved
quality can thus be transferred to capacity improvement by tightening the reuse factor of the
network. It is up to operators to decide whether better quality or more capacity is to be
desired.
Both frequency and interference diversity gain has been studied in [Sal98]. In Figure 3.7 the
frequency diversity gain is presented in case of co-channel interference as a function of
frequencies over which to hop over. The gain was studied with 1,2,3,4,5,6,8 and infinite
number of frequencies, 1 being the non-hopping case. The simulations were performed for
two different kind of propagation environment, TU3 and FLAT3, and also two different
quality measures were used. TU3 stands for Typical Urban with mobile speed of 3 km/h.
TU3 model considers six propagation paths and in the simulations six statistically
independent fading processes were generated for each carrier in the hopping sequence for
wanted and interfering signals. FLAT3 model is a time-dependent one path Rayleigh fading
model mobile speed being 3km/h. The frequency hopping was simulated so that the number
of statistically independent fading processes was equal to the number of frequencies in the
hopping group. It was also generated for wanted and interfering signals. The quality criteria
was set so that Residual Bit Error Rate (RBER) was not allowed to exceed 0.2% for class 1b
bits, see Figure 2.4, and Frame Erasure Ratio (FER) had to be below 3%. One frame
contains a 20ms speech sample transmitted in 8 consecutive bursts. More information about
FER will be provided in Section 4.2.3. In Figure 3.7 it can be seen that according to the
simulations the maximum frequency diversity gain achieved using cyclic FH is
approximately 9dB. It can also be seen that the gain saturates when the number of
frequencies increases. In these simulations interference diversity gain can be neglected due
to cyclic hopping and synchronized bursts.
34
FLAT 3
6 FER = 3%
FLAT3
∆C/Ic (dB)
5 RBER
Cl 1b = 0,2%
TU3
4 FER = 3%
TU3
3 RBER
Cl 1b = 0,2%
0
No hop 2 3 4 5 6 8 Infinite
Number of carriers
Figure 3.7 Frequency diversity gain of frequency hopping link against co-channel
interference compared to a non-hopping link [Sal98].
Interference diversity gain was simulated separately from frequency diversity gain. In this
case the simulated network consisted of 175 cells each having three sectors. The available
bandwidth was 5.4 MHz. Three different frequency allocation reuses were simulated, namely
9,6 and 3. A non-hopping case with Rfa=9 was also simulated for a reference. The results are
presented in
Figure 3.8. It can be seen that the interference diversity gain is around 4-5 dB for all the
above mentioned configurations. For configurations having Rfa=9 and 6 the network became
hard blocking limited, ie in this case 2% blocking level was achieved with certain load.
However, when considering Rfa=3 it is possible to provide 9 frequencies for each cell
meaning that maximum 9 TRXs can be allocated to every cell. Now it is not feasible to load
the cells up to hard blocking limit since C/I value falls below acceptable level before eg 2%
blocking level is reached. The network is said to be soft blocking limited. According to these
simulations nearly 100% capacity gain is achieved using Rfa=3 compared with a non-
hopping network.
Interference diversity gain depends also on the order in which the frequencies are used. In
random hopping the source of interference varies from burst to burst, and the interference is
more or less averaged over the entire network. On the other hand, if cyclic mode is used
where the frequencies are used in a consecutive order the whole interference diversity gain
can be lost especially if grouped frequency planning is used, ie the same number of
frequencies and TRXs is allocated to every cell. Namely, in this case the bursts belonging to
a certain connection still collide in spite of changing the frequency burst by burst. When
considering frequency diversity gain the situation is different. When using random hopping
the frequency for a burst is selected from MA-list according to predefined pseudo random
sequence, and it is possible that the same frequency is used in consecutive bursts. That is
why cyclic hopping can be more feasible in small configurations, where the probability of
using the same frequency in consecutive bursts is big if utilizing random mode.
35
20
19
2%
18
Frequency hopping
17 reuse 3 FH
C/I (dB)
reuse 6 FH
reuse 9 FH
16 2% reuse 9 No FH
15
No frequency hopping
14
2%
blocking probability soft blocking limited

13
14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32
Carried traffic per cell (Erl)
Figure 3.8 Values of the averaged on a call C/I ratios, not exceeded at an outage
probability equal to 10%, against the carried traffic per cell (Erl) [Sal98].
The speed of the mobile is a dominant factor in frequency hopping gain. The best frequency
hopping gain is obtained by slow moving mobiles. The faster the subscriber is moving the
smaller is the frequency hopping gain. However, the quality of the connection is not
remarkably decreased since the lost frequency hopping gain is compensated with the gain
obtained from moving.
3.4 Intelligent underlay overlay
Unlike frequency hopping, Intelligent Underlay-Overlay (IUO) is a Nokia specific GSM

network capacity enhancement feature. IUO can offer to the operator better spectral
efficiency and thus more capacity without making any major hardware investments or
extensive network modifications. The improved capacity is achieved by using new software
in base stations. The mobile stations are not affected by IUO at any level.
3.4.1 Principles of IUO
IUO is based on dividing the frequency band into two separate layers having different reuse
patterns. The frequency allocation of the upper layer, referred to as a regular layer, which
provides the continuous coverage in the network is based on conventional frequency reuse.
In order to achieve more capacity, the frequencies are allocated in the lower layer very
aggressively. The lower layer is referred to as a super layer. The different reuse patterns are
illustrated in Figure 3.9, where the effective reuse factor of the regular layer is Reff,reg=12,
and for the super layer Reff,sup=3.
36
f1 f7
f 7
f13 f13 f 1 3
f 1 4 f 1 5
f14 f15 f14 f15 f 8 f 9
f2 f8 f9
f3
f4 f10
f13 f13
f14 f15 f14 f15

f5 f6 f11 f12
High customer density
Regular reuse frequencies Loeer customer density
Super reuse frequncies
Figure 3.9 Frequency reuse in IUO network.
Due to the tighter frequency reuse leading to higher interference in the cell border areas the
service area of the super layer is smaller compared with the regular layer. In order to avoid
the degradation of the quality caused by the increased interference, BSC directs the mobile
station to those frequencies that are good enough to sustain the required radio connection
quality. In practice this means that the super frequencies can only be used if C/I value is
above certain predefined threshold. BSC calculates the C/I value based on the measurements
reported by the mobiles. The C/I ratio is calculated by comparing the downlink signal level
of the serving cell and the downlink signal level of the six nearest neighbor cell sharing the
same super reuse frequencies [Wig97] using Equation (3.16),
C Pc
= 6
, (3.16)
∑ P []
I
ni
i =1
where Pc is the measured power of serving channel, and Pn[i] is the measured power of
BCCH (channel) in neighboring cells.
In an IUO network the call is always started on a regular frequency, because during the call
setup on SDCCH the quality of the connection is not yet known for sure. After the call
establishment BSC starts calculating the C/I ratio for that particular connection, and if the
C/I ratio is above certain predefined good C/I threshold the mobile is handed over to one of
the super frequencies. BSC continues the evaluation of the C/I ratio after the mobile has
entered the super frequency. If the ratio is below certain predefined bad C/I threshold the
mobile is handed back to one of the regular frequencies. If the regular layer becomes
congested it is clear that the mobiles are not able to enter super frequencies even if there still
were free capacity on the super frequencies. However, a new feature called direct access to
super has been introduced that allows the mobiles to enter the super frequencies directly
from SDCCH provided that the received signal strength exceeds certain predefined level. In
that case the quality is assumed to be good enough. Since this is only an estimation of the
quality the actual quality is not known for sure. That is why the criterion must be set high
enough to ensure adequate quality. This feature should only be used if congestion occurs on
the regular layer.
37
3.4.2 IUO parameters
Intelligent underlay overlay brings several new parameters to BSC. These parameters do not
place any special requirements to the other parameter settings but rather provide new means
to adjust C/I calculation and handover evaluation process of the IUO traffic control. The
handover control parameters are controlled on a cell by cell basis [Laa96].
SuperReuseGoodCiThreshold and SuperReuseBadCiThreshold are the parameters triggering

the handovers between the super and the regular layers. The first one is the threshold value
for downlink C/I ratio to trigger a handover from the regular TRX to the super TRX.
Correspondingly, the second one is the threshold value for triggering a handover from super
to regular TRX. Of course, SuperReuseGoodCiThreshold must be higher than
SuperReuseBadCiThreshold. Lowering these values will obviously increase the potential
service area of a super TRX. This is highly desirable since the balance of the traffic moves
towards the super layer where frequency efficiency is better. However, decreased quality and
an increased number of handovers back to the regular layer indicates that the thresholds are
set to be too low. There are also two other parameters closely linked to the SuperReuse
thresholds. In both cases, Px is the number of comparisons out of total comparisons where
the downlink C/I value has to be greater than or equal the threshold before the handover is
possible. The change in C/I has to be long-standing before handover is triggered. If a
reaction to the rapid changes in C/I is needed the value should be lowered. Nx is the total
number of comparisons to be taken into account before the handover is possible. The
hysteresis area defined by SuperReuseGoodCiThreshold and SuperReuseBadCiThreshold is
depicted in Figure 3.10. The difference between those two parameters should be set high
enough to avoid useless handovers between layers.
IUO HO margin Base station
Regular layer Super layer
Figure 3.10 Handover hysteresis area in an IUO cell.
SuperReuseEstMethod defines the method to be used in the C/I evaluation procedure to

calculate the downlink C/I ratio of the super TRX. The two alternative methods are average
taking method and maximum taking method. If the value is set 'not in use' intelligent
underlay overlay procedure is not employed in the BTS. IntfCellAveragingWindowSize
determines the number of successive downlink signal strength measurement samples of an
interfering cell to be used in the averaging process. The value must be big enough to ensure
that rapid variations in received signal level are eliminated. IntfCellNumberOfZeroResult
indicates the number of zero results, which can be omitted when the measurement results of
the interfering cells are being averaged for the C/I evaluation process. By using this
parameter the distortion of measurement results caused by unheard interfering neighbors can
be diminished. AllInterferingCellsAveraged defines whether measurement results will be
averaged for all the interfering cells or only for those interfering cells that are among the six
best neighbor cells in the latest measurement report.
38
A very important IUO parameter is MinBsicDecodeTime. It determines the period starting

from the call set up or handover during which a handover to a super TRX is not possible
because the decoding of Base Station Identity Code (BSIC) of the neighbors is not finished.
BSIC is referred to as a "color code" which allows the mobiles to distinguish the cells
sharing the same beacon frequency. In the IUO capacity point of view it is desirable to
reduce the time before a handover to the super layer is performed to as short as possible. A
handover attempt can be performed immediately after C/I evaluation, handover decision and
target evaluation procedures are finished, provided that the MinBsicDecodeTime has
expired. Transition to the super layer can be speeded up by adjusting the parameters related
this procedure. However, if eg BSIC decoding time is reduced there is a risk that C/I
estimate is unreliable.
The last IUO related parameter introduced here is EnableIntraHoInterUL, which indicates
whether an intra cell handover within a super reuse frequency group caused by uplink
interference is enabled. An intra cell handover is safe to perform if the other super TRX has
the same interferers. All the IUO handover parameters are summarized in Table 3.2. Also the
default value and the range of each parameter is provided.
Table 3.2 IUO handover parameters in BSC.

PARAMETER RANGE DEFAULT
SuperReuseEstMethod - Maximum
SuperReuseGoodCiThreshold -127dB to 127 dB 17
Px (for good C/I threshold) 1 to 32 8
Nx (for good C/I threshold) 1 to 32
SuperReuseBadCiThreshold -127dB to 127 dB 12
Px (for bad C/I threshold) 1 to 32 10
Nx (for bad C/I threshold) 1 to 32 8
IntfCellAveragingWindowSize 1 to 32 SACCH 8 SACCHs
IntfCellNumberOfZeroResults 0 to 31 SACCH 7 SACCHs
AllInterferingCellsAveraged - Yes
MinBsicDecodeTimo 0 to 128 SACCH 10 SACCHs
EnableIntraHoInterUL - Yes
3.4.3 Intelligent frequency hopping
Combined IUO and FH is called Intelligent Frequency Hopping (IFH), which is a Nokia
specific feature. The capacity gain achieved by IFH is due to the fact that because of
frequency hopping gain the frequencies can be reused more aggressively leading to better
spectral efficiency. This applies to both regular and super frequencies. However, the tighter
reuse factor cannot be used with BCCH frequencies since they are not allowed hop and thus
frequency hopping gain is lost. Actually, in BB hopping only TS 0 is not allowed to hop, but
since TS 0 is the restrictive factor when determining the frequency reuse pattern it cannot be
tightened.
As in IUO, also in IFH BSS is capable of managing two sets of frequencies: one for the
regular layer and one for the super layer. Both layers have their own MA-lists, and also the
hopping sequences can be assigned independently for both layers. It is possible to have both
layers hopping, or only either one of the layers hopping the other one being at non-hopping
39
mode. However, the hopping mode has to be the same for both layers, ie hopping mode can
be either BB hopping or RF hopping but not a mixture of those.
40
4 NETWORK PLANNING AND IFH SYSTEM SOLUTION
In this chapter the problem related to the network planning process is outlined. Network
performance indicators important for IFH networks are described, as well as Nokia’s system
solution for IFH.
4.1 Principles of network planning
The radio network planning process can be defined as a sequence of planning actions in
which a given radio system is configured to satisfy the offered traffic demand and fulfilling
the given quality criteria in a certain geographical area. The main targets of the network
planning are to achieve the required radio coverage, to maximize the network capacity with
the available frequency spectrum still maintaining the certain quality of service, and most
important from the operator’s point of view to minimize the network infrastructure cost. The
network planning process can be divided into five main phases: network dimensioning,
coverage planning, transmission planning, frequency planning, and parameter planning
[Nok98a].
The aim of dimensioning is to give an estimation of the amount of hardware, eg the number
of cells and carriers, needed to fulfill the needs of the offered traffic. Other outputs of the
dimensioning phase are transmitter powers and cell ranges acquired from link budget
calculations. The most valuable input for the capacity assessment in the dimensioning phase
would be a traffic density map which can be based eg on the statistics of population, income
level, land usage, and mobile phone penetration and distribution. However, usually a traffic
density map is not available, and often guesses based on eg data collected from an existing
network have to be made. Other input values for dimensioning are eg time frame of the
project, system and frequency band available for the operator, and economical factors.
In an IFH network the TRXs must be divided between regular and super layers which makes
the capacity estimation even more difficult. The placement of IFH cells is also of great
importance: it is feasible to place an IFH cell close to the high traffic density area. Of course,
the traffic efficiency of the super layer is limited by its ability to absorb traffic. If the super
layer becomes congested, new calls cannot be transferred there. Also, if the regular layer
becomes congested, it is possible that a new connection cannot be established although
hardware resources were available on the super layer. What makes the capacity assessment
even more difficult is that the capacity an IFH network can carry depends also on the
assigned parameters, especially good and bad C/I thresholds. By increasing the thresholds
more traffic can be carried by the super layer.
Coverage and transmission planning are closely related to each other. They should always be
carried out simultaneously. The aim of coverage planning is to meet the desired coverage
probability requirements in a specified area. Coverage probability means that field strength
exceeds a given threshold value in a certain number of locations (eg 90%). This is due to the
fact that it would be too expensive, even impossible, to implement such a plan that the
coverage is provided in all locations. Digital maps including topography, morphography, and
building information are an essential part of coverage predictions since the accuracy of the
predictions depends partly on the accuracy of the map. Another issue of great importance
affecting the predictions is the chosen propagation model. It must be suitable for the
propagation environment (eg rural or dense city) in question. Also measurements are very
important when tuning the several parameters that are included in the propagation models.
The coverage area of a given cell can be extended by increasing the power of TRX, choosing
41
Chapter 4: Network planning and IFH system solution
an antenna with higher gain, using feeder cables having lower loss or increasing the tower
height. In transmission planning it must be guaranteed that enough transmission capacity
between sites exists. When selecting the site leased lines must be available, or then it must
be checked that line of sight (LOS) exists between sites for microwave links.
The purpose of frequency planning is to maximize the efficiency of spectrum usage within
the given minimum quality requirements and bandwidth. Because frequency assignment
requirements are quite difficult to consider in the capacity calculations, capacity estimation
and frequency planning form an iterative process. This frequency assignment process is
based on the interference analysis of the network. Interference analysis is based on coverage
analysis, because the aim is to calculate carrier-to-interference ratio, ie what is the relation
between the field strengths of the serving channel and interfering channel(s). This is a very
limiting factor when designing a cellular network since the available bandwidth is very
limited. The aim of frequency allocation is to plan the frequencies in such a way that the co-
channel C/I as well as the adjacent channel C/I exceed the given system and the quality
dependent thresholds in the serving area of each cell. In general the frequency assignment
problem is en extremely complicated task, and usually computer-based systems have to be
used to overcome this problem.
The performance of the designed network is optimized by selecting suitable BSS parameters
stored in the BSC radio network database. The parameter planning can begin with a default
parameter set. An important part of this phase are the field test measurements, in which calls
are generated in the test routes driven in the real environment. Parameters can then be
adjusted according to the measurements. It is possible that all the problems, eg handover
failures, cannot be solved by tuning the parameters, which requires returning to previous
planning phases. Thus the whole planning forms an iterative process.
4.2 Radio link measurements
4.2.1 Signal strength
The Received Signal Strength (RXLEV) is measured by both MS and BSS, and the received
input shall be reported by MS to BSS every 480ms (corresponding 104 TDMA frames). The
range of the measurements is from –110 dBm to –48 dBm, and these power levels are
mapped to RXLEV values according to Table 4.1. The are 64 different RXLEV categories,
thus 6 bits are required to transmit the received power level.
Table 4.1 Mapping of RXLEV.

