A Comprehensive Study and Performance Evaluation of Operational GSM and GPRS Systems under Varying Traffic Conditions

S. Kyriazakos, N. Papaoulakis, D. Nikitopoulos, E. Gkroustiotis, C. Kechagias, C. Karambalis and G. Karetsos Telecommunications Laboratory National Technical University of Athens Heroon Polytechniou 9, 15773 Athens, Greece Tel: +30 10 7722558, email: skyriazakos@telecom.ntua.gr
goal of the operator is to keep satisfied the customer/subscriber with the quality of the services they provide. In order to achieve best performance, they have to monitor and optimize their network continuously. A Network Management System (NMS) with an online database is responsible for the collection of everything that happens on the network, in a raw data form. For greater effectiveness, operators install systems that do a lot more than collect and store and are easier to use and take advantage of all the data provided by the NMS. One of the most important tasks was the statistical evaluation of performance data, focusing on congestion situations. For that purpose, historical data was extracted from the data warehouse and evaluated. In order to be able to measure the network performance, the patterns of a normal day should be considered, while for performance evaluation congestion situations should also be analyzed. The performance indicators presented are Traffic, Call Setup Success Rate (CSSR), Handover Success Rate (HOSR), SDCCH Blocking Rate (SDCCH BR) and TCH Blocking Rate (TCH BR). [6] Traffic is chosen in order to see the augmentation of demand for services and channels in actual numbers, it is an estimation of the congestion that will follow. Call Setup Success Rate and Handover Success Rate are chosen in order to appreciate the impact of congestion in the two most important procedures during a call attempt, regarding the quality of service offered to the subscribers. Finally, SDCCH and TCH Blocking Rates are chosen in order to understand where exactly congestion appears in terms of logical channels, as the respective channels are the ones most affected in a congestion situation.

ABSTRACT In the light of the introduction of 3G systems, we present a comprehensive study of the performance of GSM and GPRS. UMTS is already in a few countries deployed, on the other hand it is expected that it will be limited to hot-spot areas, while voice calls will be preferably established with existing networks. At the early 80s, when GSM was introduced it was considered as an overspecified system. Nowadays it is obvious that the whole range of services is used and in addition performance is degreasing, due to the rapidly increased number of mobile subscribers. We strongly believe that GSM is not yet optimized and this is a motivation to trigger new research topics in this area.

I. INTRODUCTION In this paper we summarize measurements and trials that we have carried out and we evaluate the performance of GSM and GPRS. For the measurements, an operative DCS1800 network was utilized with GPRS segment as well. This paper is organized as follows. Chapter 2 lists the requirements and the criteria for the evaluation of the networks performance. The important measures are described as well as the source of the reports that are evaluated. Chapter 3 is the performance evaluation of GSM. The situations are classified into categories and qualitative diagrams are presented. In chapter 4, GPRS is evaluated in terms of traffic throughput, delays and response time. In addition, several observations are listed. Finally, in chapter 5 we sum up the studies that are performed and we end with the conclusions.

III. GSM PERFORMANCE EVALUATION In this section we present the results that have come up through the analysis of operational data together with their evaluation that help us to comprehend the behavior and assess the performance of the logical channels in GSM in particular when congestion arises. The logical channels that are primarily used in todays, mainly, voice traffic in cellular networks are the TCH (Traffic

II. EVALUATION REQUIREMETNS AND CRITERIA The performance of cellular networks is the most important issue concerning their operators. The main

