HUAWEI 3G (Node B) SITE MAINTANANCE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to thank the Almighty God for enabling me finishing my training period safely. I would like to send my appreciation to the TECH-MASTERS Telecom and Electrical Engineering Company for accepting me to be one of their trainees. A text such as this would not be possible without the help and support from workers at the company for their generous help. I would like to thank Mr. Ambrose Raymond, Mgena Mhina, Mr. Abdallah from Huawei TZ, all Airtel Engineers who came across my way, and all other TM workers for their help and assistance to me whenever I encountered a problem during my PT. I want to thank my mother Ms. Editha Kikoba, my father Mr. Ramadhan Kikoba, and all my family members who supported me from the beginning of my studies financially and morally until now. Also I would like to thank my fiance Madam Annastazia Angello for her encouragement to me during my hard difficult work. Thank you all.

1 INTRODUCTION
3G is the short term which represents the word Third Generation. Its aGSM technology which was designed purposely to beat the CDMA (anti-GSM) technology which was found to work accurately with a very minimal cost as compared to GSM technology. In contrast to normal GSM technology (2G), 3G sites works mainly on 1800MHz frequency directional Antenna where in 2G both 900MHz and 1800MHz directional Antenna can be used. To make sure that GSM technology cant be beaten by CDMA in the market, then WCDMA technology were designed which is the one we call 3G technology of which Huawei call it Node B site.

Figure 1: Block diagram of a node B site In this report we are going to cover a little on safety precautions,3G site installations, and site maintenance which will be divided in two categories i.e sensitive areas in 3Gsite and troubleshooting and clearing any possible 3G site fault. To start with lets look on safety precautions.

2 SAFETY PRECAUTIONS TO BE OBSERVED IN THE Node B SITE To make sure that you are safe in the node B site you should have the following things:
I. II. III. IV. V. VI. Dont climb up the tower without a safety belt Dont stay inside the site compound without a safety cap Dont do any node B work without wearing safety boots Dont touch any node B radio without wearing the ESD wrist strap If possible wear gloves to protect your hands You should believe in yourself in order to do 3G installation better

3 3G SITE INSTALLATION
In this part we are going to cover a little on 3G site installation so as to make a reader understand how to maintain the site with reference to how it was done.

3.1 Antenna and RRU assembling

This is the first step to be done during 3G site installation. Procedures on how to assemble the antenna are as follows: I. Open the Antenna box carefully and take out the small box in it which contains antenna Brackets II. Open that small box and take out the brackets, attach those brackets to the antenna at their respective points (up or bottom) III. Connect RF jumpers at the bottom part of the Antenna and cover the connection point by water proof tape IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. Attach it to its pole ready for RRU connection Attach the RRU bracket to the antenna pole and tight them Insert the RRU into its brackets and tight its top screw. The antenna and RRU are now ready to be lifted to the tower Tie the assembled antenna and RRU above using strong rope passing through the pulley Lift the system above carefully and install the pole brackets to the leg of the tower
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3.2 Installing the APM30 BTS

To install the APM30 BTS you must observe the following: i. ii. iii. iv. Read the design document and observe the suggested position if can handle the BTS Lay on the base and get mark of each bolt hole onto the slab Drill the holes as marked above Install the BTS base and tight it properly as shown in figure below

Fig. the BTS base v. Install the battery cabinet onto the base and tight it

Fig. Battery cabinet installed on the base vi. vii. Open the screw holes and cable holes on top of the battery cabinet Install the radio cabinet on top of the battery cabinet and tight it properly

Fig. Radio cabinet installed on top of battery cabinet viii. ix. Ground both battery and radio cabinets. Connect the three phase AC power cable from the circuit breaker to the radio cabinet

3.3 Installing BBU, SLPU and Rectifier

After installation of APM30 BTS the BBU, SLPU and Rectifier should be also installed into the radio cabinet. They must in there because: BBU is the brain of node b site. It is the one which performs all telecom activities such as Add/Drop Multiplexing, data encryption, conversion of light to electrical signal etc. SLPU acts as the link between the RF side and MW side hence it accepts the E1 cable from transmission DDF and exchange information with the BBU via UFLP cable. The BTS accepts three phase AC voltage but only -48V DC is needed to power on RRU and BBU. For that reason the rectifier is needed to convert AC power into DC power. Procedures for those device installations are as follows: Open the BBU box carefully and take it out Adjust its screw to fit into cabinet and tight those screws Open the SLPU box carefully and install it in the empty space inside the cabinet Cut the ground cables attached inside the cabinet and ground the SLPU and BBU

Fig. SLPU and BBU grounding point Open the Rectifier dummy and insert in the rectifier module. Tight it properly That is all about BBU, SLPU and Rectifier installation

