Guidelines for Optimising a GSM Network

Graham Eastwick

19th June 1997

GUIDELINES FOR OPTIMISING A GSM NETWORK

Introduction Preparation for the project Optimising for worst case interference Drive test procedures Data collection Equipment required. Personnel Data collection procedure Analysis of data No set-ups No audio calls Dropped calls Noisy calls Handover parameters Location area planning Radio propagation problem scenarios No dominant server Screening of ideal server High spots Ridges Narrow boundaries Local morphology Extraneous interference Up/Down link imbalance Borders on road junctions High cell sites Umbrella screening Use of statistics Call set-up success rate Reasons for call set-up failures. Dropped call rate Overall call success rate Collection of statistics. Change control Appendix 1 Drive test data tick sheet Appendix 2 SOT health check equations (by Jonathan Hopkinson) Appendix 3 Statistical Significance of NEWS Testing (by Jonathan Hopkinson)

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Guidelines For Optimising a GSM Network

Introduction Optimisation is the task of improving the call success rate for mobile subscribers. In a newly deployed network there will be problems. These will be both with the set-up of the database parameters and almost certainly problems will be discovered with the installation of the equipment and the orientation of antennas. It is often the case that we will find problems with congestion in busy parts of the network. In the following pages I will attempt to give some guidelines on the organisation and preparation for an optimisation exercise, details of how drive testing should be carried out and guidance on analysing logs and resolving problems. I will only be discussing the optimisation of a macro cellular system but the techniques used to collect and analyse the data could be applied to the optimisation of a micro cellular system as well. Preparation for the project Time spent collecting together the required information before starting the optimisation exercise begins will save frustration later when trying to analyse the data collected. It will be assumed that before an attempt is made to optimise a GSM network that the sites have been installed and are all in service. The following data should be collected together before the exercise starts. A Suitable number to ring this may be a recorded announcement located at the MSC or preferably the PSTN, a number such as weather or a news service can be used as long as it does not time out for at least 3 minutes. If no suitable number can be found then a 3rd person can be used at a land phone. Under no circumstances should mobile to mobile calls be used for these tests. Maps 1:10000 to 1:50000 scale of area to be tested marked with Longitude and latitude. Sites and the direction of the antennas should be marked. List of BCCH frequencies and BSICs for all sites including those used by BTSs from another equipment supplier if this equipment borders the area under tests. A complete neighbour list for system should be obtained. The database scripts for the sites to be optimised GSM recommendations 04.08, 08.08 and 05.08 may be useful reference to have available.(05.05 may also be of interest.) A second phone for the drive test team is useful Arrangements must be made with the OMC to collect daily network performance statistics and also information about any outages that have effected the network over the past day. Advance notice of any planned outages should also be provided to avoid time being wasted by collecting data in areas that have no service.

Guidelines for Optimising a GSM Network Before the optimisation starts a sanity check of the frequency plan and the neighbour list should be conducted using the propagation predictions. Optimising for worst case interference During the drive testing phase of the optimisation it is desirable to turn off base station power control. A new feature is introduced in 1.4.1.0 that will allow the operator to turn on all non BCCH RCUs to transmit dummy bursts on all time slots that are not carrying traffic. For further information about how to enable this feature using the set_full_power command refer to the BSS Command reference manual. This will give a worst case interference environment to optimise. This will be particular useful if a system is carrying very little traffic when the optimisation is carried out. Once the exercise is finished downlink power control can be reactivated and the system performance should improve. Drive test procedures Drive testing has been used in all of our networks to provide the data necessary to optimise network performance. The 2 minute call method for carrying out drive tests provides a method for investigating the performance of our systems and optimising networks. Two Minute calls have been used as a standard as it gives a representation of the traffic on a network. The two minute calls can be used to measure the performance of the network giving a useful indication of the progress being made by the optimisation teams. By using 2 minute calls not only can interference and coverage issues be identified but signalling and many other problems that are present in networks can be discovered and there effects on system performance quantified. If the data is to be used for benchmarking the system performance then in excess of 1000 calls will be required before we can have any confidence in the data. I have included appendix 3 that will show how a margin of error can be calculated. This will be useful to explain why so many test calls are necessary. Data collection The data is collected by drive test teams using LOMS or TEMS mobiles. The TEMS mobile is a test mobile station and logging software that runs on a PC. This product is sold by Erisoft. LOMS is am obsolete product that was a forerunner to TEMS based on Orbitel mobile stations. Each team will consist of a driver and an operator to make the phone calls. Collecting the data very labour intensive, it is a full time job. Equipment required. Tems or Loms compatible mobile stations PC with TEMS or LOMS software and 2 serial ports. GPS or other positioning system is desirable. Power supplies for the above equipment to allow them to be used all day in the cars. Car