RXLEV Received power P [dBm]
0 P<-110
1 -110<P<-109
2 -109<P<-108
… …
61 -50<P<-49
62 -49<P<-48
63 P>-48
42
4.2.2 Bit error rate and RXQUAL
The Received Signal Quality measure (RXQUAL) is used as a criterion in the RF power
control and handover decision, and it is one of the most important and used quality measures
in GSM networks. RXQUAL is measured by both MS and BS and reported every SACCH,
ie every 480 ms, further to BSC which makes the actual decisions concerning PC and HO.
RXQUAL is actually an estimation of Bit Error Rate (BER), but instead of BER RXQUAL
is reported to BSC [ETS95]. BER is estimated before channel decoding and the calculated
BER is then mapped to eight RXQUAL classes according to Table 4.2. As can be seen the
BER values increase exponentially as RXQUAL increases. The method to be used in BER
estimation is not specified in the GSM specifications, and it is up to manufacturers to select
the method.
Table 4.2 Relation between BER and RXQUAL.

RXQUAL BER value [%] Assumed BER [%]
RXQ0 <0.2 0.14
RXQ1 0.2-0.4 0.28
RXQ2 0.4-0.8 0.57
RXQ3 0.8-1.6 1.13
RXQ4 1.6-3.2 2.26
RXQ5 3.2-6.4 4.53
RXQ6 6.4-12.8 9.05
RXQ7 >12.8 18.1
4.2.3 Frame erasure ratio
One speech frame would fit into four bursts. The bits are however transmitted in eight
successive bursts meaning that the bits belonging to a certain speech frame fill always only
half of the capacity carried out by one burst. In one SACCH of 480 ms 24 frames are
transmitted if DTX is not utilized 2 frames being reserved for signaling purposes. Frame
Erasure Ratio (FER) is the proportion of the speech frames that the speech decoder discards.
A frame is considered to be discarded if any of the bits belonging to class 1a bits is changed
based on the three parity bits, see Figure 2.4. The evaluation of the frame is accomplished
after decoding process and exploiting error correction techniques.
Since FER is calculated after the decoding process it gives the information how successfully
the speech frame was received. It is supposed to better indicate the subjective quality of the
connection compared with RXQUAL, since even if the RXQUAL class is high the quality
can still be adequate due to error correction techniques [Haa97]. This applies especially in
frequency hopping networks because the quality in such a network is more or less averaged.
The distribution of the RXQUAL samples compared to non-hopping network changes so
that the amount of values 2-5 tends to increase and the amount of samples belonging to
classes 1,6 and 7 will decrease. By looking at the RXQUAL values it can appear that the
quality of the network has deteriorated after utilizing frequency hopping while the number of
bad speech frames has actually decreased. In Table 4.3 the correspondences between the
different FER values and subjective speech quality are presented [Haa97]. The results are
based on listening tests. It is clear that since the mapping is based on the subjective tests also
other kind of categories could be created.
43
Table 4.3 Mapping between FER and subjective speech quality.

FER % Speech Quality
0-4 Excellent
4-8 Good
8-10 Fair
10-15 Poor
> 15 Not Usable
4.2.4 Drop call rate
Drop Call Rate (DCR) tells the share of the calls in which the radio link was not released
successfully. Drop Call Rate is a good network performance indicator, and in a good
network it should be between 2-4% depending on network planning. Call dropping can be
caused by many reasons, eg bad frequency or parameter planning, or as well it can happen
due to the transmission link failure. It gives a good picture of the overall network
performance. Especially when studying the capacity of soft blocking limited hopping
schemes, often the DCR that is affected by the increased interference, is used as a soft
blocking criteria. For that purpose the DCR needs to be set to a fixed value (eg to 2%), and
the capacity limit will then be met, when either the DCR exceeds the set value or the share
of the bad quality becomes too high. However, no matter how well the networks are planned
there will always be some background DCR. This is due to the fact that eg the battery of a
mobile can run out during an ongoing call resulting to a dropped call. This is independent of
the network quality, of course.
4.2.5 Handover success rate
Handover (HO) is a basic functionality of cellular networks, and it can be performed for
many reasons. HOs can be distinguished roughly as either intra cell or inter cell handovers.
Intra cell handover is performed within a single cell meaning that the timeslot or carrier
frequency is changed in the same cell. Intercell handover happens between two separate
cells, and they can be categorised further. Handover Success Rate parameter describes the
handover performance. It is a ratio of the successful HO attempts (intra-cell and inter-cell) to
all HO attempts. An attempt is unsuccessful in case the mobile has to return to the old
channel [Nok98b].
4.2.6 Subjective voice quality measures
Test Mobile System (TEMS) is a device developed by Ericsson for measuring the subjective
voice quality. The TEMS test telephone has the Speech Quality Indicator (SQI) which
should be even more accurate than the analysis of just FER. The SQI scale is from –15 dB to
+ 40 dB and the effect of HO's muting effect is included. The TEMS/FICS postprocessed
statistical results are obtained in 5 dB steps. There is correspondence to the Mean Opinion
Score (MOS) scaling with difference that the SQI is more accurate especially in bad
conditions. The following correspondence, Table 4.4, can be used the focus being in classes
poor and fair:
44
Table 4.4 Correspondences between SQI and MOS classes.

TEMS SQI [dB] MOS Classes
+30 to 40 5 Excellent
+20 to 30 4 Good
+10 to 20 3 Fair
- 5 to +10 2 Poor
- 15 to -5 1 Bad
4.3 Nokia's system solution for IFH-networks
4.3.1 Nokia's implementation in BSS
The new Intelligent Frequency Hopping feature will be introduced in BSS7 software release
(S7), and will provide the combined gain of IUO and FH. The hopping mode in IFH can be
either baseband (BB-FH) or radio frequency (RF-FH) hopping. As with conventional FH, in
BB-FH mode the BCCH frequency is included into hopping sequence, but not in RF-FH
mode. In Figure 4.1 the difference of the hopping modes in IFH case is illustrated.
RF hopping cell BB hopping cell
Regular layer f1
TRX-1 BCCH
TRX-1 BCCH f1
f2 TRX-2 TCH f2
TRX-2 TCH
f3 TRX-3 TCH f3
f4
Super reuse f5
layer TRX-3 TCH f6
f7 TRX-4 TCH
TRX-4 TCH f4
TRX-5 TCH f5
f5
f6 TRX-6 TCH f6
f7
Figure 4.1 Different hopping schemes.
The unique C/I evaluation principle described in Section 3.4.1 is used in IFH networks in the
same manner as with IUO. Based on the profile of interference each mobile is exposed to,
the BSC determines whether handover between the layers is performed.
By comparing the downlink signal level of the serving cell and the downlink signal levels of
the neighbouring cells which use the same super reuse frequencies as the serving cell, the
BSC can calculate the C/I ratio on the super reuse frequencies at the location of each active
mobile station. Based on that a decision is made whether the super layer is able to serve the
call or should the regular layer serve the call.
45
As the IFH has FH element included, the signal in IFH system is more robust towards the
interference than in non-hopping case. That has two consequences: the frequency reuse
factors on any layer of an IFH cell can be reduced, and the C/I criteria can be altered by
modifying the C/I thresholds. When the C/I thresholds are modified the super layer will be
able to serve the call with lower C/I, hence both the 'good C/I threshold' and the 'bad C/I
threshold' can be brought down by some decibels. This in fact means that better absorption
can be achieved. Absorption is the number of mobiles located on super layer divided by the
total number of mobiles in the cell. In theory the thresholds could be lowered by at least a
value that equals the FH gain, ie according to simulations potentially by 5-6dB (in city area).
Practical values may vary from those but through first implementations they can be verified.
Both hopping modes, BB and RF hopping, have their advantages and disadvantages. BB
hopping has less hardware restrictions, and it is supported by all BTS generations. Also all
antenna combining methods are feasible. However, operators with small bandwidth and
small configurations may experience problems. If operator is having eg 2+2 configuration, ie
2 TRXs are allocated to both layers, BB hopping is not feasible since hopping over two
frequencies does not provide much hopping gain. In that case 3+1 might be better solution,
where 3 TRXs on regular layer are hopping over three frequencies and the only TRX super
layer is not hopping at all. This way some hopping gain can be achieved on the regular layer.
Still, BB hopping sets limitations for those operators having small configurations since full
hopping gain cannot be obtained.
RF hopping is much more flexible compared with BB hopping. Full frequency hopping gain
can be achieved with small configurations and small bandwidth. With MAIO management
hopping is possible over large number of frequencies even if the number of TRXs is small,
as explained is Section 3.3.3. However, RF hopping is not supported by old BTS
generations, and before RF hopping is possible all the old generation BTSs should be
replaced with new Nokia 3rd generation GSM base stations. Also wideband antenna coupling
equipment, Antenna Filter Equipment (AFEs), are needed.
4.3.2 Nokia's network planning system (NPS/X)
NPS/X is an integrated software package for cellular network design. It provides tools for
actual planning and documentation, from rough sketches to accurate design. The different
planning phases are based mainly on predicted field strength data. The available models
giving these predictions in NPS/X are Okumura-Hata, Juul-Nyholm, Walfish-Ikegami and
ray tracing model, which has been developed at Nokia. The predicted data can be verified
and tuned using measurements. All the predictions are based on digital maps. Of course,
certain parameters like BS transmit power, antenna direction, and antenna tilt have to be
defined prior to any calculations.
Automatic frequency allocation tool is used to optimize the available radio resources in a
best possible way. The frequency allocation is based on the generation of interference and
separation matrixes, which on the other hand are based on the predicted coverages. The
interference matrix can also be calibrated using measurements performed by BSC.
Allocation can be performed for entire network, or for a smaller specified area. The
frequency allocator supports planning in both hopping and non-hopping networks, as well as
in multilayer networks. The allocation results can be verified using interference analysis tool,
which also supports frequency hopping and multilayer planning. In a non-hopping case the
interference is reported in terms of C/I ratio, while in a hopping case RXQUAL quality
measure is used. In IUO and IFH planning reference cells, ie the cells that are used in the C/I
46
estimation whether MS is handed over from the regular layer to the super layer or vice versa,
can be generated automatically. Figure 4.2 presents the basic structure of NPS/X [Nok98e].
Map Editor Digital Map Antenna DB
NMS/X Measured NPS/X

Data
Databases
System Data Propagation Model

Base Station Data
Figure 4.2 NPS/X block diagram
4.3.3 Network management system (NMS)
NMS is the operation and maintenance related part of the network. It is also needed for the
whole network control. The network operator observes and maintains the network quality
and service offered through NMS.
According to its name, the purpose of NMS is to monitor various functions and elements of
the network. These tasks are carried out by the Operation and Maintenance Centre (OMC),
which consist of a number of work stations, a server and a front end acting as an interface
between the network element and OMC.
Cell Doctor is a reporting package in NMS which provides effective tools to cover all the
functional areas of the NMS/2000: configuration management, fault management, and
performance management, with a special focus on the needs of network planning, operation
and maintenance.
Separate CellDoctor software has to be installed to operator’s NMS/2000. Cell Doctor

scripts are then executed from the NMS/2000 workstation. They can be programmed
beforehand to be executed at certain times and days. During a trial, which takes a long time
to execute, a lot of information will be collected. It is therefore important to try to decrease
the number of scripts run in order to keep the amount of information within reasonable
limits. This could otherwise cause problems in storage and readability of the obtained data.
47
5 IFH PLANNING STRATEGIES
The problem related to the division of the frequencies between the layers in IFH networks,
and which are the feasible hardware configurations for IFH are discussed in this chapter.
Some aspects of using computerized planning for IFH networks is provided. A method for
dimensioning the blocking probability of IUO/IFH networks is also presented. The
performance of IFH networks is analyzed by means of simulating the various factors
affecting the ability of the network to absorb traffic.
5.1 Planning concepts
5.1.1 Frequency split between layers
There are three main strategies to consider when determining the frequency allocation
schemes to be used in IUO networks. First, common band can be used for all the TRXs. It
means the frequencies are assigned for the BCCH-, regular- and super layers from one
common band, which is the whole band available for the operator. Another possibility is that
the super frequencies are separated from the BCCH and regular frequencies, and only the
BCCH and regular layers share the same frequency pool. The third, and most commonly
used approach is to separate the frequencies for every layer, ie BCCH, regular and super
frequencies are assigned from dedicated frequency pools for each TRX. The different
division schemes are illustrated in Figure 5.1.
BCCH+regular+super
BCCH+regular super
BCCH regular super
Figure 5.1 Different schemes to share frequencies.
5.1.2 TRX configurations
One problem in IFH planning is how to divide the TRXs between the super and regular
layers. All the TRX configurations are not equally favorable. On one hand, it is desirable to
have as many super TRXs as possible in terms of frequency efficiency, since on the super
layer the frequencies are reused in a more efficient way than on the regular layer. On the
other hand, if too many of the cell’s TRXs are allocated to the super layer it is possible that
the regular layer becomes congested due to lack of resources on the regular layer. If direct
access to super feature is not available, the call set up must always take place on the regular
layer. Now, if there are no resources available on the regular layer, the call cannot be
initiated and thus never handed over to the super layer. Actually, here we have quite a
serious drawback present in TDMA based systems: in GSM the channels must be allocated
in blocks of 8 channels, and finding the best possible and optimum distribution of the
channels between the super and regular layers can be virtually impossible.
48
Chapter 5: IFH planning strategies
5.1.3 Effects of traffic distribution
Traffic distribution inside the cell greatly affects the performance of an IFH cell. If the traffic
is concentrated in the areas where the super layer is not able to serve because of the
interference conditions, the traffic pressure in the regular TRXs increases and the
performance can decline. On the other hand, the larger proportion of the cell traffic is in the
so called ‘interference free area’, the larger proportion of the total traffic can be transferred
to the super layer. In this case the regular layer has less meaning as an independent traffic
layer, but it is rather feeding the super layer.
5.2 Blocking of IUO networks
In a conventional network the blocking probability Pbl can be calculated using Erlang B
formula [Rap96], Equation (5.1),
C
 λ 1