3.4 OPTIC FIBER AND DC POWER CABLE INSTALLATIOS

After installation of above components the last thing is installation of fiber and dc power cable. This is done in the following steps: Get the actual antenna height and estimate the dc power cable length to fit the whole line from the BTS Cut three pieces and label them at the beginning and end points Lift them up the tower with their top ends being clipped with lags Align them nicely at the end and connect them to their respective sector Lift up three fiber cables slowly and carefully Dress them well at the top and leave a reasonable loop before connection, then terminate it at their desired sectors Clamp the optic fiber and RRU dc power cable nice from up the tower to downward Dress them well inside the shelter/BTS and terminate them inside the APM30 BTS CPRI (Optic fiber ) cable can be terminated as follows
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Turn the puller on the optical module outwards

Fig. Optical module

Insert the optical module into the CPRI port on the GTMU, WBBPb, WBBPd or LBBP and then insert the optical module of the same type into the CPRI_W or CPRI_E into the RRU

Fig. inserting CPRI terminals into the Optical module

Fig. Installed CPRIs Label both RRU DC Power cable and CPRI cable

Fig. Labeled CPRI and Power cable

3.5 E1 testing and connection

The Airtel 3G (Huawei equipment) project was based on only RF side equipment. Transmission side was left in hands of the existing vendors such as Motorola, Erickson and Nokia Siemens who are the most GSM equipment provider for Airtel Tanzania. So as to ensure proper connection between those two different equipment the E1 cable were provided. Before installation you must do the following: Contact the site engineer responsible for that site to drop (enable) the E1 at a specified port

Make a loop to those given ports so that Huawei switching room can observe the given port as being active If the port loop is well seen into the Huawei switching room then you can confidently punch (clone) the E1 cable at that port using a clone tool. Run that cable from Transmission DDF/OVP to the SLPU and terminate it properly Run the cable from SLPU to WMPT board onto the BBU Connect the Fast Ethernet cable from SLPU to WMPT Turn on the site and call the Huawei switching room engineer to confirm the site availability If the site is available send the WMPT code to that Huawei switching room Engineer so that he/she can load the BBU configurations. Note: you can also load configuration directly at the site by using LMT software

Power on the site

3.6 Installing Battery and FAN power cable

In the node B site there must be an alternative when AC power goes off. To ensure that the site is all the time up, batteries were being provided Their installations are done depending on the capacity of single battery. The provided batteries were 12V each. This feature forces the installer to connect the batteries in series so as to get the required voltage (-48V) so us to make all radios up Procedures on how to install them are as follows: i. ii. iii. Insert each battery on its given space in the battery cabinet Open their caps marked + and Unscrew the seen screws and join the + terminal to the terminal using the provided bar iv. Do the same till all batteries are well joined and cover up the terminals with the opened cap
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Fig. series connection Battery backup

v.

You can now turn on the battery switch of the APM30 BTS

Thats all about batteries, but their fan is not working To make the battery Fan work do the following i. ii. iii. Measure the length from DCDB to the Fan terminal point Cut the two cables to fit the measured length Clip the lags to one end of those cable and insert and tight them according to polarity iv. v. Run them to the DCDB and terminate them Turn on the FAN using its switch. Note: the Fan should start up.

3G SITE MAINTANCE
From part 3.0 to 3.6 we have seen the general site installation which covered almost all

4.1 SENSITIVE AREAS

physical parts. Other parts were not discussed because either uses existing equipment or have already being installed directly from factory. In this section we have to navigate through each part and see how potential and delegate it is. To begin we will start from up the tower to down inside APM30 BTS.

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4.1.1

Antenna and RF jumpers

Antennas used in node B site are directional 1800MHz antenna. Its main objective is to link the BTS and MS at its sector (pointing direction). It receives and transmit RF signals within 1800MHz bandwidth. These are 2.5m length coaxial cable used to join the 1800MHz antenna to RRU. They are very potential as they are the one which first receives RF signal from the Antenna and transmit them to the RRU for more actions. It also receive RF signal from the RRU to the directional Antenna. In order to ensure proper communication between the MS and BTS then the Antenna should be okay and RF jumpers should be routed properly (polarity) and being tightened properly otherwise there will be a lot of call drops and no network coverage will be sensed in that sector.