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Guidelines for Optimising a GSM Network Personnel A data collection team consisting of a driver and an operator will be required. To optimise and test a large city a number of teams will be required to speed the process up. A team of people will be required to analyse the data. Analysis consists of two stages. Firstly generating statistics to monitor the progress and secondly and more importantly the resolution of problems on the network. It is likely that the system investigators will need to visit some problem areas to provide solutions to interference problems. Data collection procedure This work requires a number of drive test teams collecting data. Each team should be making in excess of 175 calls a day. With the latest version of TEMS the program can be made automatically. This will lead to some uncertainty in the test teams mind as to whether a call dropped or ended normally. Errors are to be expected on the tick sheets so the files will need to be processed using FICS to confirm the tick sheets and to find the calls that require further analysis. If the latest version of FICS is not available then the calls should be made manually. Test routes are defined around the main thoroughfares of the area under test for each team. Tick sheets should be filled out by the drive test teams. An example sheet is shown below
No service No setup Noisy No Audio Dropped Good

Time File name 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 File name 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Location

Comments

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Classification of the calls A call will fall into one of the categories defined on the above form. No service To be used if Mobile is saying No service or select service before the send button is pressed. (The RXLEV should be less than the criteria defined for c1 in GSM 05.08) No Set-up If after pushing send the call does not proceed to audio then it is categorised as no set up No Audio This is a special case of no call set-up where after the traffic channel been assigned the audio connection is never made or only appears after a handover. Noisy Call A call is defined as noisy if there is more than 5 seconds of noise or breaks in the audio during the call. This could consist of a number of short bursts of noisy or breaks. Dropped calls If a call terminates before the 2 minutes, then it is classed as a dropped call. Good calls If none of the above categories are applicable then the call must have been successful. Only 1 tick per call should be entered on the tick sheet. Log file names should be changed after every 10 calls. A useful scheme for naming files to ensure unique file names is to use the form xy1234i.log, where xy is the initials of the operator, 1234 is the day and month and i is a letter starting with a and progressing through the alphabet. Calls should be 2 minutes long ( 5 seconds) and have a minimum gap of 20 seconds between calls. If a call drops or fails to set-up then no further calls should be made for 20 seconds after the failed call has terminated. All data should be archived at the end of the day. This may be to Floppy disks, CDRoms or any other means convenient to the team carrying out the work. Analysis of data All failed calls will require analysis. The failures will be due to a number of different factors and each failure must be analysed. If it cannot be explained then further assistance should be sought. It is useful to make a graph showing the contribution each type of failure is making to the call success rate. In addition to a graph showing the G Eastwick Motorola Confidential Proprietary Page 4 19 June 1997

Guidelines for Optimising a GSM Network percentage of dropped calls, no set-up, no service and no audio calls further graphs showing the contribution of different causes of failure to each failure class should be produced. This analysis is useful in directing the effort of the problem solving team, the problems that are causing the largest percentage of the failures should obviously be addressed first. The results collected can be used to bench mark the system. This allows us to monitor the progress of the system improvement. A large number of calls need to be made if the results are to have any statistical significance. It is useful to quote the margin of error when presenting results. This will help explain the variance that will be seen in results from week to week. Appendix 3 has further information on the statistical reliability of drive test data. For the results of the tests to show the quality of the network from the subscribers point of view we must use our mobile in the same way as most of the subscribers. It is rare these days for a mobile subscriber to have a car mounted mobile station. Most subscribers have hand portable mobile stations that are used in cars. I recommend that the drive tests are carried out using the mobile station in a car. If a roof mounted antenna is used then an attenuator should be used to simulate the in car losses. It may also be necessary to carry out tests in a few key buildings in a city if coverage of these buildings is important. No set-ups These problems can be caused by a number of reasons, careful analysis of the TEMS logs can help us to determine the cause. I will attempt to describe some scenarios that we may see, this is no way meant to be exhaustive and there will be many other scenarios that may cause calls to fail. No access to SDCCH. Check the channel request was sent from the mobile. If the mobile did not send one then we need to check that all access classes are un-bared. This can be done by checking the system information messages. The signal level of the BCCH measured by the mobile could also be less than the C1 parameter for the cell. Where the path loss criterion parameter C1 used for cell reselection and selection is defined by: C1 = (A - Max(B,O)) where A = Received Level Average - RXLEV_ACCESS_MIN B = MS_TXPWR_MAX_CCH - P RXLEV_ACCESS_MIN = the system. Minimum received level at the MS required for access to