µ   C!
Pbl =   , (5.1)
n
C
 λ 1
∑ 
  
n = 0  µ  n!
where λ is the call arrival probability, H=1/µ is the average call holding time and C is the
number of channels in the system. With the given offered traffic A=λ/µ and the number of
channels C the probability that a call is blocked due to lack of hardware resources can then
be calculated. A common design criterion for blocking is 2%.
In IUO and IFH networks the situation is not so straightforward, and Equation (5.1) cannot
be applied as it is. The hardware resources are split between the super and regular layers and
the offered traffic is divided between these layers. Also transitions from the regular to the
super layer and vice versa are possible. A method for estimating the blocking probability of
two layer networks is proposed in Appendix A. It is based on two dimensional Markov
chains and is therefore quite similar to derivation of Erlang B formula. However, analytical
solution cannot be found (or anyway not with reasonable work effort), and a numerical
method to solve the system of equations has to be considered. In this case Matlab was used
to obtain the results.
The input values for estimating the blocking probability of IUO/IFH networks are the offered
load, the number of channels on both layers, the transition probabilities from the regular to
the super layer and from the super to the regular layer, and the BCCH decoding time. It is
also possible to estimate the effect of direct access to super feature.
In Figure 5.2 is presented one example of the results when applying the above-described
method. The configuration was 2+2, ie that on both layers there were 2 TRXs in each cell.
For simplicity the BCCH and signaling channels are omitted in the calculations. The
blocking probability is presented as a function of offered load with several Direct Access to
Super (DA) parameter values. Also the blocking probability of the super layer is presented in
Figure 5.3. However, the blocking of the super layer has no interest from user’s point of
view, since the user experiences only the overall blocking on the regular layer. One
observation concerning Figure 5.2 and Figure 5.3 can be made: the blocking probability of
49
the super layer is much higher compared with the regular layer. This was as expected, since
in IUO/IFH networks the traffic is guided to the super layer due to its better spectral
efficiency.
Let’s now suppose that we have a homogeneous network of 24 three sectorised sites (72
cells). By using Erlang B table it can seen that each cell can carry 23.7 Erlangs if all the
TRXs in a cell are in one pool and 2% blocking criteria is set. If we further suppose Rfa being
12, it can be calculated that the traffic this kind of network can carry is 35.6 Erlangs/MHz. In
Figure 5.2 it can be seen that if the cells in the previously mentioned network were IUO cells
each of them could absorb 18.1 Erlangs traffic with 2% blocking supposing that direct
access to super feature is not used. Assuming the reuse factor being on the regular layer 12
and on the super layer 3 it can be calculated that the network can handle in this case 43.4
Erlangs/MHz. This is about 22% more than in the conventional network. Using frequency
hopping the reuse factor of the regular layer could be lowered to e.g. 9. Hence the
corresponding values is 54.3 Erlangs/MHz, capacity improvement being about 54%. Having
the direct access to super parameter value of 0.3 the capacity improvements would
correspondingly be 27% and 58%. However, this model is purely theoretical and is giving
only a very rough assessment about the gain achieved with IFH.
Regular blocking
9
DA=0
DA=0.1
8
DA=0.3
7 DA=0.5
6 DA=0.7
Blocking [%]
5 DA=1
3 ErlB
0
12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26
Traffic [Erl]
Figure 5.2 Blocking probabilities of the regular layer as a function of offered load with
different direct access to super (DA) probability factors.
50
Super blocking
18
DA=0
DA=0.1
16
DA=0.3
DA=0.5
14 DA=0.7
DA=1
12
Blocking [%]
10
0
12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26
Traffic [Erl]
Figure 5.3 Blocking probabilities of the super layer as a function of offered load with
different direct access to super (DA) probability factors.
5.3 IFH-planning using NPS/X
5.3.1 Allocation process
The whole frequency allocation process has been revised in NPS/X 3.3. It is now possible to
model a number of different networks and system features, which produces more accurate
data for automatic frequency allocation. The frequency allocation tool has been designed
keeping usability and flexibility in mind. Verified default values have been assigned to all
the parameters, which together with the intuitive user interface make allocation easy, also for
a novice network planner.
The frequency allocation procedure in NPS/X 3.3 starts with Hierarchical Cell Layer (HCL)
definitions. With HCLs it is possible to divide the cells into logical layers, such as micro or
macro cell layer. Each hierarchical cell layer can have different parameters for the cell
service area definition, eg own parameter set for rural area and urban areas. These
parameters are defined in the Cell Service Area Class (CSAC). The CSACs contain all
parameters related to the definition of cell service area (coverage margin, dominance margin,
and umbrella HO threshold for micro cells, hierarchical cell layer membership and HO
methods used in the cell). Therefore it is possible to define different parameter sets for
different areas (rural, urban, etc.) and for different HCLs. One HCL can have several CSACs
while one CSAC can belong only to one HCL. When calculating interference matrices it is
also possible to have different interference matrix parameters for each cell service area class.
[Nok98c]
There can be three types of TRXs: BCCH, regular layer TCH and super layer TCH. Each of
these can have different sub-bands and different separation matrix parameters. When using
Multiple Reuse Pattern (MRP) method, each TRX has a different sub-band and different
separation matrix parameters. Therefore there is a TRX specific concept called Frequency
Group (FG) defining the sub-band and separation matrix parameters. Each TRX must belong
51
to one of these Frequency Groups. Furthermore, each MA list belongs always to one FG. In
Figure 5.4 the relations between HCLs, CSACs and FGs are illustrated.
Cell Service Area Classes (CSAC): Hierarchical Cell Layers (HCL):
macro-rural
macro-urban macro
micro-1
micro
micro-2
pico pico
Frequency Sub-bands: Frequency Layers:
BCCH
Other Regulars
Super
MA lists:
1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11,
13, 15
Figure 5.4 Relations between different hierarchical structures.
Of course, the coverage data has to be calculated and verified prior to any actions in the
frequency planning. After calculating coverages that are tuned using measurements,
interference matrix can be calculated. Due to inaccuracies in digital maps and propagation
models interference matrix can be calibrated in order to obtain better results in frequency
allocation phase. Calibration is based on the measurements carried out by BSC, and those
measurements can then be transferred to NPS/X in order to calibrate the interference matrix.
In frequency allocation phase the user can in RF hopping and IFH cases first calculate the
lengths of the MA lists. The MA list calculation in NPS/X is based on traffic (measured or
predicted using Erlang B formula) and fractional loading given by the user. Of course, the
user can define the MA list lengths by him/her self, too. When the lengths of the MA lists
are determined, frequency allocation tool allocates the frequencies to the MA lists according
to Frequency Group (FG) definitions (ie if the frequency group for TRX in question is
defined to be regular, the frequencies are allocated from regular frequency pool)
To make the processes that are related to frequency allocation more concrete Figure 5.5
clarifies the situation.
52
Capacity
Capacity NetDim / OMC / CDW
estimation,
estimation, Frequency
cell
Frequency NPS/X 3.3 / NDW
cellbasis
basis requirements
requirements
Spectrum Planning Quality
QualityAnalysis
Analysis
Spectrum Planning Definition of of
Estimation
and
andHW
HW concept
concept Frequency groups Automatic
Automatic
needed
and CSACs number
constraints
constraints decision
decision Parameter
Parametertuning
tuning
of frequencies
NPS/X 3.3
Automatic
Automaticinterferer
interferer
Coveragedata
Coverage data generation
generationfor
forIUO
IUO
Planning
Planningof
ofother
other
parameters
parameters
Interference
Interferencematrix
matrix
Neighbour
Neighbour cell
Interference cell generation
generation
measurements
measurements with
with Frequency
Frequency
Calibration
GPA Tool
GPAtool
tool Allocation
Allocation
Figure 5.5 Actions prior to frequency allocation [Nok98f].
5.3.2 Automatic reference cell generation
NPS/X 3.3 contains a new tool, reference cell generation tool, which automatically generates
the reference cells. Reference cells are used in IUO/IFH networks in the C/I estimation in
BSC to decide whether MS is handed over from the regular layer to the super layer or vice
versa. Reference cell generation is probably the biggest bottleneck of IUO/IFH planning, and
determination of the reference cells is a very time consuming process. That is why there is a
big need for automatic reference cell generation.
Interference for interfered TRXs is calculated so that co-channel and/or adjacent-channel

interference caused by interfering TRX is taken into account. The following aspects must be
considered: interference type, ie is the interference caused by co- or adjacent channel or
both, co-channel C/I threshold, adjacent channel C/I threshold and area percentage to be
exceeded before the cell is accepted as a reference cell. [Nok98d]
The interference is calculated so that if the C/I value in the pixel is below the pre-defined C/I
value, that pixel is considered to be an interfering pixel. Now, if the number of interfering
pixels pixI divided by the number of pixels in the dominance area pixD, ie the interference
probability PI defined by Equation (5.2), exceeds the area percentage the cell is added to a
reference cell list. The bigger is the calculated interference value, the bigger interferer the
interfering cell is. Interfering cells, which have 10 biggest interference values, are included
into the reference cell list. The situation is depicted in Figure 5.6.
pix I
PI = (5.2)
pix D
53
interfered area
calculation region border
cell coverage area Cell 2

border with given "Interfering cell"
threshold
Cell 1
"Interfered cell"
cell dominance area

border with given
margin
Figure 5.6 Interference Calculation Area definition.
This tool can also handle interference calculations in IFH networks. The interferers in IFH
networks are generated so that an interference value is calculated for every cell pair
(interfered -> interfering) in a target area. The interference value represents a probability that
a certain number of TRXs in the interfering cell is interfering the TRXs of the interfered cell.
The interference value is a function of the interference probability, the number of TRXs and
the length of the MA lists.
The hit probability for the MA list pair can be calculated
NC
Phit = ⋅N TRX , (5.3)
LMA1 ⋅LMA 2
where NC is the number of common channels in MA list pair, LMA1 the length of the
interfered MA list, LMA2 the length of the interfering MA list, and NTRX the number of
hopping TRXs in the interfering layer.
The function for calculating the interference value IV can be presented to be
I V = PI ⋅Phit . (5.4)
By inserting Equations (5.2) and (5.3) into (5.4) we obtain
pix I NC
Iv = ⋅ ⋅N TRX . (5.5)
pix D LMA1 ⋅LMA 2
It should be noted that if MAIO Management is enabled, it affects to C/I calculation results
of MAIO managed sites immediately. The affect depends on the cell specific MAIO
parameters.
54
5.3.3 Interference analysis
In a non-hopping network the interference is based on C/I ratio which is calculated by using
the power levels of the serving carrier and the interfering carriers. The analysis can be
performed for all the frequency channels, or for the selected channels. It is also possible to
analyze both co-channel and adjacent channel interference.
In frequency hopping case the situation is a bit more complicated. It is difficult to use C/I as
a quality measure since the frequency is changed every 4.615 ms. That is the reason for using
RXQUAL to estimate the quality of frequency hopping networks. The RXQUAL quality
estimation is performed in downlink direction for every pixel in the work area. A special
RXQUAL evaluation algorithm presented in Equation (5.6) has been developed at Nokia
[Ter97]. RXQUAL is calculated as
1 C
RXQUAL = RXQUAL( ∑ ∑ BER ( ) ⋅DTX ⋅load ) , (5.6)
cells freqs N f I
where Nf is the number of hopping frequencies in the serving cell, BER(C/I) is BER as a
function of C/I, DTX is the discontinuous transmission factor and load is the frequency load
factor. The load factor in Equation (5.6) for each cell can be calculated using Equation (5.7):
Erl ( Pbl , N TCH ) N

load = (1 − Pbl ) TRX , (5.7)
N TCH Nf
where Erl(Pbl,NTCH) is the cell traffic in Erlangs as a function of required blocking

probability Pbl and the number of traffic channels NTCH, NTRX is the number of TRXs in the
cell and Nf is as defined above.
In the quality estimation the C/I value is first mapped into BER. The mapping is based on
simulations [Ter97], and the relation between BER and C/I is presented in Figure 5.7. The
RXQUAL algorithm determines separately the BER corresponding to the C/I value caused
by each interfering cell. In a frequency hopping case each call is experiencing interference
causing BER only when it is transmitted on that particular frequency. That is why the BERs
caused by each individual frequency are summed and then divided by the number of
frequencies in the serving cell. This approach is justified if BER is a linear function of C/I
and infinite C/I results to zero BER. In Figure 5.8 BER is presented as a function of I/C. It
can be seen that the dependence between C/I and BER is not linear. It is linear after about
I/C value of 0.14 corresponging C/I=8.5dB [Sal98]. However, the line does not intercept the
y-axis at 0 but at about 0.08. This causes some excess BER of maximum 0.08 in case that
C/I value is below 8.5 dB.
55
0.25
0.2
BER 0.15
0.1
0.05
0
-1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
C/I [dB]
Figure 5.7 Simulated BER as a function of C/I.
0.25
0.2
0.15 Simulated BER

BER
Linear BER
0.1
0.05
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4
I/C
Figure 5.8 BER as a function of I/C.
Furthermore, in Equation (5.2) the average BER is multiplied by the DTX and load factors.
If the interfering carrier is BCCH carrier, DTX=load=1. This is due to the fact that BCCH
carrier must be transmitted constantly corresponding to a fully loaded TRX.
5.4 Simulations
5.4.1 Simulator
The IFH simulations were performed using a dynamic simulation tool, Capacity, which has
been developed in co-operation with Nokia Telecommunications and University of Aalborg.
With Capacity it is possible to measure both the performance and the capacity of GSM
networks. The simulation tool is able to simulate the factors affecting the performance of the
GSM network, and returns the quality experienced by each individual mobile station at a
56
given system load. The quality is measured in terms of C/I, percentage of dropped calls and
RXQUAL distribution.
The network structure was a regular grid cell radius being 3 km. Totally 24 three sectorized
sites were placed on the network area resulting to 72 cells. Calls were initiated randomly and
they were supposed to arrive using Poisson distribution average call length being 80
seconds. Each call was supposed to move with constant speed (3km/h or 50 km/h) to
randomly chosen direction. Handovers had higher priority than new calls meaning that it was
first checked if there are mobiles requesting handover to that cell before a new connection
could be established. In the simulator all handovers succeed supposing that free channels are
available in the target cell. This is however not the case in real life since call can be dropped
because of handover failure. The call dropping procedure is depicted in Figure 5.9. In the
simulator the user can determine certain RXQUAL value which defines the threshold after
which the quality of the connection is considered poor. Every time (ie every SACCH
multiframe) the reported RXQUAL value exceeds this threshold a specific mobile counter
value is increased by one. On the other hand, if the RXQUAL value is below this limit the
counter is decreased by two. When the counter exceeds user definable dropped call threshold
the call is dropped. In the simulations the RXQUAL threshold was set to 5 (ie that
RXQUAL of 5 was still considered adequate) and dropped call threshold to 19. With these
configurations it is means that it takes at least 20*480 ms=9.6 s from the beginning of the
connections before the call can be dropped.
Counter 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
Call dropped
Quality 5 7 6 7 7 7 6 4 7 7 6 7 6 6 7 7 7 6 7 6 7 7 6
time
Figure 5.9 Call dropping procedure in the simulator.
Both Rayleigh and shadow fading are considered in the simulations. The log-normal shadow
fading is correlated over 110m, and standard deviation of 6 dB is used as a reference
[Wig97]. Measurements are reported every SACCH multiframe, but are performed for every
104 bursts. Table 5.1 summarizes the general parameters applied in the simulations.
Table 5.1 Parameter settings used in the simulator.