Channel) and the SDCCH (Stand-alone dedicated control channel) often referred as signaling channel. Of course there exist many other channels, which are also taken into account in our study, but these two and especially the SDCCH are the most important resources where the system relies in order to accommodate the users needs [1]. A new call cannot be initiated if SDCCH channels are not available and the same happens when SDCCHs are available but all TCHs are blocked. Thus we can say that blocking of these channels is a main performance indicator for an operational GSM network that may lead to severe bottlenecks if the phenomenon insists. Other performance indicators considered in this study are Throughput, Call Setup Success Rate (CSSR) and Handover Success Rate (HOSR). [1,2] Throughput is chosen in order to see the augmentation of the demand for services and channels in actual numbers, it is in other words an estimation of the congestion that may follow. Call Setup Success Rate and Handover Success Rate are chosen in order to appreciate the impact of congestion in the two most important procedures during a call attempt, directly affecting the quality of service offered to the subscribers. Finally, SDCCH and TCH Blocking Rates (SDCCH BR and TCH BR) are chosen in order to understand when and where congestion appears, since, as we have seen, the respective channels are the most vulnerable. In order to understand how the behavior of these channels affects the networks performance we will analyse how TCH and SDCCH blocking are affected when congestion in the network increases. Towards this goal we have extensively studied real examples of congestion problems based on data provided by a cellular network operator, which provided insight on the above, while they also refer to other types of blocking that can happen (other than the two basic: TCH and SDCCH blocking). The results of this analysis are summarized in figure 1. It presents the behavior of the basic performance indicators through scaling congestion situations, thus presenting how the network reacts in such conditions. It must be noted that the indicators behavior is relatively designed but it is the result of thorough analysis of data corresponding to real congestion situations. The diagram consists of four indicators: Throughput, SDCCH Blocking, TCH Blocking and Handover failures. The three vertical lines represent the thresholds of low, medium and high congestion situations and they are very helpful in the identification of each situation. Note that since, for example, high congestion corresponds to different blocking rates for different channels we cannot give an absolute value to a certain level of congestion when trying to compare its effects on different channels. High congestion for SDCCH, PCH, RACH, AGCH means a blocking rate over 5% whereas for TCH this value is 10%. If we want to give a picture of what is happening in the network during

different congestion situations we could say that low congestion means that only few BSCs are affected and probably is geographically limited, medium congestion means that an important percentage of BSCs participate in the crisis and high congestion means that almost the entire network is affected. Of course, the above classification of situations is also based on the results at the network level i.e. the traffic load on the different channels. Let first consider the throughput of the network. As seen in the diagram, it increases beyond the threshold of the medium congestion situation, but reaches a limit before the threshold of the high congestion conditions. This limit represents exactly how much traffic the network can handle (or the maximum throughput the network can achieve). After this limit (which is normally slightly different in absolute numbers from network to network) traffic is slightly decreasing, as the resources responsible for a service establishment (SDCCH mostly) dramatically diminish. As far as the SDCCH Blocking is concerned, it is clearly marked on the diagram that it is increasing proportionally to the augmentation of the congestion level. This is normal, because the demand for establishment resources increases, while resources are fixed and limited. In that way, blocking is increasing proportionally to the demand. TCH Blocking also increases as traffic (or demand) increases, beyond the low congestion threshold, and reaches a peak around the medium congestion threshold. As we are moving towards high congestion situations TCH Blocking clearly reduces its figures. This happens because the network has run out of call establishment resources (SDCCH mostly) and thus, the real call traffic is reduced (as users terminate calls) and TCHs are becoming available. It must be noted that in cellular networks, TCHs outnumber SDCCHs in every single TRX [2]. Finally, Handover failure rate (the same applies for Call Setup failure rate, which is 1-CSSR) follows the curve of TCH Blocking. It reaches its peak when TCH Blocking is at its highest point and diminishes at high congestion conditions, because services cannot be established. From the above analysis it has been made clear that the elimination of call establishment resources (SDCCH mostly) triggers a chain effect phenomenon that affects traffic resources and procedures, such as call setup or handover. It should also be noted that beyond a certain point (approaching the high congestion situation and the maximum handling of traffic), services requests begin not to be served, thus decreasing TCH Blocking and Handover Failure rates. If conditions worsen more, even deeper beyond the high congestion threshold, then the user cannot even reach the network i.e. RACH Blocking starts to appear and the user cannot send a Channel Request message at all. The network then cannot even understand these attempts and that is why the above indicators are not affected beyond that point.

Figure 1: Behavior of performance indicators in congestion situations Based on the above facts we will now examine what happens to SDCCH and TCH utilization as congestion in the network increases. The results of the analysis are depicted in figure 2. When monitoring a channel, one will firstly perceive a change in utilization, followed by a change in blocking/success rates. This is very important and it shows that in order to assess the networks condition effectively we have to look first at the utilisation of the respective channels and then at the blocking rates.