MS_TXPWR_MAX_CCH = Maximum TXPWR level an MS may use when accessing the system until otherwise commanded. P = Maximum RF output power of the MS. G Eastwick Motorola Confidential Proprietary Page 5 19 June 1997

Guidelines for Optimising a GSM Network

All values are expressed in dBm. {This parameter is used to ensure that the MS is camped on the cell with which it has the highest probability of successful communication on uplink and downlink.} The mobile needs to have performed a location update in the location area in which it is located. A check needs to be made that this is the case by reviewing the log file to check that a location update has been successfully carried out since the last location area change. If the location update has been rejected and the SIM is known to be registered with the network then there may be a problem with the VLR, HLR or the links to these. Did we receive an immediate assignment reject? If so then we have SDCCH congestion. If we have a large amount of SDCCH congestion then we need to look at the SDCCH planning. Base station statistics give the information on SDCCH usage and congestion. If the cell has no TCH congestion then extra SDCCHs could be configured. The number of location updates in the cell needs to be investigated. It is not a good idea to position location area boundaries along a busy road for example. Careful replanning of the location area boundary may resolve this problem. If we see an immediate assignment but the mobile does not send a SABM message to access the SDCCH then we need to analyse the contents of the immediate assignment and check that it was sent in response to the RACH transmitted by this mobile. If the Random reference and N26, N32 and N51 do not match then the immediate assignment was sent in response to a RACH from another mobile. This conflict should be seen very occasionally. If we see problem repeatedly on a cell then further investigation is required to confirm that this cell is carrying traffic and has call originations. When the mobile sends SAMB messages the mobile waits for a UA from the base station. If this is not seen then it could be due to interference, a problem with the uplink on the cell or low levels. Note that the SDCCH channels may not be on the same frequency as the BCCH. Unsuccessful set up after successfully accessing a SDCCH The Signalling needs to be examined carefully to determine at what point the set-up failed. The key stage in the set-up is the assignment to the TCH. Failure before the assignment Note the last layer 3 message. A downlink disconnect message is often seen from the MSC. The cause value should be noted. The causes used may or may not be useful, they are determined by the MSC vendor. A call can typically fail due to congestion on the A interface or no free radio channels in the cell.

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Guidelines for Optimising a GSM Network Failure after assignment. If we get an assignment command from the base station then we know that the BSS and A interface are not suffering congestion. The call may fail at this point and recover to the old channel sending an assignment failure. This may be indicative of interference on the channel or time slot the call was sent to. Repeated problems on the same cell may point to a problem with the cabling at the site. Even after the assignment has been successful the call may fail before the call is successfully connected. Check for any downlink disconnects, the cause values may show us why the call has failed. Typically this may be as the dialled number is busy, congestion in the PSTN network, No answer, incorrect dialled digits or any other fault condition. Once we have audio the call is considered to have set-up correctly. Interference and low level signals may also effect a call during the set-up. A call may also fail due to the mobile being camped on the wrong cell. The analysis of interference type problems will be discussed in the next section. No audio calls There should be very few calls with no audio. If the audio reappears after an inter BSS handover then this is due to the change in transcoder circuit. If a number of no audio calls are experienced then the transcoder database should be checked for errors. A system diagram is also required showing the configuration of the network. Dropped calls The first thing to check when looking for a dropped call is the Radio link time out counter decrement to 0. (This situation is complicated slightly if the mobile is carrying out a layer 2 transaction and then the call may drop after the maximum number of layer 2 repetitions has been exceeded.) If this has not happened then the layer 3 messages need to be examined. The mobile may have received a disconnect from the MSC causing the call to terminate prematurely. If this problem is seen often on a network then further investigation of the A interface messaging may be required. Tools such as the K1103 can be useful for this. (The K1103 is a A interface monitor produced by Siemens. There are a number of A interface monitors available that can be used as an alternative.) Drops on handover Calls also fail if they are handed over to a poor neighbour, if the source cell is clean then the call recovers to the source cell and may be OK. If the source cell is suffering from bad interference then the call may drop. In this situation the we need some information about the location of the mobile. We need to consider if the mobile was on the correct cell before the handover and if the neighbour was the one expected. If they are correct then we need to investigate for likely sources of interference. Analysing interference problems If the signal level is high and the quality poor resulting in a dropped or noisy call then we probably have a problem with interference. We need to check first of all that we are G Eastwick Motorola Confidential Proprietary Page 7 19 June 1997