Number of sites 24
Number of cells 72
Path Loss L=35log(d)
Shadow fading standard deviation 6dB
Shadow fading correlation distance 1/e at 110m
Average call length 80s
Mobile speed 3 km/h and 50km/h
Cell radius 3km
Max BS output power 43dBm
Max MS output power 13dBm
Antennas 65° sectorised
Dropped call RXQUAL threshold 5
Dropped call threshold 19
57
The capacity gain achieved when using IFH feature was compared with conventional
network. It means that a configuration consisting of one regular and one super TRX was
compared with 2 TRX conventional configuration, for example. The comparison was made
in traffic per MHz, ie, how much traffic this particular system can handle without exceeding
the predefined quality criteria. In the simulations this maximum load was determined when
the DCR was less that 2%, and the percentage of blocked calls was less that 2%.
5.4.2 Blocking probabilities
The blocking probability results obtained when exploiting the method described in Section
5.2 were verified with simulations. In the simulator good- and bad-C/I thresholds were set to
17dB and 12dB. TRX configuration was 1+1, ie one TRX was allocated to both layers. The
number of blocked calls was then calculated in several points having different offered loads.
In the simulator also error margins for the blocking probabilities are provided. The
simulation results were then compared with calculated values. In the calculations good- and
bad-C/I probabilities of 0.5 and 0.55 were used. The results are presented in Figure 5.10. It
can be seen that the calculated values match quite well with the simulations and almost all
the values are within the error limits.
5
Blocking[%]
4 Upper limit
Simulated
3
Lower limit
2 Calculated
0
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Off.load[Erl]
Figure 5.10 Comparison of simulated and calculated blocking probabilities with 1+1
TRX configuration of IUO.
5.4.3 Effect of direct access to super
When IUO was first introduced a call had to be first set up on the regular layer and after C/I
evaluation handed over to the super layer when C/I allowed that. This principle reduced the
potential gain of IUO and could also lead to congestion on the regular layer under certain
conditions.
58
In the BSC software release S7 this problem will be solved by allowing direct access to the
super layer without any adverse impact from the degree of regular layer loading. The access
criterion is based on the received DL signal level reported by the MS. But since the actual
C/I is not known, it is possible that the call is dropped due to wrong estimation in quality.
The effect of the direct access to super feature was simulated using Capacity simulator. The
starting value can be found from RXLEV measurement by studying the minimum values of
the super-reuse TRXs and maximum values of regular-reuse TRXs correspondingly. After
the starting point is found the parameter can be optimised until the still acceptable call drop
rate is achieved. When the optimum value for direct access threshold is found it can be
reused over the network.
In Figure 5.11 the results are presented [Wig97]. The upper curve represents the DCR as a
function of direct access level. The figures in the lower curve, on the other hand, describe the
proportion of the mobiles that have accessed the super layer directly from SDCCH. It can be
clearly seen that after certain power level threshold, in this case –85 dBm, the dropped call
ratio starts to increase significantly. However, this is not any absolute value that could be
used in every network. The power levels can vary a lot in different networks, and eg in micro
cell networks the value of the direct access to super parameter should be higher.
1.2
Drop (%)
Simulated Drop Call Percentage [%]
1
Dir.Acc (%)
0.8
0.6
46%
35%
0.4
24%
17%
0.2
12%
8%
0
-65 -70 -75 -80 -85 -90 -95 -100
Direct access threshold [dBm]
Figure 5.11 Dropped call versus direct access to super threshold
5.4.4 Simulated capacity gain of IFH
The capacity gain of IFH was calculated as follows [Nie97]. Whenever IUO element was
included in the baseband frequency hopping network, the used configuration was 4+3 (ie
four TRXs on the regular layer one being a BCCH TRX, and three TRXs on the super layer).
The frequency reuses factors were 3/9 and 1/3 respectively. Thus, together 45 frequencies
were required. 3/9 reuse means that nine different frequency groups are rotated within three
sites (ie each site contains three cells). 1/3 reuse, on the other hand, means the frequency
pool is split into three parts, and these groups are then used within one site. In the pure
frequency hopping cases the used reuse patterns were 3/9 with 5 TRXs per cell, and 1/3 with
12 TRXs per cell plus one BCCH TRX having a frequency reuse of 3/9. Also both frequency
hopping cases require a total number of 45 frequencies. The simulations were carried out
59
with two separate speeds of mobiles (3 km/h and 50 km/h) since the frequency diversity gain
is quite dependent on the speed of the mobiles.
The offered traffic was increased until the hard blocking or the soft blocking limit was
reached. The hard blocking criterion was set to 2% blocking, and the maximum amount of
acceptable dropped calls was fixed to 5%. The simulation results are summarized in Table
5.2. From the results it can be seen that with the mobile speeds of 3 km/h the pure frequency
hopping 1/3 reuse case and the IFH case provide the highest capacity. However, the drop call
rate is much higher in 1/3 FH case compared with the IFH case. In respect with 3/9
frequency hopping case IFH gives almost 35% more capacity. In comparison with those two
cases it can be seen that the drop call rates are at the same level in both cases, and the
network was hard blocking limited. When the speed to the mobile is increased to 50 km/h,
the IFH network becomes soft blocking limited. The capacity gain of IFH in respect with
pure 3/9 hopping case decreases to 26%. The more positive results with the mobile speed of
3 km/h are partly caused by the fact that the power control can better regulate the
transmission power, when the speed is low. Also, the number of handovers decreases with
lower speeds.
Table 5.2 Summary of the simulation results.

Reuse Speed [km/h] Load [%] DCR [%] Blocking type Capacity [Erl/Cell]
BB-FH 1/3 3 40 5 soft 41.6
1/3 50 33 5 soft 34.3
BB-FH 3/9 3 78 <1 hard 31.2
3/9 50 78 <1 hard 31.2
BB-IFH 3/9&1/3 3 75 <1 hard 42
3/9&1/3 50 70 5 soft 39.2
60
6 FIELD TRIAL
The field test trial was conducted in co-operation with one of Nokia’s customer. The main
goal of the trial was to verify the quality and capacity gain achieved by means of IFH. The
trial arrangements from network planning to the actual implementation were mostly carried
out by Nokia. The traffic for the trial was generated by operator’s normal customers.
6.1 Trial environment
The trial took place in urban environment. Mostly the terrain type was quite flat, and only
one big hill located in the trial area.
The trial area consisted of 11 sites having together 31 cells, ie two sites contained two
sectorised cells the rest nine sites having three cells each. All the base stations were Nokia
3rd generation GSM base stations, and also AFEs were used in every cell. The AFEs were
needed to perform the tests in RF hopping cases. The number of TRXs was four in almost
every cell the average number of TRXs being 3.74. An area referred to as a buffer area was
generated for the trial purposes. The buffer area consisted of cells that were close to the cells
located in the trial area it self. The buffer area was generated because the trial area located in
the middle of the city, and interference outside the trial area could not be prevented because
a separate frequency band for the trial cells was not available, of course. Also when
performing the frequency allocation with NPS/X the overall interference condition has to be
taken into account, and thus the interference caused by the buffer area cells was calculated.
Also some reference cells were included in the reference cell lists from the buffer area. The
performance of the buffer area was monitored to ensure that the quality of the trial area is not
improved at the expense of the buffer area.
6.2 Test cases
The test cases can be divided into two parts: pure frequency hopping cases and IFH cases.
The pure frequency hopping cases were needed to be able to compare the results with IFH
tests. The trial consisted of 8 different main test cases. In all test cases the existing BCCH
plan with 18 frequencies was used. Thus, only the number of frequencies in the hopping
channels was changed.
6.2.1 Pure frequency hopping cases
The frequency allocation schemes in the RF hopping cases can be roughly divided into two
parts according to the planning methods: easy planning where the planning was performed
manually, and computerized NPS/X planning where the frequencies were planned using
Nokia’s network planning tool. The first tested frequency allocation scheme was so called
1/3. The basic idea of 1/3 easy allocation is to divide the hopping frequencies into three
different groups and reuse the groups over all the sites (group A for sector 1, group B for
sector 2 and group C for sector 3). As mentioned, the easy allocation can be done manually,
ie no planning tools are needed. That is the biggest advantage of it. The 1/3 easy planning
scheme was tested with 30 (6 MHz), 18 (3.6 MHz) and 15 (3 MHz) frequencies resulting to
MA list lengths of 10, 6 and 5 frequencies.
61
Chapter 6: Field trial
The other tested easy planning method was 1/1 scheme. The easy 1/1 frequency allocation
consists of only one single hopping group, ie all frequencies (except BCCH frequency) are
allocated to one MA list and co- and adjacent channel interference between the sectors are
taken care by MAIO management.
The heuristic allocation is based on the frequency allocation algorithm implemented in

NPS/X 3.3. NPS/X can allocate the frequencies according to the current interference
situation and therefore it gives better allocation than the 'easy' methods. In the heuristic
allocation the frequency pool consisted of 18 frequencies. Thus, the frequency allocation
reuse was Rfa=3. In Figure 6.1 the reuse patterns are presented to better illustrate the
different reuse concepts. First figure represents the easy allocation 1/3 case the second
illustrating the heuristic 1/3 case. In heuristic allocation every MA list can be different to
minimize the interference. In the easy allocation cases all the sectors having frequency group
A contain exactly the same frequencies. However, in the heuristic cases most of the
frequencies in the frequency groups A1, A2, A3 and A4 are the same, but some variation
exists between the different ‘A’ groups. The frequency groups having almost the same
frequencies in their heuristically allocated MA lists are separated using the subscripts. The
last figure depicts the single MA list case.
A A A1 A2 A A
C1 C2
C C A A
B1 B2
B B A A
A3 A4
A A A A
C3 C4
C C A A
B3 B4
B B A A
Figure 6.1. Principle of the reuses in RF hopping cases.
6.2.2 IFH cases
Also in IFH cases the frequency planning methods used can be divided between manual easy
planning, Figure 6.2, and heuristic NPS/X planning, Figure 6.3. Of course, different reuse
schemes can be used for both regular and super layers. The same notation applies as in the
pure RF hopping cases. Table 6.1 summarizes the used frequency allocation methods in the
trial, also for RF hopping cases. The number of frequencies used is presented in every case,
and also the effective reuses calculated using the Equation (3.14) are provided in the table.
A D A A A B
B C B C C C
B A C D B A C A C A C B
B C B C C C
D D A A A A B B A
A A A
C B C B C C
C D B A C A B A C B C A
C B C B C C
D A A A B A
Regular: 2/2 Super: 2/2 Regular:1/1 Super: 2/2 Regular: 2/2 Super 1/1
Figure 6.2 Reuse patterns in easy IFH cases.
62
D1 E1 D1 D2
A1 A2 A1 A2
C1 D1 C2 E1 C1 F1 C2 F2
B1 B2 B1 B2
E2 E1 D2 D3 E2 D4
D1 E
A3 A4 A3 A4
C3 E2 C4 D2 C3 F3 C4 F4
B3 B4 B3 B4
E2 D2 E3 E4
Regular: 2/2 Super: 1/3 Regular: 1/3 Super: 1/3
Figure 6.3 Reuse patterns in heuristic IFH cases.
Table 6.1 Frequency configurations in the trial.

Case Reg. Reuse Sup. Reuse Reff,Tot #Reg. Freqs #Sup. Freqs
IUO - - 11.7 20 12
IFH Easy pl 1/1 Easy pl 2/2 11.3 19 12
RF FH Easy pl 1/3 - 10.9 30
RF FH Easy pl 1/3 - 6.6 18
RF FH Easy pl 1/3 - 5.5 15
RF FH NPS/X 1/3 - 6.6 18
RF FH Easy pl 1/1 - 6.6 18
IFH NPS/X 1/3 NPS/X 1/3 8.0 10 12
IFH NPS/X 2/2 NPS/X 1/3 6.6 9 9
IFH Easy pl 2/2 Easy 2/2 11.7 20 12
6.3 Measurements
The performance of the network was monitored by using NMS/2000 performance

measurements (see Section 4.3.3) and drive/walk tests with measuring equipment.
NMS/2000 scripts were used for collecting the results, and drive/walk tests were mainly
performed to support and verify the results collected with NMS/2000. Drive/walk tests were
also performed for trouble shooting purposes.
6.3.1 Statistics collected in OMC
Automated script running was defined in the NMS/2000 for most scripts and some scripts
were executed manually according to occasional requirements. The most important
performance figures to observe were resource availability, DCR, RXQUAL quality
distributions, C/I statistics, traffic on TCH and SDCCH channels, blocking figures, and call
success rates. For IUO and IFH purposes super layer absorption and super layer usage
63
figures were observed. Also handover performance, especially reasons for the super layer to
the regular layer handovers, was seen very important.
6.3.2 Walk and drive tests
In addition to collecting valuable performance data in the OMC, the walk and drive tests
were performed to support the planning and implementation process. The CellDoctor
indicators are not able to see all the fine details of eg HO parameters or MA-list frequencies.
The functionality and quality of the test area can be seen from the end user point of view.
The walk and drive tests were performed by using both Nokia FER-tool and Erisoft TEMS
measurement equipment. The FER-tool is a tailor-made tool and implemented into a Nokia
8110 GSM phone with a PC application. It gives the layer specific FER and RXQUAL.
TEMS is a commercial tool for measuring and testing digital air interface and is the only
commercial tool which gives also FER; not layer specific, though.
6.4 Transitions between regular and super layers
6.4.1 C/I thresholds
By adjusting the good and bad C/I thresholds it is possible to change the traffic distribution
between the layers. By lowering these thresholds more traffic can be transferred from the
regular layer to the super layer. However, if the good and bad C/I thresholds are set too low,
the quality of the network may be sacrificed. This especially concerns the good C/I
threshold. This is due to the fact that if the mobile is handed over from the regular layer to
the super layer and the quality is not good enough, the call can be dropped on the super
layer. This is because the mobile is not able to make a handover back to the regular layer
since the signaling is not going through either.
In an IUO case the default value for bad C/I threshold is usually 12dB. This is achieved by
adding the flat fading margin of 3 dB to the minimum C/I requirement in GSM
specifications. This minimum value is 9 dB. The fading margin is of course not fixed to 3
dB. However, in IUO networks the fading margin of 3 dB for bad C/I thresholds is seen to be
enough. Good C/I value is derived from the bad C/I threshold so that a hysteresis margin is
added to the bad C/I value. If the margin is set too low it can cause unnecessary handovers
between the layers. This is because the call can be handed over back to the regular layer right
after it was handed over from the regular layer to the super layer. The hysteresis margin is
usually set to 3-5 dB resulting to good C/I value of 15-17 dB.
When frequency hopping is introduced in an IUO network, the C/I thresholds can be
lowered. However, to determine how much they can be lowered is not necessarily very
straightforward. At least the thresholds can be lowered by the amount of frequency diversity
gain described in Section 0. Eg if the hopping sequence consists of 6 frequencies the
frequency diversity gain is around 5 dB, thus the C/I thresholds can be lowered by 5 dB. But
to determine the effect of interference diversity gain is more difficult. Of course, the more
frequencies are included in the hopping sequence the better the interference is averaged over
those frequencies. But, to have long MA lists means also that the source of the inference is
closer to the carrier cell. An extreme case is the so called 1/1 reuse case, where one single
MA list is allocated in every cell. Now the length of the MA list is on its maximum value,
and the interference is averaged most efficiently. However, also the interference experienced
64
in case of collisions is very high. How the actual gain must be determined is not known, but
it is assumed that eg in 1/1 case the C/I thresholds could be lowered by 2-3 dB.
6.4.2 Quality handovers
Quality handover from the super layer to the regular layer is triggered if the quality on the
super layer is not acceptable. It is highly desirable that the transition form the super layer to
the regular layer is based on the bad C/I threshold but, eg, if a mistake has occurred in the
reference definition phase the C/I evaluation is not reliable. The RXQUAL experienced by
the user can be degraded too much even though the C/I estimation would show acceptable
interference level. In that case a handover based on the quality is triggered to avoid the call
drop.
In the initial IUO network the quality handover margin was set to RXQUAL 4. When IFH
was introduced, the margin was lowered to RXQUAL 6 based on the fact that a frequency
hopping network is more robust against interference and bad quality. Also the window sizes
determining the number of samples that have to belong to the bad quality classes before the
handover is triggered were reduced. This way the call was transferred faster back to the
regular layer if the quality remained at the unacceptable level for a long time.
6.4.3 Absorption
In Figure 6.4 the absorption in different cases is presented. The absorption figure is the
average absorption over the whole trial area. It has also been averaged over all the
measurement days for each test case. In the original IUO plan the absorption was slightly
below 56 %. Then, frequency hopping was introduced in the network and the absorption
figure dropped to 51%. However, this was expected to happen, since the interferers are much
closer in IFH as explained in Section 6.4.1, and all the thresholds remained untouched. Then,
good and bad C/I thresholds were lowered to 10 and 7 dB, ie they were lowered by 5 dB
(IFH 1/1&2/2 optimized case). Based on Figure 3.7 this is approximately the frequency
hopping gain that was expected to be acquirable when the MA lists consisted of 6
frequencies. Also the quality handover threshold was set from 4 to 6 at this point. After
optimizing the parameters the absorption was over 60 %, which is over 4 % more than in
IUO case.
65
62.0
60.0
Absorption [%]
58.0
56.0
54.0
52.0
50.0
48.0
46.0 IUO (32 freqs.) IFH 1/1 & 2/2 (22 IFH 1/1 & 2/2 (C/I Heuristic 1/3&1/3 Heuristic 2/2&1/3 Easy 2/2&1/1 (14 Easy 2/2&1/1 (18 Easy 2/2&2/2 (32
freqs.) optimization) (22 freqs.) (18 freqs.) freqs.) freqs.) freqs.)
Case
Figure 6.4. Absorption in different IFH cases.
In heuristic cases (heuristic 1/3&1/3 and heuristic 2/2&1/3) the reference cells were created
using NPS/X. But since it was not known how well the new interferer generation tool works
the number of reference cells was quite excessive. In many cases the maximum number of
10 reference cells were included in the reference cell list in BSC. That is the reason why the
absorption figures are 3-4 percentage units lower on those days when heuristic frequency
planning and reference cells generated by NPS/X were used.
In ‘easy 2/2&1/1’ phase when easy frequency planning was used again the absorptions seem
to be even lower than in heuristic cases. The reason for that is the used frequency reuse
scheme: in this phase 1/1 reuse scheme was used on the super layer. Now the interferers are
even closer compared with the situation in 2/2 reuse. In this case the C/I thresholds should
have been lowered again and still we would not have endangered the quality since in 1/1
case the hopping sequence is longer and more frequency diversity gain can be achieved. Also
interference diversity gain is bigger. Thus, C/I thresholds could have been decreased by
some decibels, eg 2-3 dB. However, the absorptions were still around 55% which is about
the same as the initial absorption figure in the IUO case.
In the last case 2/2 reuse scheme on the super layer was used again, and now the absorption
figure is again 1-2 percentage units higher than in ‘easy 2/2&1/1’ cases. However, the same
level as in the ‘optimized IFH 1/1&2/2’case was not obtained.
In Figure 6.5 the minimum and maximum absorptions are presented for each case. This
means that in each case the cells having the smallest and biggest absorption figure are taken
into account. The good absorption level is dependent on the TRX division of an IUO cell,
and in 2+2 configuration an absorption figure of 60% is considered good. Also, it is
desirable to have a small variation in the absorption figure, since low absorption means that
not much traffic is served by the super layer. This can be due to eg errors in the definition of
the reference cells.
In Figure 6.5 it can be clearly seen that in IFH cases the variations between the best and the
worst cell in terms of absorption are smaller than with pure IUO. In IUO network the
absorption varies between 20 and 85 %, while in IFH cases after optimizing C/I and quality
handover thresholds it varies between 30 and 80 %. For some reason in the last IFH case the
variation is as big as in the initial IUO case. One explanation can be the errors in the
reference cell definition. Namely, in the last case the reference cells were again created
manually.
66
100
90
80
70
Absorption [%]
60
50 MAX
40 MIN
30
20
10
0
IUO (32 freqs.) IFH 1/1 & 2/2 (22 IFH 1/1 & 2/2 (C/I Heuristic 1/3&1/3 (22 Heuristic 2/2&1/3 (18 Easy 2/2&1/1 (14 Easy 2/2&1/1 (18 Easy 2/2&2/2 (32
freqs.) optimization) freqs.) freqs.) freqs.) freqs.) freqs.)
Case
Figure 6.5. Minimum and maximum absorption.
6.4.4 Direct access to the super layer
Direct Access to the Super Layer Feature was used in some cells to improve the absorption
rate. The direct access threshold was set to –50 dBm.
Originally this feature is meant for preventing blocking in the regular layer in the
configurations where the regular layer has smaller or the same number of TRXs than the
super layer. In the trial area there was no blocking in the regular layer. Therefore, it was
difficult to see any difference in the absorption rate after implementing the feature.
Direct access threshold of –50 dBm was found adequate and a safe level without sacrificing
good quality. However, in another kind of environment the level of –50 dBm might be a far
too high value to bring any benefit for the blocking problem. The field strength levels were
very high in the trial area: 60 % of the level samples were higher than RXLEV 63 (-47
dBm), which is the highest RXLEV value reported by the mobile.
The direct access level should be optimized to correspond the average level with which the
mobiles go to the super layer. If the direct access level is set too low, the mobile can become
imposed by too high interference after reaching the super layer and the call can easily be
dropped. By implementing a too high threshold, the mobiles cannot get to the super layer by
this feature at all and the blocking situation in the regular layer remains.
67
6.5 Quality and capacity improvements
6.5.1 Traffic and Handovers
In Figure 6.6 are presented the failed handover rate, and unsuccessful handovers due to lack
of resources rate in all the test cases. Failed handover figure describes the number of
handovers after which the mobile has to return to the old channel due to signaling failure in
the handover procedure. The handover is unsuccessful is the target cell does not have free
hardware resources available. When comparing the failed handover rates between pure
frequency hopping and IFH cases, it seems to be that IFH gives superior performance in
handover failure rate compared with FH. However, this is not the case. In IFH (and IUO)
network the call is usually always established on the regular layer. Now, if the C/I condition
is good enough in the place where the mobile is located, the mobile is transferred from the
regular layer to the super layer causing an extra handover. Also, if the mobile is already
transferred to the super layer and the C/I condition worsens the mobile is handed over back
to the safe regular layer. As depicted in Figure 6.7, in frequency hopping cases the number of
handovers equals the number of call attempts. In IFH network this is not the case, but the
number of handovers is almost 3 times the number of call attempts due to the transitions
between the layers. An IUO/IFH handover is usually safe to perform, and only very few of
the IUO/IFH handovers are failed. Thus, in percentages the IUO/IFH network seems to give
a very good handover performance.
20.00%
18.00%
16.00%
14.00%
12.00%
10.00% Failed
handovers
8.00%
6.00%
4.00% Unsuccessful
handovers due
2.00% to lack of
0.00% resources
/3h 18f
2f
//2 f
/3_ 15f
1/1 31f
8f
//1 f
H_ 18f
32
30
22
2f
8f
/3_ ial
_3
_1
_1
/1_
_2
_1
H_ //6_
y_
y_
rt
_
/2_
/1_
ea
ur
2
FH f_pa
H_ //1/1
eu
eu
s
FH eas
1
/
2/2
//2
ea
he
20
1/3 FH_
h
1/3
1/1
8
O_
ea
ea
1/3
_1
H_ u//1
2/2
2/2
_1
_1
u//
H_
IU
FH FH_
IF
sy
H_
e
he
ea
IF
IF
h
2/2
IF
IF
/3
_1
H_
IF
IF
Figure 6.6 Failed and unsuccessful handovers due to lack of resources in all the test
cases.
Another interesting observation in Figure 6.6 is the number of unsuccessful handovers due to
lack of resources in IFH cases. As estimated in Figure 5.2 and Figure 5.3 the blocking of the
super layer is bigger than the blocking of the regular layer. Due to congestion on the super
layer the number of unsuccessful handovers due to lack of resources also increases. Of
course, from the user’s point of view this has no effect, since the user experiences only the
68
overall blocking situation in the network. If the call becomes blocked when trying to perform
a handover from the regular layer to the super layer, the call can remain on the regular layer.
60000
50000
40000
30000 Call attempts