In Figure 3, the utilization of RACH, PCH and AGCH in relation to congestion is depicted. These channels follow a smoother increase of their utilization, as there are usually enough resources to handle the requests made. Especially, AGCH rarely encounters problems in terms of blocking. The most common phenomenon, though, as far as RACH/PCH are concerned, is that problems are encountered in the Abis interface (air interfaces resources are usually adequate to handle most situations) [2,3], leading to congestion situations. Normally, all three channels (PCH, RACH, AGCH) remain in medium or low utilization. Utilization is the key indicator that will characterize a congestive scenario, as it is more representative of what is really happening and more independent from the situation itself than blocking. On the other side, blocking will provide additional information and, thus, extra help in the identification and characterization of a congestion scenario. Blocking rate depends on certain network parameters, such as radio coverage of the selected area, overlapping of the cells and the use of directed retry [4,5]. Directed retry is a procedure used when there is congestion in the network: in the call setup phase, the mobile station is assigned to a traffic channel in a cell other than the serving cell. Furthermore, a significant point that has resulted from our analysis is that most of the congestion events are scaling events, meaning that the increase will pass through all the congestion levels, on the way to the highest peak and that must be taken into account on the selection of the appropriate scenario.

Figure 2: Utilization of SDCCH, TCH in congestion situations As shown in figure 2, the utilization of TCH and SDCCH is similar in both low and medium congestion situations. When SDCCH gets highly congested, TCH utilization degrades since TCH channels become available from terminated calls but cannot be reused because the system lacks call setup resources. If the traffic load becomes even bigger, the situation worsens, RACH and PCH overcome the highest level of utilization and SDCCH utilization starts to degrade also, as the network does now not perceive attempts for call set-up. IV. GPRS MEASUREMENTS New technologies emerging in the scene of mobile cellular networks, and especially GPRS, elevate the transmission speeds into a higher level and seem to offer to the subscribers new potentials and services, based on these speeds. Alongside to the advantages of GPRS also come certain constraints about the extra load on network and resources that will be required and its behavior in congestion situations. The analysis of GSM congestion showed that the problem is located mostly in certain channels (SDCCH and TCH) of the air interface, and on RACH and PCH messages, but in the Abis part of the network. By introducing GPRS, congestion in the respective protocol must be defined. Three different situations in GPRS procedures can be defined as congestive. It should be noted that all situations occur after the initiation of the service, meaning that GPRS attach and PDP context establishment have successfully taken place. The first one refers to the availability of logical channels that GPRS introduces to the GSM air interface and it is similar to the congestion that is described for typical GSM networks. The lack of resources on PRACH (Packet RACH), PPCH (Packet PCH), PAGCH

Figure 3: Utilization of RACH, PCH, AGCH in congestion situations

(Packet AGCH), PACCH (Packet Associated CCH) and, of course, on PDTCH (Packet Data TCH) ends up to congestion and service unavailability, exactly like in normal GSM. The difference between normal GSM and GPRS is that GPRS can also use some normal GSM channels for the messages, in a case of GPRS resources unavailability. The normal RACH can be used instead of PRACH, the normal PCH can be used instead of PPCH and the normal AGCH can be used instead of PAGCH, in order to transmit the respective messages of each channel, in case of congestion in the GPRS channels. It is very important to remark that Circuit Switched (CS) traffic has priority over Packet Switched (PS) traffic. If congestion occurs for CS traffic, then only dedicated GPRS traffic channels can carry PS traffic. The default GPRS capacity determines a number of traffic channels that are always switched to the PCU (in the BSC), when allowed by the CS traffic load. Using these TCHs, the operator can provide fast GPRS channel reservations for the first data packets. During peak GPRS traffic periods, additional channels are switched to GPRS use, but only if the CS traffic load permits that to occur. A second situation that can be defined as congestion has to do with the data speed that is provided by the network to the subscribers. If the usual speeds of 40 50 kbps (that operators claim as reachable) fall to 10 kbps or even below the normal GSM data speed, then this is congestion. The problem is mostly in the unavailability of the number of PDTCHs that are required to reach these speeds. An interesting optional feature of GPRS, called two phase access, can be applied in this situation for the improvement of the uplink resources allocation, but the cost in the overall performance is to be discussed. The two-phase access is initiated by the MS, when it is not satisfied with the uplink resources allocated to it. It sends a Packet Resource Request message that is used to carry the complete description of the requested resources for the uplink transfer. The networks response is a Packet Resource Assignment message, indicating the resources reserved for uplink transfer. Power Control and Timing Advance information are included in this message. Both messages are realized on a PAACH. The third situation is related to the fact that the IP based service presents remarkable delays, from the subscribers point of view. The interpretation of delay as congestion in the respective protocol is acceptable, as GPRS concerns high-speed data transmission for applications dependable on that speed. If the delay is perceivable by the subscriber, then it is classified as congestion. Technically, the problem is initiated either by the transmission of the Ack./Nack. messages after a certain number of data blocks that hold up the speed of the whole procedure, or/and by the limitations of the air interface itself that cuts the IP packets into the admissible GSM bursts, thus delaying the procedure.