Guidelines for Optimising a GSM Network on the cell we would expect to be our serving cell in the location recorded for the mobile. If we are not then we may have a problem caused by a missing neighbour definition or cabling problems at the antenna. Missing neighbour When analysing the data it may be found that the mobile is not on the correct serving cell for the area. This may be due to a missing handover definition. The first check is to verify that the BCCH frequency for the cell that is suspected of being missing is not included in the list of frequencies being transmitted in the system information messages. If the frequency is present then the neighbour should have been seen with TEMS to be stronger that the serving cell, you will need to verify using the neighbour list that the neighbour has the correct BSIC and Frequency defined. If the target cell was congested or had link problems then the same symptoms could be seen with TEMS. If the frequency is missing from the system information message then the neighbour definitions need to be checked. Mobile on wrong cell for location. This may be caused by missing neighbour, incorrectly oriented antennas, sectors connected to wrong antennas to mention a few possible problems. We need to check that the mobile started the call on the correct cell. The mobile is slower to spot new neighbours in idle mode. This can cause problems in a system with small cells, the neighbour list needs to be well thought out to prevent problems. If the mobile is on the wrong cell then we will need to look at the previous handovers and cell reselections to understand how it arrived on this cell. Adjacent channel interference Interference can come from both the BCCH and the Non BCCH frequency From a TEMS log adjacent channel interference can be seen if the cell is specified as a neighbour. It must be remembered that only the BCCH frequencies are monitored by TEMS so we will need to look carefully at the data. Consider if the non BCCH frequencies on any of the cells can be causing problems. Co Channel interference This is more difficult to see from the TEMS logs. Once we have decided that the problem is not being caused by adjacent channel interference then we may begin to suspect that we have a co-channel problem. Careful analysis of the maps may reveal an obvious co channel problem. Again we need to consider the non BCCH frequencies as well as the BCCH ones. If after careful study of the frequency plan no reason can be found for an interference problem then it may be necessary for a system investigation team to visit the area. It can be useful to arrange a short outage on the serving cell suffering interference and measure the remaining signals on both the co channel and adjacent frequencies in the area. This work will have to be carried out outside of the busy hours as it affects the service to subscribers. TEMS can be locked on to the chosen carrier and will show any GSM interference. If the BCCH can be decoded then positive identification of the interference is easy.

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Guidelines for Optimising a GSM Network Uplink interference This can be difficult to spot from the drive testing. If a the quality of a call goes suddenly from 0 to 7 then it is possible that the link fail counter has expired at the base station. The full power RFLOSS feature should be enabled at the BTS with link_about_to_fail parameter set to less than link_fail. In this case if the mobile is not at full power we prior to the problem we should see it move to full power just before the bad quality starts. To find a site that is suffering from large amounts of uplink interference the interference on idle statistics should be monitored. Link balance problems Careful analysis of the mobile's power level along with a knowledge of the database settings can show problems with the link balance. The mobile will be at a higher or lower power level than expected for the downlink receive level if the paths are balanced. To confirm this there is a new statistic parameter at the base station with 1.4.1.1. To read this statistic you need to remote logging to the BSC and display it. OMC PM will support this statistic from 1.5.0.0. The call trace tool will also let you gather information on the path balance. Wrong frequency Is the frequency in use at a cell the same as the one on the plan? If not the cell is very likely to suffer interference. The neighbour lists may also be wrong and be preventing handovers. Outages Cell and link outages will cause the mobile to be on the wrong cell and most likely suffering interference. These are real problems and should not be discounted from the statistics as these problems effect the call quality to the users of the system. Low Levels The signal strength in an area may simply be too low for successful calls. We need to confirm that there are no problems with the cell that is expected to cover this area. To rectify this a new cell may be required. A repeater may be useful in some situations but it must be remembered that a repeater will not add capacity, this may be a problem in some situations. Noisy calls Noisy calls are caused by interference and low level signals the analysis of these calls is the same as for dropped calls. Handover parameters A good understanding of the handover procedures available on the Motorola GSM system is required by the engineers analysing the log files. The BSS database application course (SYS 03) run by the training school that goes in to some detail on these algorithms. I do not intend to cover this in great detail here. The database should be checked before the exercise starts to check for sanity on the parameters. The key handover trigger will be the power budget algorithm the detail of this algorithm can be found in GSM 05.08. In setting up this we want to ensure that G Eastwick Motorola Confidential Proprietary Page 9 19 June 1997