Handover attempts
20000
10000
2/2 1/3h 18f
2f
//2 f
/3_ 15f
1/1 31f
ea f
8f
ea 14f
2/2 f
32
_1 _30
22
2f
8f
al
8
_3
_1
IF /1_1
_
i
_2
_1
H_ //6_
_
art
H_ /2_
H_ 2/2_
_
1
ea
sy
ur
1/1
/
eu
eu
FH _eas
_1
_p
he
//1
20
//
IF 1/3h
/
1/3 FH
8f
/
1/1
O_
ea
1/3
H_
/3
2/2
2/2
_1
_1
//
u//
IU
sy
eu
FH
H_
H_
he
ea
IF
IF
IF
/3
_1
H_
H_
FH
IF
IF
Figure 6.7 The number of call and handover attempts in all the test cases.
6.5.2 Drop Call Rate
Drop call rates are depicted in Figure 6.8 for pure frequency hopping cases and in Figure 6.9
for IFH cases. Also effective reuses calculated using Equation (3.14) are provided in the
figures. The cases in the figures are arranged in an ascending order according to DCR.
In the frequency hopping cases the drop call rate improves when the effective reuse factor is
increased, as was expected to happen. As can be seen in Figure 6.8, the heuristic frequency
planning seems to give very good results compared with the manual planning. The DCR of
2% was obtained with NPS/X frequency planning when using 18 frequencies for the
allocation. The DCR was higher in both manual planning cases with 18 frequencies. The
achieved DCR in manual planning cases is better only when using as much as 30 frequencies
(Reff=11) for the allocation.
In the IFH cases the situation is a bit more complicated. The effective reuses and drop call
rates do not follow each other as nicely as in FH cases. When using IFH, heuristic frequency
planning gives even better results compared with the FH cases as can be observed in Figure
6.9. For example, the IFH case having 14 frequencies resulted to DCR of 2.1%, while the
DCR in the FH case having 15 frequencies was 3%. Thus, an improvement of 0.9%
percentage units was found for the IFH with even one frequency less compared with the FH
case. The two best DCR figures as a whole were achieved by means of heuristic frequency
planning and IFH. Also the reference cells were generated using NPS/X in those cases.
However, as can be seen in Figure 6.9 the difference in DCRs between heuristic frequency
planning and the manual planning cases having the whole available bandwidth (31 and 32
frequencies) is very small. Since the number of measurement days for each case was too
small, the statistical fluctuation is bigger than the difference between those cases. Of course,
69
the number of frequencies is much bigger in the manual frequency planning cases and
relatively heuristic allocation gave much better results.
12.0
10.0
8.0
Call Drop Rate (%)

6.0
Effective reuse
4.0
2.0
0.0
FH_1/3 easy_30f FH_1/3_heur_18f FH_1/3 FH_1/1_18f FH_1/3_easy_15f
easy_18f_partial
Figure 6.8 Drop call rates with effective reuses in different FH cases.
12.0
10.0
8.0
Call Drop Rate (%)

6.0
Effective reuse
4.0
2.0
0.0
2f
f
f
f
31
22
f
18
14
22
18
_3
/2_
/2_
/1_
/1_
u_
u_
ea
2/2
//2
//2
he
he
//1
//1
1/3
1/3
1/1
1/1
ea
ea
H_
2/2
2/2
u//
u//
H_
H_
IF
H_
H_
he
he
IF
IF
1/3
2/2
IF
IF
H_
H_
IF
IF
Figure 6.9 Drop call rates with effective reuses in different IFH cases.
70
A new concept, effective frequency load Leff, is defined as
L freq N TRX Terl

Leff = = , (6.1)
R fa N TCH N freqs
were NTRX is the average number of TRXs in the network, Terl average traffic in the cells,
NTCH the average number of TCHs and Nfreqs the number of available frequencies.
In Figure 6.10 the drop call rate is presented as a function of effective frequency load Leff in
IUO, FH and IFH cases. Also the one measurement point which is available in heuristic
frequency hopping case is provided in the figure. The effective frequency loads are
calculated in each tested case using the Equation (6.1). In Figure 6.10 each calculated Leff is
mapped to the corresponding DCR value. Then, a polynomial of 2nd degree has been fitted to
the measured data in FH and IFH cases. In IUO case the number of measurements is too low
for any appropriate curve fitting, but for comparison an exponential function as been fitted
also in IUO case.
The coefficient of determination (R2-value), which is a method of determining the accuracy

of the best-fit line [Mur80], is also included in Figure 6.10. The coefficients of determination
of 0.25 to 0.45 are mildly significant statistically, 0.50 to 0.70 are moderately significant,
and a value over 0.75 shows a high degree of significance. In all cases the function giving
the best R2-value has been fitted to the measurement data.
As can be seen, at low frequency loads (Leff<5%) the drop call rates are very close to each
other in FH and IFH cases. However, when the frequency load increases the DCR increases
much faster in the pure FH case, while in the IFH network the drop call rate remains at the
acceptable level. In other words, IFH network is not so sensitive to the increments in traffic.
Thus, in terms of DCR the quality of the network degrades much faster when using only
frequency hopping.
3.5 Heuristic
RF-FH
3 y = 1.4052e11.798x IFH
R2 = 0.8112 y = 462.2x2 - 23.205x + 1.82
2.5 RF-FH
R2 = 0.9777
DCR [%]
2 IUO
1.5 y = 53.646x2 + 6.9638x + 1.1219 Poly. (IFH)

R2 = 0.9244
1 Poly. (RF-
FH)
0.5 Expon.
(IUO)
0
0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10%
Effective Frequency Loading [%]
Figure 6.10 Drop call rate as a function of effective frequency loading in IUO, FH and
IFH cases.
71
6.5.3 RXQUAL distributions
Figure 6.11 presents the percentages of the RXQUAL samples belonging to the quality
classes of 6 and 7 in frequency hopping cases. Frequency hopping networks are more robust
against the interference, and thus the selection of monitoring only the quality classes 6 and 7
is justified. In a conventional non-hopping network the quality criterion to be monitored is
usually set to 5-7. Also the effective reuses calculated using Equation (3.14) are provided for
each hopping case.
It can be clearly seen that an increment in effective reuse factor results in better quality in
terms of RXQUAL. This was of course as expected since the bigger the effective reuse
factor is the smaller is the interference experienced by the users. No difference could be seen
between manual or heuristic NPS/X planning. In Figure 6.11 there are three cases each
having the same number of frequencies, but the frequency allocation scheme differs in every
case. In two of those cases manual planning approach has been used, and in one case the
frequency allocation is performed with NPS/X. In each of those cases the quality remains at
the same level.
In Figure 6.12 the measured RXQUAL values are presented for the IFH cases. The analysis
is also made for RXQUAL classes 6 and 7. Also here the quality is improved when looser
frequency reuse is used. In comparison between FH and IFH figures it can be stated that in
the uplink direction no big difference in RXQUAL values can be seen. However, downlink
seems to be better in all IFH cases if the comparison is made between FH and IFH cases
having equal effective reuses.
It is worth noticing that in FH cases uplink quality is always better than downlink. This is
due to the fact that in the uplink direction power control is utilized resulting to lower
interference level, which can then be seen as improved quality. However, in IFH cases the
order of the qualities swaps, ie, now the quality of the downlink direction is better than for
uplink. The reason for that is not known for sure, but it can be due to the fact that the C/I
estimation in BSC is based on the measurements performed by the mobiles in the downlink
direction. Because the decisions of the transitions between the layers are based on the
downlink measurements, the downlink quality is preferred in the decision making at the
expense of the uplink direction. For example, if the mobile is located on the super layer and
C/I estimation shows that the quality is satisfactory to remain on the super layer, this is
necessarily not the case in the uplink quality. In uplink the quality can decrease resulting to
worse quality distribution in the uplink RXQUAL.
72
12.0
10.0
8.0
RXQual (%) UL
6.0 RXQual (%) DL
Effective reuse
4.0
2.0
0.0
FH_1/3_easy_15f FH_1/1_18f FH_1/3_heur_18f FH_1/3 FH_1/3 easy_30f
easy_18f_partial
Figure 6.11 The proportion of RXQUAL classes 6 and 7 with effective reuse in
different FH cases.
14.0
12.0
10.0
8.0 RXQual (%) UL

RXQual (%) DL
6.0 Effective reuse
4.0
2.0
0.0
2f
2f
f
f
f
22
31
f
f
14
18
18
22
_3
_3
/2_
/2_
/1_
/1_
u_
u_
ea
//6
2/2
//2
//2
he
he
//1
//1
20
1/3
1/3
1/1
1/1
ea
ea
O_
H_
2/2
2/2
u//
u//
H_
H_
IU
IF
H_
H_
he
he
IF
IF
2/2
1/3
IF
IF
H_
H_
IF
IF
Figure 6.12 The proportion of RXQUAL classes 6 and 7 with effective reuse in
different IFH cases.
6.5.4 FER
The intention in the trial was to perform the FER measurements with Nokia’s tailor-made
FER tool, and with TEMS. However, due to hardware failures the measurements were lost
for many days, and with the collected statistics any conclusions concerning FER between the
tested cases cannot be made.
73
Despite the lack of data some conclusions about the performance of the non-hopping and
hopping network can be made. In Figure 6.13 - Figure 6.15 the FER distributions are
presented in every RXQUAL class for the non-hopping BCCH frequency layer, for the
hopping regular layer, and for the super layer. Especially, when comparing the FER
distributions in RXQUAL classes 5 and 6 the advantage of frequency hopping can be seen.
In the non-hopping case the number of FER samples of the highest FER class in the
RXQUAL class 6 is over 90%. However, the FER distributions of the hopping regular and
super layers differ from the non-hopping case. Now the number of FER samples belonging
to the highest FER class in the RXQUAL class 6 is under 70% on the both hopping layers.
This is in spite of the fact that the effective frequency allocation reuse Reff is higher on the
BCCH frequency layer than on the other layers (around Reff =18). The same tendency in the
FER distributions can be seen in RXQUAL class 5 also. The FER samples belonging to the
highest FER class is smaller in the hopping layers than in the non-hopping BCCH layer. In
the RXQUAL class 7 no difference between the hopping and non-hopping layers can be
seen: all the samples belong the FER class of >15%. The results support the observations
that have been made in the previous frequency hopping trials [Sal98]. RXQUAL is not the
best possible quality measure in frequency hopping networks. The actual speech quality
perceived by the end user is more dependent on the discarded frames, and with the same
RXQUAL distribution FER is smaller in frequency hopping networks than in non-hopping
networks.
100.00%
90.00%
80.00%
70.00%
>15%
60.00% 10-15%
50.00% 5-10%
1-5%
40.00%
0-1%
30.00%
20.00%
10.00% 0-1%
1-5%
0.00% 5-10%
7 FER
6 10-15%
5 4 3 >15%
2 1
RXQUAL 0
Figure 6.13 FER distribution within each RXQUAL class for BCCH frequency layer.
74
100.00%
90.00%
80.00%
70.00%
60.00% >15%
50.00% 10-15%
5-10%
40.00%
1-5%
30.00%
0-1%
20.00%
10.00% 0-1%
1-5%
0.00% 5-10%
7 FER
6 10-15%
5 4 3 >15%
2 1
RXQUAL 0
Figure 6.14 FER distribution within each RXQUAL class for hopping regular layer.
100.00%
90.00%
80.00%
70.00%
60.00% >15%
50.00% 10-15%
5-10%
40.00%
1-5%
30.00%
0-1%
20.00%
10.00% 0-1%
1-5%
0.00% 5-10%
7 FER
6 10-15%
5 4 3 >15%
2 1
RXQUAL 0
Figure 6.15 FER distribution within each RXQUAL class for the super layer.
6.5.5 Quality gain of IFH
In the calculation of the quality and the capacity gains of IFH the result in Figure 6.10 is
exploited. What makes the situation a bit difficult is that the existing IUO network was not
optimized, thus it can be unfair to compare the optimized FH and IFH cases with IUO
network. Another problem in calculating the quality gain of IFH is the small number of
measurement samples available in IUO case making the calculated results unreliable. To
75
make the comparison with IUO fairer it is assumed that the number of used frequencies on
the regular layer (BCCH frequencies excluded) is 12 instead of 20. Even though 8
frequencies have been removed from the frequency pool of the regular layer it is assumed
that the quality would not have been degraded considerably, especially if the frequency plan
had been optimized at the same time. The modified IUO case is presented in Figure 6.16,
and the result is used as a basis for the quality gain calculations.
The quality gain of IFH is calculated as follows. In frequency hopping case the quality
criterion was set to 2 % DCR. Now, the effective frequency load Leff corresponding to DCR
of 2 % is calculated by solving the polynomial equation, the result being Leff=5.7%. The
acquired effective frequency load is then substituted to the corresponding DCR equations of
IUO and IFH cases. In IUO case the DCR is 2.33% and in IFH case 1.69% with Leff=5.7%.
Thus, FH gives 0.33 percentage units better quality over IUO in terms of DCR, IFH gives
0.31 percentage units better quality over FH, and IFH gives 0.64 percentage units better
quality over IUO. It seems to be so that pure FH gives better quality compared with IUO.
However, IUO concept provides also considerable quality gain, as can be seen in the
comparison between pure FH and IFH case.
y = 462.2x2 - 23.205x + 1.82

