GPRS signaling and performance

Johan Montelius

Introduction
In this laboration you will use the TEMS Investigation tool to look at some GPRS trac. We will rst look at the signaling and then performance.

At the oce

The rst log le is captured while being stationary in a radio environment that is probably not that crowded (my oce at 10 oclock in the morning). We shall rst look at the signaling trac so open Layer 3 Messaging, Events, PDP Context and GPRS Status windows. Open the log le wap.log and play it. The log le is taken while accessing a WAP site (can you nd out which?). Only a few pages was downloaded and then the GPRS connection was closed. Take a look at the events window. This log is started while the PIN code is not yet entered so in the mobile is at rst in limited service mode. Once the PIN code has been entered the mobile does a location area update to register with the system. Notice that it uses its TMSI and not the IMSI since it wakes up in the same location area (that it left a minute ago).

1.1

System Information 13

Take a look at the System Information 13 layer 3 message. This message informs the mobile that GPRS is in the air and is the reason that you can see a little blue rim on the status bar in your phone. Inspect the message: Is a Packet Broadcast Control Channel present? Is a EDGE (EGPRS) supported? What is the value of the T3168 timer? One thing you can notice; count the number of bytes in the message dump. What is the size of a common control channel message? Why are the last nine bytes lled with 2b?

1.2

Attach request

You will see how the mobile enters packet mode and, if you study the layer three messages, how it sends a Attach request. Inspect this message further. As you see this is a lot of information that the mobile sends to the 1

network (to the SGSN). Also note that the message dump is only 34 bytes long. The attach message will put the mobile in ready mode. It will now perform routing area updates and be reachable from the SGSN. The GPRS attach is part of the GPRS mobility management procedure. We still do not have a IP connection. Notice that the attach request was sent over a packet data channel. Go back a few messages and locate the uplink Channel Request and downlink Immediate Assignment. The request is for a one phase packet acess.... The assignment will, among other things, give the mobile a uplink state ag number. If this number is set in a downlink timeslot the uplink timeslot can be used for the mobile. Does this hold for any timeslot? Open up a Current Channel window and conrm that a packet data channel is used in the communication.

1.3

PDP Activation

Once I have opened the WAP browser and selected a URL the mobile needs an IP connection and must ask for a PDP context activation. Locate the Activate PDP Context Request and inspect the message. What kind of connection are we actually requesting? What kind of address do we want? What is the access point name? How do we want our Radio Link Control layer? This message is sent to the Serving GPRS Support Node (SGSN) that will contact the GGSN specied by the APN. Its the GGSN that will give us the IP address. Find the Activate PDP Context Accept message and determine what we where actually given. What is our IP address? What is our delay class? What is our mean throughput? If you open a PDP Context window you will have a nice summary of the parameters. Notice that we are using the GPRS packet channels all though we are not yet communication outside of the PLMN. We are still just talking to the SGSN. Take a look at the Packet Downlink Assignment message that is shorty after the PDP context request. 2

 What kind of resources are we allocated in the downlink? How many time slots will be used? Look for other downlink assignments what are the most number of time slots that we will be allocated?

1.4

GPRS trac

To get an overview of how many time slots that we are actually using in each direction you can open the GPRS Line Chart window. You will now see the downlink (above) and uplink (below) resources that we are using (or rather have been allocated). As you can see the norm is to give me one or two time slot going up and up to four going down. If you change the properties (left click) of the chart scales you will see that the throughput is not very high. In the lower frames you will also see what coding scheme is being used. The bit rate using coding scheme two is 13.4 kb/s per time slot before doing channel coding. Yet the reported session throughput is only few kb/s. What is happening here?

1.5

Codding scheme

In the GPRS line chart we will also see what coding schems that are used, which ones? Why not more?

1.6

Layers

Open up a Data Bytes Sent/Received window and look at how many bytes that have been shiped and received at each layer in the GPRS stack. Each layer will add some overhead and possibly do retransmissions (is this true for us, take a look at the PDP context).

1.7

Deactivate PDP Context

Once the pages of the wap site have been access the browser is closed, this also terminates the IP connection. This resulted in a Deactivate PDP Context Request. Even though we have deactivated the PDP context we are still in the ready state and will listen to the packet channels. When the phone is turned o we again enter packet mode just in order to do a Detach Request. This will nally sign us o from the SGSN. The GPRS detach will be followed up with a IMSI detach before the mobile nally dies.