Guidelines for Optimising a GSM Network handovers are quick enough to avoid noise due to bad quality but that the averaging is long enough to avoid ping pong handovers. For power budget handovers we can set the Hreq Av period to 4 ( approximately 2 seconds) and the handover margin to 6 dB. If the handover is between 2 cells using adjacent frequencies then the handover margin should be set to 3dB. The most useful imperative handover trigger is RXQUAL this can be used to speed up handovers in areas suffering bad interference. RXLEV and timing advance handovers have a tendency to cause a large number of ping pong handovers and therefor I do not generally recommend there use. Special situations may exist where these types of handovers help. Location area planning To avoid problems caused by high numbers of location updates on the network (and its consequent SDCCH congestion) some care is required with planning the location area boundaries. We avoid using different location areas each side of a busy highway. It is also good to avoid having different location areas each side of an expanse of water. Mobiles will be moving constantly between these location areas leading to high SDCCH usage in these cells. If this problem is noticed during drive testing then changes may required to the location areas. This will require changes to both the BSS and the MSC database. Radio propagation problem scenarios In the following section I will discuss some of the radio propagation problems that have been observed during optimisation exercises along with some solutions. No dominant server In a text book mobile system the boundaries between cells are clearly defined and mobiles will move from one server to another in a predictable way. In real life we often have areas where no one cell provides strongest coverage but two or more cells have signals of roughly equal strength. This can cause problems with ping pong handovers, bad quality and an increase in drop calls in the area. This type of problem will typically occur in areas where the land is gently undulating or over large expanses of water. To solve such a problem extra handovers may be added to facilitate handovers to the cells found best during field trials. Some improvement may be gained by adjusting the tilt of antennas. In some cases the only solution will be to add an additional cell to improve the coverage in these areas. Screening of ideal server Generally the best server is the one closest to the mobile. There are however situations where the signals from the closest cells are screened from the mobile by buildings, cuttings, underpasses and similar obstructions. Often a mobile will handover to a distant site in such situations and may consequently suffer from co or adjacent channel interference. In this situation it may be found helpful if the margin to nearby neighbours is lowered to encourage the mobile to handover to preferred neighbours. G Eastwick Motorola Confidential Proprietary Page 10 19 June 1997

Guidelines for Optimising a GSM Network High spots Within the coverage area of a cell the is likely to be hills, flyovers and embankments. The mobile is likely to be receiving strong signals from a number of distant cells in such locations. Co and adjacent channel interference may lead to dropped calls in these areas. Out of cell originations may also be a problem in these areas. In addition the mobile station may be a cause of uplink interference to other users. To address the problem of mobiles originating calls on the wrong cell one way neighbours may be defined. I do not recommend the use of timing advance based distance handovers as these are enabled on a per cell basis and will effect all boundaries. Timing advance triggered handovers will often result in a ping pong back to the source cell as it is likely to be power budget better. If a high cell is causing a lot of problems in a city then this site should be reviewed. It may be appropriate for the antennas to be moved down to a lower location on the building or in some circumstances the cell should be removed from service. It is often the case that in the early days of a GSM network many high sites are deployed to maximise the coverage achieved from a limited number of cells. As the network traffic grows capacity becomes more important and theses high sites will need to be taken out of service and relocated to allow a tight frequency reuse pattern to be deployed. Ridges A ridge can create a problem where the boundary between two cells is too sharply defined. This will typically occur where a road takes a sharp drop. The mobile loses touch with the serving cell before the base station has had time to effect a handover to the neighbour cell. The severity of such problems will depend on the speed of the mobiles. This problem can be difficult to solve, reducing the handover margin may help. Reducing the averaging times will effect the rest of the boundaries in the cells and may lead to problems elsewhere in the cell. In some situations it may be possible to add a neighbour that gives reasonable coverage on both sides of the ridge and maintain a call by this cell. Narrow boundaries In practice cells do not conform to the ideal hexagonal shape shown in the textbooks. Cells that are not physically adjacent may have areas of coverage that adjoin. These areas can be predicted with the frequency planing tool provided accurate topological and morphological data are available. The frequency predictions should be analysed carefully and appropriate neighbours should be added. Real life will always differ from the predictions and additional neighbours may be found to be required during drive testing. In some situations we may need to remove a neighbour definition.