3.5
R2 = 0.9777
3 y = 1.4052e8.8488x
R2 = 0.8112 Heuristic
2.5 RF-FH
IFH
DCR [%]
2
RF-FH
1.5 IUO
y = 53.646x2 + 6.9638x + 1.1219
Poly. (IFH)
1 R2 = 0.9244
Poly. (RF-
0.5 FH)
Expon.
0 (IUO)
0% 1% 2% 3% 4% 5% 6% 7% 8% 9% 10%
Effective Frequency Loading [%]
Figure 6.16 Drop call rate as a function of effective frequency loading in modified IUO,
FH and IFH cases.
6.5.6 Quality estimated by NPS/X
The quality of the network was also estimated with NPS/X using the method described in
Section 5.3.3. Two main targets for the verification of the interference analysis tool were set.
First, it was to be confirmed how well the RXQUAL estimated with NPS/X corresponds to
the actual quality measured in the real network. And second, the difference between manual
and computerized frequency planning according to the interference analysis tool was also of
great interest.
76
The comparison is made between the two 1/3 pure frequency hopping cases having 18
frequencies in the frequency pool for the allocation. According to the interference analysis
tool the NPS/X heuristic frequency planning gave better quality compared with the manual
planning. The percentages of the quality classes 6 and 7 together were lower in heuristic
frequency planning as can be seen in Figure 6.17. However, the amount of quality classes 6
and 7 is quite high compared with the real statistics collected from the OMC. This is
probably because of the high mountains in the trial area. According to NPS/X, and possibly
also in the real network, these mountain areas seem to have very high interference level.
However, not much traffic is generated in that area, and since the quality analysis tool cannot
take the traffic distribution into account, the results are too pessimistic compared with the
statictics acquired from the real network.
14
12
10
NPS/X heuristic
8
%
NPS/X manual
6
4 Measured heuristic
2 Measured manual
0
RXQ1 RXQ2 RXQ3 RXQ4 RXQ5 RXQ6 RXQ7
RXQUAL
Figure 6.17 RXQUAL 1-7 distributions estimated using NPS/X interference analysis
tool, and measured in the actual network.
6.5.7 Capacity gain of IFH
Figure 6.16 has also been exploited in the calculation of the IFH capacity gain. The quality
criterion was set to DCR of 2 %, and then in each case the effective frequency load
corresponding to the DCR of 2% was calculated. The calculated frequency loads were
Leff=4.0% for IUO, Leff=5.7% for FH and Leff=7.9% for IFH. Thus, the acquired capacity
gains are 42.5% for FH over IUO, 38.6% for IFH over FH, and 97.5% for IFH over IUO. In
addition, Figure 6.18 shows the capacity gain of IFH over FH as a function of DCR. As can
be seen, the capacity gain increases as a function of DCR, ie by allowing higher drop call
rate in the network more capacity gain can be achieved by means of IFH.
77
60.00%
50.00%
40.00%
Capacity gain
30.00%
20.00%
10.00%
0.00%
1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 2 2.1 2.2 2.3
DCR [%]
Figure 6.18 Capacity gain as a function of DCR.
6.6 Network planning methods for IFH
6.6.1 Manual planning
Even if the manual planning approach does not give the best possible quality, it has certain
advantages. In some cases, especially if the maximum capacity is not needed, the manual
planning approach can be tempting for the operators. However, this concerns only the
frequency planning phase. To define the interfering cells manually is always a very laborious
task. In IFH there can be up to 10 interfering cells in BSC for every cell. In the manual
interfering cell definition the network planner has to examine every cell pair using a map if
the same set of frequencies is used on the super layer. Especially in IFH this can be difficult,
since the interference caused by the interfering cells is proportional to the number of TRXs
in both cells, to the lengths of the MA lists, and to the number of common channels in the
MA lists. For a large group of cells the definition of the interfering cells can be virtually
impossible without computer based planning.
The simplest way to plan the frequencies is the single MA list case, ie 1/1 reuse case on both
layers. From the network planning point of view this is the easiest way to allocate the
frequencies, since actually no frequency planning is needed. The whole frequency band
available for the operator can be assigned for every cell, divided of course between the
regular and super layers. With single MA list case MAIO planning is needed, but it is not a
big issue.
However, 1/1 case has certain limitations. According to the trial results the best possible
quality is not achieved by means of single MA list case. If the capacity is the limiting factor
in the network, 1/1 reuse is not necessarily the best planning method. Also, 1/1 reuse has
some hardware restrictions. To be able to use MAIO management the site has to be
synchronized. The current BSC software release can support up to 12 synchronized TRXs
per site. If one site contains three cells, the maximum configuration is 4+4+4. This means
that every cell can have 4TRXs. In high traffic density areas this is not necessarily enough,
thus single MA list case is not feasible. With 1/1 reuse case the feasible TRX divisions
between the layers are 2+2 (2 TRXs on the both layers), and 3+1 (3 TRXs on the regular
78
layer and 1 on the super layer). Thus RF hopping capability is required to obtain the
sufficient frequency hopping gain.
In 1/1 case the definition of the reference cells is manually as easy as possible. Since all the
cells are sharing the same set of frequencies, also the most interfering cells are the closest
cells to the carrier cell supposing that all the cells are having nearly equal number of TRXs.
Another possible frequency allocation reuse scheme is so called 2/2, in which the frequency
pool is divided into two frequency groups. One group is then allocated in every second site
in the most rational way, meaning that the interference is minimized between the sites. In
this case the interfering cells are further away from each other, thus the caused interference
is smaller to other cells. But at the same time the obtained frequency and interference
diversity gains are smaller due to the fact that the frequencies are divided into two groups. In
the trial no evidence was found that the 2/2 reuse scheme would exceed the performance of
1/1 case. The definition of reference cells requires more effort since the frequency groups in
the cells must be checked: the cells not sharing the same frequency group must not be
defined as reference cells, of course.
The third tested easy frequency allocation case was 1/3 reuse scheme, in which the available
frequency pool is divided into three subgroups. Because in many cases the sites contain three
cells, the frequency groups can be allocated in such a way that all the subgroups are used
within one site. Then, when allocating the frequencies to the next site, the subgroups are
allocated so that the interference is minimized in respect with the other sites. With 1/3 reuse
scheme offset planning between the sectors is not required, since every sector is sharing a
different frequency set within the site.
However, 1/3 allocation scheme has one major drawback with small configurations: it is
difficult to obtain a low effective frequency allocation reuse factor. Let's suppose that the
configuration in the cell is 2+2, one TRX being the BCCH TRX. Thus, the RF hopping
regular layer contains one TRX, and the super layer 2 TRXs. To obtain any frequency
hopping gain at least 3, rather 4, frequencies are required in the hopping sequence. With four
frequencies in the hopping sequence a total number of 12 frequencies must used for each
site, thus on the regular layer Reff=12, and on the super layer Reff=6. With big enough
configurations this is not a problem. For example, with 4+3 configuration the corresponding
reuse figures would be Reff=4 (BCCH TRX excluded in the calculations). This would be
already too low for the regular layer, but very feasible for the super layer. With 4+3
configuration also BB-hopping mode could be used.
Usually random frequency hopping is preferred to cyclic hopping. This is because random
hopping gives better interference diversity gain. Let's now consider two cells with an equal
number of TRXs, cyclic hopping being used in both cells, and the same set of frequencies
allocated in both cells. Now, it is possible that two calls are using the same time slot, and if
the calls are hopping over the exactly same frequencies the interference diversity gain is lost.
The bursts collide constantly since the frequencies are used in the same sequential order. If
the number of TRXs is different in those cells, this does not apply.
On the other hand, with short MA lists and random hopping being used it is possible that the
same frequency appears in the hopping sequence several times consecutively. In this case, of
course, the frequency diversity gain may be lost. However, when using cyclic hopping the
frequencies appear in the hopping sequence in consecutive order, and one frequency is never
repeated twice in the sequence.
79
The number of subscribers is typically growing rapidly in GSM networks. This leads to a
need to add sites, cells and TRXs in the network. How easily the network can be expanded is
of course a major issue in the network planning. In general it can be concluded that when
performing the IFH network planning manually, the expansion of the network causes less
changes in the network plan than when using computerized planning methods. For example,
when adding TRXs (eg in single MA list case) no frequency changes are required if the
frequency load does not increase too much. Also the reference cells remain the same. Some
MAIO planning is required, and the changes in the MAIO are dependent on the relation
between the number of frequencies in the MA list, and the number of TRXs.
When adding a cell on the site some more changes are required. The addition of the cell may
happen in a way that the number of cells on the site is increased from eg two to three. In 1/1
and 2/2 cases the same MA list already used in the site in question must be attached to the
new cell. The MAIO planning must be re-performed on that site. Also some changes are
needed in reference cell definition. The new cell has to be added to the reference cell list on
those sites that are sharing the same MA list, and are close enough to become interfered by
the new cell. For the new cell the reference cell list has to be created, of course. In 1/3 reuse
the frequency group (see Figure 6.2) not used on the site must be provided for the new cell.
The reference cells must be re-defined in the same manner as in 1/1 and 2/2 cases.
When adding a totally new site, the frequency planning is very easy: the frequency groups
are assigned to every cell according to Figure 6.1 and Figure 6.2. The reference cell
definition is affected in the same way as adding a cell.
6.6.2 NPS/X planning
The performance of the network which is achieved by means of using NPS/X in the planning
process was better than with manual planning approach as was stated in Section 6.5.2.
Although the performance of the network was good when using NPS/X, the planning
procedure itself must be improved. Frequency allocation with NPS/X was easy and fast.
Also the generation of the reference cells with NPS/X resulted to time saving compared with
manual reference cell definition. However, the biggest bottleneck was to transfer the plan
generated with NPS/X to the real network. All the parameters had to be transferred
manually, and due to this interworking problem between NPS/X and the actual network no
time saving was achieved with NPS/X planning compared with manual planning.
Heuristic frequency plan is more sensitive to the changes in the network than manual
frequency plan. When adding a TRX, or especially a cell or a site in the network, the
interference situation changes. And because the frequency allocation tool in NPS/X tries to
minimize the interference in the network, the expansion of the network may result to big
changes in the frequency plan. Necessarily this is not a problem, if the changed frequency
plan can be transferred to the network without manual work. Also, some operators anyway
change their frequency plan, eg, four times a year. Expansions in the network may affect the
reference cell definition: when the frequency plan is changed the interfering cells change
also. Thus, new reference cell lists must be generated. As in frequency planning, this is not a
problem if the reference cell lists can be transferred to the network without manual work.
The only concern for heuristic IFH planning is then the full functionality of necessary
parameter transfer between NPS/X and the network.
BSC might restrict in some cases the usage of heuristic frequency planning. Namely,
nowadays 256 TRXs can be attached to one BSC. The number of MA lists that can be
80
generated under one BSC is 128. Now, lets suppose that each cell under one BSC has 4
TRXs, which leads to 64 cells under one BSC. When using NPS/X in the frequency planning
phase it is possible, that every cell has its own unique MA list. In this case this would mean
that a total number of 64 MA lists must generated under the BSC. In IFH both hopping
layers must have an MA list of their own, thus the number of required MA lists is 2*64=128
MA lists, which equals to the number of available MA lists in BSC. Now, if the frequency
plan is to be changed eg due to addition of new hardware, 64 new MA lists must be
generated for both layers. Of course, the old MA lists must not be deleted before the new
ones are created. Thus, the situation is virtually impossible since all the MA list locations are
in use, and new ones cannot be generated.
In the trial the frequency band was divided into three parts: the frequencies were allocated
for the BCCH, hopping regular, and hopping super layers from a layer-dedicated sub-band.
This way it can be ensured, that no interference between the layers occurs. However, a very
interesting approach to test would be to allocate the frequencies for all the layers from one
frequency pool, ie, from the whole band available for the operator. This way the frequencies
minimizing the overall interference in the network could always be assigned to the TRXs or
MA list in question. But the risk that the quality of the hopping regular, or especially BCCH
layer is endangered is probably too high. The frequency plan should be accomplished with
computer aided methods, of course. To achieve an optimized frequency plan, the field
strength prediction of the propagation model should also be accurate enough.
6.6.3 Combinations of manual and NPS/X planning
Both manual and NPS/X planning have their advantages and disadvantages. With NPS/X
planning a small change in the network might lead to a totally different frequency and
reference cell plan, which can make the follow-up of the network evolution difficult.
Especially, if the whole process from the planning made with NPS/X to the actual
implementation in the real network is not thoroughly considered, this could lead to huge
amount of manual work (c.f., parameter transfer problem). On the other hand, with manual
planning the maximum capacity cannot be achieved in the network. Also, to define the
reference cells manually requires a lot of work. Thus, in some cases a combination of
manual and NPS/X planning might be a feasible solution.
If the maximum amount of capacity is not required in the network, the frequency planning
can be performed manually. For example, by using 1/1 reuse concept the expansion of the
network is very easy until a certain limit has been reached, and with this reuse concept no
actual frequency planning is needed. However, since the definition of reference cells is the
biggest bottleneck in IFH planning, the reference cell lists could be generated using NPS/X.
Now, when changes are taking place in the network, the frequency plan is not necessarily
affected much, and the small changes in the reference cell lists could be done manually to
the original plan. This ‘easy to maintain’ method can reduce the number of planning actions
needed in evolving networks. If major changes in the network take place constantly, this
approach cannot be used.
6.6.4 MAIO management
Mobile Allocation steps and offsets have to be planned manually since the current version of
NPS/X does not support that kind of activity. Especially with shorter MA lists, i.e., when
Nfreqs<2NTRX, and the frequencies in the MA list are in consecutive order, the steps and the
81
offsets have to be planned carefully to avoid adjacent channel interference as much as

possible. NPS/X takes into account automatically, however, that there is no co-site
interference , if MAIO management is enabled.
Table 6.2 shows one example of the difference in MAIO planning between the heuristic and
manual planning. The frequency pool of which the allocation was performed consisted of
frequencies 83,84,85,87,88,89,90,91 and 94. The frequency allocation reuse scheme was 1/3.
First, frequencies were allocated using NPS/X. As can be seen in the Table 6.2, the offsets
had to be planned separately for every site to minimize the adjacent channel interference. If
the number of cells to be planned is large, this can be a very time consuming task, and it is
also very easy to make mistakes in this phase. However, if frequencies were planned
manually (‘stupid’ planning), offset planning was very easy or it was not required at all.
Because the same frequencies are reused in the very same way in every site, it is enough
when the offsets are planned once for one site.
Table 6.2 Example of offset planning.