Concluding, it should be noted that only the analysis of real operators data of GPRS application could provide the means of overcoming the problems described above. In that way, assumptions will become certainties, definition of congestion more accurate and the performance of GPRS over GSM will be measured and depicted. Continuing the measurements, close to the cell where the RX level was 40 dBm (too close to the microcell) the data throughput was 32 kbps, hence 32kbps/ 3TSLs = 10.7kbps/TSL, and that means that CS-2 was used. Running away from the microcell, and just before the reselection would take place with an umbrella cell, about 20 seconds before, the coding scheme changed from CS-2 to CS-1 and the throughput dropped at 18 kbps. In addition, close to the antenna, the C/I ratio is higher comparing to the borders of the cell, therefore is normal that the Coding Scheme changed to CS-1 in the margins of the microcell. Concluded, after the measurements over GPRS that there are two categories of data throughput. The first one is between 30-32 kbps and the second one 20-22 kbps. Consequently, this observation is function of the different C/I ratios from area to area, resulting the triggering of the Coding Scheme 1 when the C/I ratio is not sufficient. Even if handover is not a procedure in GPRS the results are: The goal was to download a file and at the same time moving into different cells. Whenever these cells were part of the same BTS, the time to regain the download was about 8 seconds. On the other hand, whenever two cells were parts of different BTSs but also in different BSC and MSC, the time was increased to 33 seconds. In addition, when two cells were in different BTS but in the same BSC, the time to regain was about 5 minutes, and the only way to continue the download was to de-attach and then attach again to the GPRS network Nevertheless, in the case of the reselection was occuring when the GPRS Mobile was in standby condition and bandwidth was requested after the reselection then the connection would be successful; e.g. when download a web page, only a part is readable and by then scrolling down the other parts is requested. As far as the Circuit Switch Data (CSD) the trials showed that the network does not support CSD even when cells were in the same BTS (intra-BTS handover). The WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) was used with GPRS and CSD. The conclusions are that the GRPS supports faster access to the pages than the CSD. Time connection using GPRS was limited to 5 seconds comparing to the 25 seconds that were needed to restore the circuit (CSD). Moreover, the idle time e.g. the waiting time to read wml pages, the CSD charges that time, where in GPRS the charge corresponds to the download demanded capacity.

V. CONCLUSIONS In this paper we have presented the results of an extensive study of the GSM system. It is important that the studies have shown the limitations of the GSM system to accommodate extreme offered traffic. The system cannot predict the rapidly increased traffic in many cases and it can definitely not adapt by reconfiguring system parameters. Finally, GPRS is still immature and several issues need to be considered. Indirectly GPRS performance can be increased in the cellular system is working more efficiently. In addition, management techniques should also be developed for GPRS. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This work has been performed in the framework of the project IST CAUTION, which is partly funded by the European Community. The Authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of their colleagues from National Technical University of Athens, VTT Information Technology, Cosmote Mobile Telecommunications S. A., Telia Mobile and Motorola S.p.A.

[3] Temple, J., Mc Grath,S., Burkley, C.J., The PanEuropean GSM signalling requirements for the Abis interface. Proceedings of 44th IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference, Stockholm, June pp. 775 779, 1994. [4] R. Verdone, A. Zanella, "Performance of Directed Retry in a Mobile Radio System: the Impact of Propagation", ITC2000, pp. 167-171, Acapulco, MEX, May 2000. [5] T.-S. P. Yum and K.L. Yeung, Blocking and Handoff Performance Analysis of Directed Retry in Cellular Mobile Systems, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, Vol. 44, No. 3, pp. 645-650, August 1995. [6] S. Kyriazakos, G. Karetsos, E. Gkroustiotis, C. Kechagias, P. Fournogerakis Congestion Study and Resource Management in Cellular Networks of present and Future Generation", IST Mobile Summit 2001, Barcelona, Spain, 9-12 September 2001. [7] W.C.Y. Lee, New Cellular Schemes for Spectral Efficiency, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, Vol. 36, November 1987.

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