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Guidelines for Optimising a GSM Network Local morphology Morphology refers to the land use. This can have a significant effect on the propagation characteristics. These effects should be taken into account when planing a network. Wide expanses of water such as lakes, reservoirs, large rivers and sea will enhance the propagation this will potentially lead to areas of high co channel or adjacent channel interference. Forestation will attenuate RF signals in the 900Mhz band, this effect is greater in the summer months when the trees have leaves. Buildings will screen the radio signals and roads may act as waveguides enhancing signal strength in built up areas. It will help if these effects are taken into account during the planning stage of the network. Problems will inevitably be discovered in the optimisation phase. Some of these will be resolved by neighbour changes. Other problems will require frequency changes to be implemented. In situations where the signal strength is simply found to be poor then once the sites concerned have been checked for faults then the only solution will be an additional site in the area effected. Extraneous interference Once a thorough investigation has been made to eliminate co channel and adjacent channel interference sources then we may begin to suspect external sources are causing the problems. This may be difficult to identify especially if the source is intermittent. We have experienced problems with analogue mobile phone networks causing problems. Cordless telephones have also been found to cause problems in the uplink direction. In some situations military systems have caused problems. These problems can be particularly difficult to solve without co-operation from the regulatory authorities. Increasing the power in the effected area or retuning the frequencies in use are the only options available to the operator. Up/Down link imbalance There will be an imbalance between the up and the downlink signal strengths in a cell to take advantage of the better sensitivity of the base station. Typically this will be about 4 dB on a non diversity system and 7 dB when diversity is being used. If the imbalance is found to be greater than this then there may be problems with the installation of the site. If separate receive and transmit antennas are in use at the site they should be inspected to confirm that there are no obstructions such as a lift shaft, air conditioning plant or any other structure that is screening the antennas. Attention must be paid to the positioning of the transmit and receive antennas as they may be obstructing each other. This problem could also be caused by problems with the feeders. Further verification of the link balance can be carried out using the link balance statistic or the call trace

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Guidelines for Optimising a GSM Network product. Both transmit and receive antennas should have the same tilt applied if problems with link balance are to be avoided. Borders on road junctions If a cell border runs along a busy road or is at a busy junction this may cause there to be an excessive number of handovers at these locations. This will have an effect on the system capacity. This problem may be shifted by adjusting the tilt on one of the antennas. Alternatively the handover margins could be adjusted to move the boarder. High cell sites High cell sites that were deployed at system start-up can cause problems later. These sites can cause problems with co-channel and adjacent channel interference. They can also attract out of area originations that can easily result in a noisy or dropped call. The only real solution is to either move the antennas to a lower location or take the site off air. Some advantage may be achieved by tilting the antennas. The maximum acceptable tilt is about 12 degrees. Umbrella screening In some locations the structure of the building on which the cell site is located may give screening to the radio signal such that a mobile located next to the building is screened from the cell. This may lead to poor quality calls very close to a cell site. This problem may be solved by moving the antennas. If the mobile is able to maintain a good quality call using an alternative cell then no action is required other than to ensure that suitable neighbours to be included on the database to facilitate handovers as the mobile moves away from the cell. Use of statistics Statistics can provide a good way of benchmarking the system performance. This will allow the progress of the system performance improvements to be monitored. They will also show what areas of the network are performing badly. This will help focus effort on the areas of the network that will give the largest gains in terms of customer satisfaction. One other benefit of the statistics is that they give us the performance of the network from the subscriber viewpoint. The following sections describe the statistics that can be used to measure the system performance both in the call establishment phase and after the call has been successfully set up on a traffic channel. Call set-up success rate The OMCR Key statistic TCH Assignment Success Rate is a good starting point. The definition is
SUM(TOTAL_CALLS) *100% SUM[OK_ACC_PROC_CM_SERV+OK_ACC_PROC_CM_REEST+OK_ACC_PROC_PAGE_RSP]

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.