NPS/X: Easy planning:
MA lists MA offset MA lists MA offset
Site1 83,85,87 0 83,84,85 0
88,89,90 0 87,88,89 0
84,91,94 1 90,91,94 0
Site2 87,90,94 0 83,84,85 0
83,89,91 0 87,88,89 0
84,85,88 1 90,91,94 0
Site3 85,89,91 0 83,84,85 0
83,87,90 0 87,88,89 0
84,88,94 1 90,91,94 0
Site4 85,87,90 1 83,84,85 0
88,91,94 1 87,88,89 0
83,84,89 0 90,91,94 0
Site5 85,90,94 0 83,84,85 0
83,87,89 0 87,88,89 0
Site6 84,85,90 1 83,84,85 0
83,88,94 0 87,88,89 0
87,89,91 1 90,91,94 0
6.6.5 Interference caused by the second adjacent channel
There are a few ways how the frequencies can be divided in manual frequency planning
within a site. Let's first suppose that the frequency pool consists of 12 consecutive
frequencies, and also that a 1/3 reuse network with 2 TRXs per cell is to be planned. The
frequencies can be assigned so that always 4 frequencies are assigned to every cell in
consecutive order, ie that frequencies 1-4 are in the first cell, frequencies 5-8 in the second
cell, and frequencies 9-12 in the third cell (see Table 6.3). Or then, the frequencies can be
assigned so that starting from frequency 1 every 3rd frequency is always assigned to the cell
1, (see Table 6.3), the second case. The benefit of the second approach is that we avoid the
interference caused by the second adjacent frequency inside the cell that we experience
constantly in the first case. In the case were the mobile is located very close to the base
82
station and downlink power control is enabled, the base station is transmitting on a low
power. Now, if another mobile is located on the border area of the cell, the base station is
likely to transmit with high power level causing high interference to the mobile close to the
base station. This is because the HSN is the same inside the cell.
However, when using the second approach MA offsets have to be planned. This is due to the
fact that if MA offsets are not used, as can be done in the first case, first adjacent channel
interference occurs between sectors. The same applies if a mistake is made in MAIO
planning. Since the effect of the second adjacent channel interference is very small or
negligible, it is recommended that the first approach is used. This way it is much easier to
control the adjacent channel interference between the sectors, and mistakes in offset
planning cannot be made since MAIO planning is not needed.
Table 6.3 Examples of manual planning with consecutive and punctured frequency
groups.
Freqs= {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12}
MA lists MA steps MA offsets MA lists MA steps MA offsets
Cell1 1,2,3,4 2 0 Cell1 1,4,7,10 2 0
Cell2 5,6,7,8 2 0 Cell2 2,5,8,11 2 1
Cell3 9,10,11,12 2 0 Cell3 3,6,9,12 2 0
In the trial both manual planning approaches described above were tested, and no difference
could be found between those cases.
6.7 Performance of SDCCH and TCH
SDCCH channel is one of the three dedicated control channels used in GSM (see Section
2.3.1). It is used in the call set-up phase to carry the necessary signaling information before
TCH assignment. Also in transmission of Short Messages an SDCCH channel is assigned to
the mobile if the mobile is in the idle mode.
In Figure 6.19 the success rates of TCH and SDCCH channels are depicted as a function of
effective reuse. The success rate is the proportion of the channel requests in which the
channel assignment is succeeded. SDCCH success rate describes how well the mobile can
access SDCCH from AGCH, and correspondingly TCH success rate how well the mobile
can access TCH from SDCCH. In Figure 6.19 it can be clearly seen that in tight reuses, ie,
when the effective reuse factor Reff is low, the performance of the SDCCH channel is
degraded when compared with the TCH channels. With high effective reuses the success
rates are between 98 % and 99 %. The success rate of SDCCH is a bit worse than TCH. But
when the effective reuse reaches a value of Reff=8, the performance of SDCCH becomes
worse much faster than the performance of TCH. The biggest gap between the success rates
is over three percentage units with the tightest reuse. Thus, the performance of SDCCH is
not as good as the performance of TCH in interference limited networks.
One explanation for the worse performance of SDCCH can be its interleaving depth. Traffic
channel, which is used for transmission of speech, is interleaved over eight bursts, while
SDCCH is interleaved only over 4 bursts. The observation, that in an interference limited
network the performance of a channel interleaved only over 4 bursts seems to be degraded, is
83
of great importance since the future data service, General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), is
using the same interleaving depth. This has to be taken into account in the planning of GRPS
networks. This observation may also have effect on the planning of frequency hopping
networks. In the trial two SDCCH channels were allocated to every cell: one was on a non-
hopping TRX (in RF-FH the BCCH TRX is not allowed to hop), and one on a hopping
TRXs. It might be worth considering that the SDCCH channels should be allocated on the
BCCH TRX, which is not allowed to hop, and is also having a higher reuse factor providing
better interference conditions.
99.00%
98.00%
97.00%
TCH success
96.00%
rate
95.00% SDCCH
success rate
94.00%
93.00%
92.00%
91.00%
90.00%
R=20 R=19 R=10 R=9 R=8 R=6.6 R=5.5
Figure 6.19 TCH and SDCCH success rates with different effective reuses.
84
7 PERFORMANCE OF IFH WITH OTHER FEATURES
It is not very clear how the future data services affect the performance of IFH network. In
this chapter the co-existence of the data services and IFH is considered in a general level.
Also some aspects related to dual band networks and IFH are presented here.
7.1 High speed circuit switch data (HSCSD)
High speed circuit-switched data feature provides accelerated data rates for end-user
applications. Current trend is for increased demand for high data rate applications like World
Wide Web (WWW), file transfer, and facsimile which have so far been fairly impractical to
use in mobile environment due to slow data connections.
In HSCSD the data rate of a single TCH/F can vary. Till nowadays the maximum rate for
data connection has been 9.6 kbit/s but quite lately 14.4 kbit/s data rates have been
introduced to be used over one TCH/F [ETS97a]. 14.4 kbit/s radio interface is achieved by
changing the puncturing scheme. By puncturing the number of channel coding bits in 22.8
kbit/s frame is reduced by a pre-determined rule. Due to this, 14.4 kbit/s connection is more
vulnerable for bad quality, and also the cell service area for 14.4 kbit/s service will reduce.
According to the study [Saa99] the 14.4 kbit/s connections require 3-4 dB better C/I value
than 9.6 kbit/s service. When the error rate for 14.4 kbit/s connection is unacceptable, the
performance can significantly be improved by automatic link adaptation function. In
automatic link adaptation the data rate is changed back to 9.6 kbit/s.
In HSCSD even higher data rates can be offered by using several TCH/F channels for one
connection. New functionality is needed in MS and MSC to split the data to be carried in
several radio interface TCH/Fs, and to be combined in the other end. For cellular operation
HSCSD channels in the same connection are controlled as one radio link, eg inter cell
handover is made simultaneously for all the channels in one HSCSD connection. In Table
7.1 the available data rates up to four time slots (TS) are listed.
Table 7.1 The data rates with different channel coding and different number of TSs.
TS 7.2 kbit/s 9.6 kbit/s 14.4 kbit/s
1 7.2 kbit/s 9.6 kbit/s 14.4 kbit/s
The services in HSCSD can be divided between Transparent (T) and Non-Transparent (NT)
services. In transparent data service the throughput of the connection is constant. In HSCSD
this means that the requested data rate have to be fulfilled from the call setup to the release
of the call, including possible handovers during the call. NT service makes it possible to use
radio interface data rate flexibly. For HSCSD this means, that the reserved radio resources
can also vary during a call. Depending on the available resources the HSCSD connection can
occupy channels from one to user defined maximum number of channels.
85
Chapter 7: Performance of IFH with other features
In frequency hopping networks the same frequency hopping sequence must be used for all
the channels in the HSCSD connection. When baseband frequency hopping is in use, the
HSCSD channels in the configuration must be allocated from the same hopping group. This
means that TS0 (see Figure 3.4) cannot be used for connections having several TSs in use,
but the call must be allocated to TS1-TS7.
In IUO the HSCSD radio resource parameters are defined separately for the regular layer. In
the super layer the interference band recommendation defined by BSC must be fulfilled by
all the channels in HSCSD configuration. Because of the lower error correction level n*14.4
kbit/s (n an integer) connections are more vulnerable to the bad quality. By raising the C/I
thresholds in IUO/IFH it is possible to further improve the quality of the super layer. This
way it could be guaranteed that 14.4 kbit/s connections would not be downgraded to lower
data speed connections due to bad quality.
If a big portion of the HSCSD calls using several time slots is located at the cell border
areas, it can lead to congestion on the regular layer. It is possible that there is free capacity
on the super layer, and without direct access to super layer feature all the capacity of the cell
cannot be utilized. On the other hand, let’s suppose that a transparent HSCSD call having 4
time slots in its use is served by the super layer and the quality of the connection starts to
decrease. If the call cannot be transferred from the super layer to the regular layer due to lack
of resources, it can be dropped. Of course, this is always a risk when returning to the regular
layer from the super layer. But it is more likely that four free time slots does not exist on the
regular layer compared with the transition of a single TS call. With NT calls this does not
cause problems, since the speed of the connection can be downgraded according to the
available hardware resources.
7.2 General packet radio system (GPRS)
GPRS is a GSM Phase 2+ service that requires many changes in the network infrastructure.
This is due to the fact that GSM is based on a circuit-switched transmission mode while the
GPRS uses packet-switched connections.
BSS provides radio path for GSM traffic as well as for GPRS service. The basic principle of
GPRS is that circuit-switched traffic shall not suffer from the launch of GPRS services.
GPRS uses dynamically the air interface capacity left free from the circuit-switched traffic.
However, dedicated capacity can also be allocated for GPRS.
BTS shall provide the GPRS support so that only software upgrade is needed in the first
release. It shall be possible to configure all the BTS generations and all the TRXs within
them to support GPRS traffic. In Table 7.2 the different coding schemes (CS1-CS4) and
their data rates are presented [ETS97c].
86
Table 7.2 Data rates supported by GPRS.

Coding scheme Speed
CS-1 9.05 kbit/s
CS-2 13.4 kbit/s
CS-3 15.6 kbit/s
CS-4 21.4 kbit/s
In the beginning of GPRS era the most common GPRS mobile types will have typically
maximum 2-4 timeslot capabilities, and also 1 timeslot GPRS mobiles are available. Some
5-8 timeslot mobiles may also appear into the market in the early phase of GPRS service.
Anyway as long as 5-8 timeslot mobiles make a very small share of GPRS mobile
population the cost to offer 5-8 timeslot bit rates in the networks will make lower bit rates
services more attractive for operators.
A new mobility management concept is introduced allowing the mobiles primarily select the
cell by themselves. Network controlled cell re-selection to allow GPRS intra cell handovers
due to capacity or interference reasons is not supported in the GPRS Release 1. In the
network GPRS traffic causes higher interference level than the normal circuit-switched
traffic, since in the downlink direction the power control is not supported, and the mobiles as
well as the base stations must transmit on the maximum power. The increased interference
can be avoided by allocating the GPRS mobiles on the BCCH frequencies, which must
anyway be transmitted at the full power level.
A new release of Radio Network planning tool NPS/X introducing GPRS support is needed
for planning radio networks with GPRS service. The new features include coverage planning
for different coding schema, capacity planning to take into account the packet nature of the
traffic and frequency planning to take into consideration the interference generated by
GPRS.
GPRS has similar restrictions concerning frequency hopping than HSCSD. When baseband
hopping is used, the timeslots for multislot mobiles have to be allocated from the same
hopping group, ie TS0 cannot be used with the mobiles in multislot connection.
Because network controlled cell re-selection is not supported in GPRS Release 1, the mobile
can not make a handover from the regular layer to the super layer. MS can only use regular
TRXs, and it can not be ordered to use super reuse TRXs. However, if there is capacity
dedicated for GPRS on the regular layer, this must be taken into account in the capacity
planning to avoid blocking on this layer. On the other hand, if the regular layer is in
congestion, GPRS traffic cannot be served at all, if dedicated time slots are not reserved for
GPRS.
7.3 IFH in GSM900/GSM1800 networks
Dual band GSM900/1800 network operation is specified in the ETSI multiband operation
specification [ETS97b]. From user’s point of view there is no difference between a single
band GSM900 or GSM1800 network, and a dual band network. The dual band network of a
87
single operator appears as a single PLMN to the subscribers using dual band mobiles.
However, support for dual band operation in the MSC and the BSS is required.
It has been discovered by measurements, that the higher frequency of the GSM1800 system
means that the attenuation of the signal with distance is higher, and hence the range of the
GSM1800 cell is lower than that of GSM900. In addition, the building penetration loss is
higher for GSM1800. Thus, the indoor coverage from outdoors is worse than with the
GSM900 system. However, there may be some special cases where due to building
construction, for example window sizes, GSM1800 may have a better penetration.
In order to get the maximum capacity, Nokia IUO, frequency hopping and Intelligent
Frequency Hopping can be used together with dual band (in both layers of a dual band
network if necessary). Still, some limitations must be noted when dual band is used together
with IUO feature.
As IUO is a single band feature, it can be disturbed by the following dual band
functionalities. IUO relies on the same band interferer measurements. The more
measurements are sent to the BSC, the more accurate is the C/I calculation to ensure a
reliable handover between the regular and the super layers. As a dual band MS is measuring
neighbours in both bands, less interferers are analyzed, and IUO efficiency could then be
affected.
When IUO or IFH is used in a dual band network it will generally be preferable that dual
band mobiles are directed to the 1800 layer, rather than to the 900 super layer assuming 900
is the network on which IUO or IFH are implemented. This is to maximise the capacity for
single 900 band users. To ensure that this takes place the BSS7 software has a feature where
it can be selected that dual band mobiles are not allowed to access the super layer of one or
both bands. By preventing dual band mobiles to use the super layer the network plan with
IFH can be made exactly as in the single band case, i.e., dual band will have no impact on
the capacity for the single band mobiles.
When it is required that dual band MS can access the super layer a new feature "Multicell
Reporting" can be used. A GSM mobile can only report the 6 strongest cells it measures to
the network. In a dual band network these would be a mixture of cells from both bands,
which has to be taken into account when planning IFH to ensure that sufficient interfering
cell measurements are reported. The "Multicell Reporting" feature allows the operator to
define how many measurement reports are made from each band. For example, the 6
reported cells can be set so that 5 cells are reported from the serving band (in which the
handover attempt to super layer can be initiated) and only the strongest cell from the other
band in included into reported set.
In later BSC software releases a feature called single BCCH is included in the software
package. With this feature the BCCH frequency does not have to be allocated on both
GSM900 and GSM1800 bands. It means that we may have cells without BCCH. This allows
the optimal use of IFH in the network. One possibility is to allocate all the frequencies from
GSM1800 band on the super layer, while the frequencies on the regular layer are allocated
from GSM900 band. By using the so called 1/1 reuse scheme on the super layer the
allocation process can be made very easy. And since the number of available frequencies on
the GSM1800 band is big, the hit probability of the bursts is so small that the quality would
be excellent. The single BCCH feature reduces also the number of required neighbour
definitions in the network, since the neighbours do not need to be generated separately for
both bands.
88
The usage of single BCCH feature has however some disadvantages. The service area of the
GSM1800 band TRXs is smaller due to RXLEV approximation, because only GSM900
frequencies are measured by the mobiles. Single BCCH solution does not provide support
for the GSM1800 mobiles, since the BCCH frequency on GSM1800 does not exist. It is also
required that the cells on the both layers have to be located on the same site.
89
8 CONCLUSIONS
The main objective of this work was to study the capacity and the quality gains achieved by
means of IFH solution. Another important objective was to find out the improvement in the
quality that can be obtained by using computer aided network planning methods. The
support of NPS/X given for the network planning of IFH networks, and which kind of
parameter sets must be used in the planning were also subjects in this study. All these
objectives were achieved.
One objective of this work was to provide means for dimensioning the blocking probability
of IUO/IFH network as a function of given offered traffic. The results of this method, which
was presented in Appendix A, were very promising. The blocking figures given by this
model were verified with simulations. The calculated and simulated blocking results were
presented in Figure 5.10, which shows that the model gives a good estimation of the
IUO/IFH blocking probabilities.
When considering the results of the IFH trial it is quite clear that IFH solution provides
quality and capacity gain when compared with IUO or pure frequency hopping solutions.
According to the field test trial the achieved capacity gain of IFH was around 40% over FH.
Based on the simulations the expected capacity gain was about 35%, thus the trial verified
the gain of IFH predicted by the simulations. However, it is very important that the results
presented in this work are confirmed in further trials. Namely, in many test cases the number
of measurement days was not high enough to make any accurate conclusions. For example,
it is not known which reuse concept provides the best possible capacity gain. For that reason
testing of different reuse approaches is a subject to further trials. It is also very important
that the existing network, no matter whether it is a conventional or IUO network, is
optimized before the actual trial cases are tested. Without good enough benchmarking the
test cases may seem to provide superior quality and capacity gains without solid enough
background.
The trial also showed that the network planning with NPS/X gives better results than manual
planning approach. Also some default parameter sets were verified for later use. Despite the
good performance of the computerized network planning some bottlenecks were also found
in the planning process. It was realized that it is very important that the frequency allocation
results, as well as the reference cell lists, can be transferred directly from NPS/X to the
actual network without manual work. If the interface between the planning tool and the
network management system does not work well, the required amount of manual work is too
big to plan IFH networks for large areas.
It would have been possible to even further improve the frequency allocation results
obtained with NPS/X. Namely, the calculation of the interference matrix which is the basis
for the frequency allocation was based on the predicted field strengths. Of course, the
models were tuned in the trial, but the traffic distribution was not taken into account in the
allocation. Real traffic data could have been imported from the network. After this process
the traffic could have been weighted according to the morphographic types. The weighting is
based on the fact that, e.g., on the water or cultivation morphography areas not much traffic
is generated, while on the other hand urban and suburban areas may have a very high traffic
density. With NPS/X it is possible to weight the traffic according to these morphography
factors. With a proper traffic density layer, the allocator tries to minimize the interfered
traffic, not the interfered area, that is the case if the uniform traffic distribution is used in the
90
Chapter 8: Conclusions
generation of the interference matrix. By utilizing the traffic density layer it is possible to
guide the interference to the areas where the traffic density is low, and thus less traffic will
be interfered. It is of great interest to test this functionality of NPS/X in later trials. Most
likely the performance of the network can be further improved.
Another interesting functionality to be tested in NPS/X would be a frequency allocation,