Thus it indicates the proportion of call attempts which are successfully assigned to a TCH. The problem with this Key statistic is that some CM_Service_Request and Page_Response messages are sent for SMS or Supplementary Service (SS) transactions which do not require a TCH, and thus TOTAL_CALLS will never be increased in these cases. This means that even in a perfect network, TCH Assignment Success Rate will never be 100%. The errors due to Supplementary Service invocations and SMS transactions can be compensated for by using the K1103. The statistics function of the K1103 can be used to count the proportion of system accesses that are for SS and SMS. For 1 BSC count CM_Service_Request and Paging Response messages Register messages (indicates SS invocation) RPData messages (indicates SMS transaction) If SS is 3% and SMS is 4% then TCH Assignment Success Rate can be 93% at best. Thus the value of TCH Assignment Success Rate should be increased by 7% to compensate. Since the proportion of SS and SMS transactions may change over time, it would be worth using the K1103 to periodically reassess these values. Alternatively, suitable measurements may be available from the MSC. A second problem is that re-establishment is not supported, so OK_ACC_PROC_CM_REEST should not be included in the key statistic. This will make it more accurate:SUM(TOTAL_CALLS) *100% SUM[OK_ACC_PROC_CM_SERV+ OK_ACC_PROC_PAGE_RSP] Having compensated for SS and SMS, this statistic then indicates the call set-up success rate. This then becomes a useful indicator of cell performance and can be used to benchmark cells with each other and over time. A drop in this statistic clearly indicates a problem. Reasons for call set-up failures. In addition to the overall call set-up success rate, it is important to know at what stage in the Call Set-up process calls are failing. There are many possible causes:

CM_Service_Reject Authentication Failure Ciphering failure Assignment failure MSC/MS signalling fault RF loss L2 message repetition expiry L2 message fault Motorola Confidential Proprietary Page 14 19 June 1997

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Guidelines for Optimising a GSM Network

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RF losses during the call set-up process are recorded with the SDCCH RFLoss statistic. However, this statistic also pegs RF losses during a location update procedure, so it cannot give an accurate value for calls alone. For example, if the call set-up RFLoss rate is 1% and the Location Update RFLoss rate is 0.4%, then if there are twice as many Location Updates as calls, the SDCCH RFLoss rate will be 0.6%. This must be considered when interpreting this statistic. The Assignment failure rate is useful to monitor:TOTAL_CALLS * 100% MA_REQ_FROM_MSC This will reduce if blocking occurs, but should normally be 99% or better. This should be continually monitored on a per cell basis. Dropped call rate Once on a TCH, the call may drop due to an RFLoss or during a handover. RF Losses can be quantified with the key statistic TCH RF Loss Rate, Handover losses can be quantified with the key statistic Handover Failure Rate. Overall call success rate This can be obtained from the equation:TCH Assignment Success Rate + SS/SMS Adjustment - TCH RF Loss Rate Handover Failure Rate. This can be calculated on a per-cell, per-BSC or network-wide basis. It is suggested that this be done weekly, so that the trend may be observed. Collection of statistics. Tools such as SOT have been produced by the systems deployment group these may be used by Motorola Local offices to assist in the data collection procedures. The statistics provided are described in Appendix 2. For the Asia Pacific region an alternative web based statistics package has been prepared by Ed Curran may be more appropriate. Change control Careful control of the databases is required to make sure that recommended database changes are implemented swiftly and correctly. It is recommended that some formal control procedures are implemented. Some sort of database change request form is required where the optimisation engineer will propose the change and give reasons. Space should be provided for the team leader to give authorisation. The OMC should control the implementation of the changes and sign the form once the change has been implemented. The form should then be passed to the engineer that maintains the script files to ensure that these stay updated. G Eastwick Motorola Confidential Proprietary Page 15 19 June 1997

Guidelines for Optimising a GSM Network

Appendix 1 Drive test data tick sheet Appendix 2 SOT health check equations (by Jonathan Hopkinson) Appendix 3 Statistical Significance of NEWS Testing (by Jonathan Hopkinson)

G Eastwick Motorola Confidential Proprietary

Page 16 19 June 1997