which is based on the tuned interference matrix. The interference data is imported to NPS/X
from a real network, and then the predicted interference values in the matrix are replaced
with the measured ones for those cell pairs for which the measurements are available. Now
the frequency allocation would be partly based on the measured data. This approach should
be able to provide the best possible allocation result.
In the trial it was not possible to test the gains achieved with PC and DTX standard GSM
enhancement features. Uplink PC was used during the whole trial, whereas downlink PC and
DTX were disabled. However, in later trials the functionality of DL-PC and DTX with IFH
must be tested. Also the effect of the direct access to super -feature must be further tested to
ensure its functionality in the real network.
The quality information provided by FER was almost entirely lost in the trial due to
hardware failures in the equipment. It would be very valuable information, if the FER
measurements were available for all the test cases in the future trials. This is because FER is
supposed to better indicate the subjective voice quality of the connection that is perceived by
the users [Haa97].
In this thesis the difficulty of determining the good and bad C/I values in frequency hopping
networks was discussed. It was stated that those thresholds could be lowered at least by the
amount of frequency diversity gain. The frequency diversity gain can be determined at some
accuracy. However, it is not known how the interference diversity gain should be calculated,
and how much the thresholds could be lowered accordingly. For that reason it might be
worth considering the change of the estimation method so that decision concerning the
handovers between the regular and super layers could be based on BER. The C/I values
reported by the mobile could be mapped to the BER. The mapping could be based on the
system level simulations in the same manner as in quality analysis tool in NPS/X, in which
the quality of frequency hopping networks is presented in terms of RXQUAL. Then, the
overall BER caused by all the frequencies could be calculated, and according to this BER
value the handovers between the layers could be controlled in the BSC.
Some ideas were also given about how IFH and future data services might interact with each
other. Without proper network planning the IUO/IFH network can become congested when
introducing the new data services. GPRS traffic can also lead to higher interference level in
the network, which possibly must be taken into account in the frequency allocation.
However, the question how the new data services and IFH can co-exist in a real network will
be seen in the near future.
91
Chapter 8: Conclusions
9 REFERENCES
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European Telecommunication Standards Institute, 1992, 11p.
[ETS92b] ETSI GSM 06.10, GSM Full Rate Speech Transcending, European
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[ETS92c] ETSI GSM 05.03, Channel Coding, European Telecommunication Standards

Institute, 1992, 22p.
[ETS92d] ETSI GSM 05.04, Modulation, European Telecommunication Standards

Institute, 1992, 3p.
[ETS92e] ETSI GSM 06.01, Speech Processing Functions: General Description,

[ETS95] ETSI GSM 05.08, Radio Sub-System Link Control, European

[ETS97a] ETSI GSM 02.34, High Speed Circuit Switched Data; Stage 1, European
[ETS97b] ETSI GSM 03.26, Multiband Operation of GSM/DCS 1800 by a Single

Operator, European Telecommunication Standards Institute, 1997, 17p.
[ETS97c] ETSI GSM 03.64, General Packet Radio Service; Overall Description of the
GPRS Radio Interface, European Telecommunication Standards Institute,
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[ETS98] ETSI GSM 10.59, Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE),
[Haa97] J. Haataja, Taajuushyppelyn vaikutus DCS1800/1900-järjestelmän laatuun,

Master Thesis, Helsinki University of Technology, Radio Laboratory, 1997,
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McGraw-Hill, 1989, 449p.
[Lee93] W. C. Y. Lee, Mobile Communications Design Fundamentals, New York,

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Hopping Solutions for GSM Network of Small Bandwidth”, IEEE VTS 48th
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28p.
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[Nok98b] System Training for GSM, Nokia Telecommunications, 1998, 134p.
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Requirement Specification, Nokia Telecommunications, 1998, 77p.
[Nok98d] NPS/X 3.3 IFH Interferer Tool for Multilayered Networks, Requirement
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[Nok98e] NPS/X 3.2 Network Planning System, User Manual, Nokia

Telecommunications, 1998, 680p.
[Nok98f] Frequency Hopping Planning Guide, Nokia Telecommunications, 1998, 80p.
[Rap96] T.S. Rappaport, Wireless Communications: Principles and Practice, New

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[Saa99] A. Saarimäki, Radio Network Aspects in GSM Data Evolution, Master Thesis,
Helsinki University of Technology, Radio Laboratory, 1999, 92 p.
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93
Chapter 9: References
10 APPENDICES
APPENDIX A
A method for estimating the blocking probability of IUO networks is presented here. It is
based on Markov chains, and the method is therefore quite similar to derivation of Erlang B
formula, see Equation (5.1). In the derivation of Erlang B one-dimensional Markov chain is
used to obtain the formula, whereas here in order to be able to determine the blocking
probability of IUO networks two-dimensional Markov chain has been exploited. However,
so far analytical solution to the problem is not available, hence numerical method (Matlab)
has been used to calculate the blocking probabilities.
The transition intensities are presented as a Markov chain state diagram in Figure 1.1. On the
horizontal axis are the states of a regular layer, whereas on the vertical axis are presented the
states of a super layer. In other words, when moving from left to right in Figure 1 the number
of calls on a regular layer increases, and in the same way when moving downwards the
number of calls on a super layer increases.
Regular
Super
(1-p)λ (1-p)λ (1-p)λ (1-p)λ
0,0 1,0 2,0 n,0
µ 2µ 3µ nµ
1-λ 1-(1-(1-s)1+ λ+ µ) 1-(1-(1-s)2+ λ+ 2µ) 1-(1-(1-s)n+ pλ+ nµ)

pλ
µ 1-(1-s)1 1-r1 1-(1-s)2 1-r1 1-(1-s)3 1-r1 1-(1-s)n 1-r1
pλ pλ pλ pλ
µ µ µ µ
(1-p)λ (1-p)λ (1-p)λ (1-p)λ
0,1 1,1 2,1 n,1
µ 2µ 3µ nµ
1-(1-r1+λ+ µ) 1-(1-(1-s)1+1-r1+λ+ µ+ µ) 1-(1-(1-s)2+1-r1+λ+ 2µ+ µ) 1-(1-(1-s)n+ pλ+ nµ+ µ)
1-(1-s) 1 1-r2 1-(1-s) 2 1-r 2 1-(1-s) 3 1-r 2 1-(1-s)n 1-r 2
pλ pλ pλ pλ
2µ pλ 2µ 2µ
2µ 2µ (1-p)λ (1-p)λ
(1-p)λ (1-p)λ
0,2 1,2 2,2 n,2
µ 2µ 3µ
nµ
pλ
3µ 1-(1-r2+λ+ 2µ) 1-(1-(1-s)1+1-r2+λ+ µ+ 2µ) 1-(1-(1-s)2+1-r2+λ+ 2µ+ 2µ) 1-(1-(1-s)n+ pλ+ nµ+ 2µ)
1-(1-s)1 1-r3 1-(1-s)3 1-r3 1-(1-s)n 1-r3
pλ 1-(1-s)2 1-r3 pλ pλ
pλ
3µ 3µ 3µ 3µ
pλ
pλ 1-(1-s)1 1-rn pλ 1-(1-s)2 1-rn pλ 1-(1-s)3 1-rn 1-(1-s)n 1-rn mµ
mµ mµ mµ pλ
mµ (1-p)λ
(1-p)λ (1-p)λ (1-p)λ
0,m 1,m 2,m n,m
µ 2µ 3µ nµ
1-(1-rn+λ+ mµ) 1-(1-rn+λ+ µ+ mµ) 1-(1-rn+λ+ 2µ+ mµ) 1-nµ-mµ
Figure 1. State diagram.
The transition probabilities are defined and calculated as follows:
1. The probability that there will be a change from n channels to n+1 channels is λ
2. The probability of call directed to super layer from SDCCH (direct access to super) is
denoted by p. So the call arrival probability to super is pλ and the call arrival probability
94
Chapter 10: Appenxies
to regular is (1-p) λ.
3. The outgoing probability from n regular channels to n-1 is nµ, and from m super
channels to m-1 is mµ.
4. Let s be the share of the traffic that can be transferred from regular to super layer. ("good
C/I threshold"). Now the probability that one call is transferred to super is s. If there are n
ongoing calls on the regular layer, the probability that none of the calls is transferred to
super is (1-s)n, so the probability that one or more calls can be transferred to super is 1-
(1-s)n.
5. If r is the share of traffic that can stay on super layer ("bad C/I threshold"), then (1-r) is
the proportion of the traffic on the regular layer of the whole cell service area. So the
probability that one call is transferred from super to regular is (1-r). Correspondingly, the
probability that none of the m calls located in super layer is transferred from super to
regular layer is (1-(1-r))m=rm, and so the probability that one or more calls can be
transferred to regular is 1-rm.
6. In general, the likelihood that the system will remain at state (n,m) is
1-λ-nµ-mµ-(1-(1-s)n)-(1-rm).
The probability of call being at state Pn,m (n is state number for regular and m for super) is
the product of those state and transition probabilities from which the transition to state Pn,m
is possible added with the probability of being at state Pn,m multiplied by the likelihood
factor 1-λa-nµ-mµ-(1-(1-s)n)-(1-rm).
Pn ,m = λPn − 1,m + (1 − (1 − s ) n + 1 ) Pn + 1,m − 1 + µ ( n + 1) Pn+ 1,m + µ ( m + 1) Pn ,m + 1

(A1)
+ (1 − r m + 1 ) Pn − 1,m + 1 + (1 − (1 − (1 − s ) n + 1 − r m + λ+ nµ + mµ )) Pn ,m .
Equation (A1) does not take into account the possibility to have direct access to the super
layer. However, the situation is very similar that in the Equation (A1), only the first term
λPn-1,m on the right side is divided into λ(1-p)Pn-1,m and λpPn,m-1. Simplifying and moving
all the terms to the left side in Equation (A1) we now have
(1 − (1 − s ) n + 1 − r m + λ + nµ + mµ )) Pn ,m − λPn − 1,m − (1 − (1 − s ) n + 1 )
(A2)
Pn + 1,m − 1 − µ ( n + 1) Pn + 1,m − µ ( m + 1) Pn ,m + 1 − (1 − r m + 1 ) Pn − 1,m + 1 = 0.
Writing the equations for all the states yields (n+1)(m+1) times (n+1)(m+1)+1 system of
equations,
 a (1)0, 0 L a(1) n ,0 L a(1) n , m  0

 M P0   
 O M   M 
M
 M O M   0
 Pn  =   , (A3)
 M O M   M 
 M
a( nm)0,0 L a ( nm) n ,0 L a( nm) n , m  0
  
 C  1
P 

 1 L 1 L 1 
 

95
where a(i)n,m is the transition probability coefficient and Pn the state probability
(C=(n+1)(m+1)). The last row comes from the condition that the sum of all the state
probabilities must be one, ie
∑P
n =0
n = 1, (A4)
where C is the number of states, in this case again C=(n+1)(m+1).
The state probabilities Pn are then calculated by solving the system presented in Equation
(A3) using Matlab. The calculation of regular blocking, which is actually the overall
blocking experienced by MX, is very straightforward. The call is blocked if there is no more
available channels,
M
Pbl = ∑ PN ⋅i , (A5)
i =1
where N is the maximum number of regular channels (ie N=number of regular TCHs and
M=number of super TCHs).
96

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HELSINKI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

Department of Electrical and Communications Engineering

Planning and performance analysis of intelligent frequency

Date: 07. Jun. 99 Number of pages: 96

Faculty: Department of Electrical and Communications Engineering

Professorship: Radio Engineering Code: S-26

Supervisor: Prof Pertti Vainikainen

Instructor: Juhani Huttunen DTech

Työn nimi: Älykkäiden taajuushyppelyä käyttävien GSM-verkkojen suunnittelu ja

Päivämäärä: 07.06.1999 Sivumäärä: 96

Professuuri: Radiotekniikka Koodi: S-26

Työn ohjaaja: TkT Juhani Huttunen

Työssä tutkittiin kahta GSM-verkoissa käytettävää ominaisuutta, joilla voidaan parantaa

IFH:lla saavutettavaa kapasiteetti- ja laatuparannusta tutkittiin simuloimalla. Myös

Tässä työssä hahmotellaan myös suuntaviivoja, joiden mukaan IFH-verkkoja pitäisi

Espoo, 07. June 1999

TABLES AND FIGURES

2 GENERAL OVERVIEW OF GSM ....................................................................16

2.1 GSM system architecture ...................................................................................................................16

2.2 Transmission in air interface .............................................................................................................19

2.3 Channel organization .........................................................................................................................21

2.4 Radio resource management..............................................................................................................22

3 PRINCIPLES OF FH, IUO AND IFH ................................................................24

3.1 Properties of radio path .....................................................................................................................24

3.2 Properties of frequency hopping .......................................................................................................26

3.3 Frequency hopping in GSM...............................................................................................................29

3.4 Intelligent underlay overlay ...............................................................................................................36

4 NETWORK PLANNING AND IFH SYSTEM SOLUTION.................................41

4.1 Principles of network planning..........................................................................................................41

4.2 Radio link measurements ...................................................................................................................42

4.3 Nokia's system solution for IFH-networks........................................................................................45

5 IFH PLANNING STRATEGIES ........................................................................48

5.1 Planning concepts ...............................................................................................................................48

5.2 Blocking of IUO networks..................................................................................................................49

5.3 IFH-planning using NPS/X ................................................................................................................51

5.4 Simulations ..........................................................................................................................................56

6 FIELD TRIAL ...................................................................................................61

6.1 Trial environment ...............................................................................................................................61

6.2 Test cases .............................................................................................................................................61

6.3 Measurements .....................................................................................................................................63

6.4 Transitions between regular and super layers .................................................................................64

6.5 Quality and capacity improvements..................................................................................................68

6.6 Network planning methods for IFH ..................................................................................................78

6.7 Performance of SDCCH and TCH ....................................................................................................83

7 PERFORMANCE OF IFH WITH OTHER FEATURES.....................................85

7.1 High speed circuit switch data (HSCSD) ..........................................................................................85

7.2 General packet radio system (GPRS)................................................................................................86

7.3 IFH in GSM900/GSM1800 networks ................................................................................................87

Table 3.1 An example of MAIO allocation with synthesized RF hopping. ...........................................................................31

Figure 2.1 Generic GSM system architecture. .......................................................................................................................17

α angle between MS and BS

Phit hit probability

AFE Antenna Filter Equipment

RF-FH Radio Frequency Hopping

2 GENERAL OVERVIEW OF GSM

2.1 GSM system architecture

2.1.1 Basic network elements

BSC EIR AuC OMC

AIR Abis A NMS - Network

Figure 2.1 Generic GSM system architecture.

2.1.2 Frequency band

fUL (n) = 890 + 0.2n MHz, n=1,2,… ,124 (2.1)

fUL (n) = 890 + 0.2(n − 1024) MHz, n=975,… .,1024 (2.3)