Fig. Antenna and it RF jumpers being terminate to the RRU

4.1.2

RRU and its connected cables

RRU is simply the Radio Remote Unit. It is there for many purposes but mainly is for conversion of RF signal to Light wave signal and vice versa. It receives RF signal from the antenna through RF jumpers and convert them to Light waves so that can be
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transmitted through the optic fiber cable. It also receives Light waves from the BBU through Optic fiber and convert it to RF and send it to the antenna transmit for MS communication. As seen above, the RRU accepts three types of cables, one optic fiber, one DC Power cable (-48V) and two RF jumpers from the Antenna. RF jumpers makes sure that the connectivity of RRU to the Antenna is there always for MS communications. The power cable carries -48V from the DCDB inside the APM30 BTS to make sure that the radio (RRU) is on throughout its operation otherwise no communications between RRU and antenna or BBU. Optic fiber cable (CPRI) is optic cable which carries signal from/to the BBU. It interconnects the RRU and BBU. For data exchange to be performed properly the following conditions should be fulfilled: The RRU and BBU should have the average power of -48V DC so as to make them run properly therefore their power switches inside APM30 BTS should be ON otherwise fiber alarm will be observed. To be sure of this see the LEDs onto the RRU should be lighting The fiber should be terminated properly to their required ports. Note: The optic module should be inserted inside its slot properly before terminating the CPRI otherwise there will be a fiber alarm
4.1.3 BBU

RF jumpers should be connected properly from antenna to RRU The fiber cable should have no short circuit i. e not damaged/broken

This is also the radio known as Base Band Unit which performs a lot of jobs in a node B site. It is the central brain of the node B site as being explained in part 3.3. If this is damaged then no communication for the whole site. To ensure network availability this part should be on all the time

4.1.4

SLPU

As being explained in part 3.3 this is also a very important part for transmission purposes therefore it is recommended to make it exist into the site, although its less important

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4.1.5

Rectifier

This is the converter of AC to DC. It is the very important part as most electronic devices uses DC power other than AC. In node B site also all radios uses DC power, basically 48V

4.1.6

Transmission DDF/OVP

This is the only transmission part in node B site. It can be newly installed (Huawei product) or existing one (Erickson, Nokia Siemens or Motorola). If this side is not ok then no transmission will be done at that site hence the site will be down. Make sure that all E1 cables used in the node B site are well cloned into the DDF/OVP to make the site up always.

4.1.7

FAN

There are two types of fan being used in node B site, one is at the top above rectifiers for radio cooling and the other is at the battery cabinet to cool up batteries. All these fan are very important hence they should be on always so as to ensure allowable temperature inside the BTS.
4.1.8 Batteries

This part also should be there so as to ensure no shortage of power. They are just standby waiting for AC main power failure so that they can take up the action.

4.2 TROUBLESHOOTINT AND CLEARING 3G FAULTS/ALARMS

There is no site which can stay for eternal life without some problems. It can be seen very early after installation due to poor installation or sometime after installation due to external factors such as wind, people and any non/living thing passing across the equipment and disturb it. As an engineer or a technician in charge you should be able to translate alarm into physical action/thing. There many alarms which can be seen in the node B site but common alarms are: Fiber alarm/Sector is down alarm. As explained in part 4.1.2 the possible reasons for this alarm is: i. Power failure at the RRU. This is the common reason as it happens when either the RRU switched was accidently turned off, the open/short circuit at the RRU

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terminal or open circuit at the DCDB terminal where due to poor installation someone accidently pulled off the cable from its connector. How do you know about this problem? You can know it by : o Swap the power terminal at the DCDB and check status of the CPRI with alarm if it exist o Swap the CPRI themselves, if the alarm exist o Check the power connector of that sector and try to pull out the cables if one of the cable comes out then that is where the problem is, insert it properly and connect the power. The alarm should clear, if not o Climb up the tower with a meter and check the status of RRU LEDs, if they UP then the problem is not power, if they are not up then test continuity of the circuit using the multi-meter. If you get continuity then connect the cables properly. Alarm should clear. If the LEDs comes up but still alarm is on then see procedure below. ii. Fiber cable (CPRI) not well terminated especial the optic module not well inserted into its slot. Disconnect the CPRI cable at the BBU/RRU and reconnect it. The alarm should clear Temperature and Humidity Alarm. This fault can be caused due to fan failure or over temperature due to Air condition failure. To solve this make sure all your fan are on and well operating Site is down alarm. This situation occurs due to:

a) BBU is OFF, check the status of the BBU before doing anything b) No power supply to the BBU, check the if AC power and Battery DC power is there c) E1 cable is loose/disconnected, if the above reasons doesnt apply try to check E1 cable at both ends (SLPU and DDF/OVP)

5 RECOMMENDATIONS
I would like to recommend that if you are a site Engineer you should update yourself with a new technologies emerging every day. Telecom companies should also train their engineer about their expected technology to be used by such company so as to ensure good supervision and acceptance to be of high quality as currently other engineer accepts sites which they even
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understand. Subcontractors company have to be systematic in their plans otherwise they will never grow due to poor money management. Also I would like to recommend that, our university should value the potential found in students so as to use them to save the country.

6 CONCLUSION
3G network is very portable and easy to be instaled, it ensures data reliability and speed. It is better in data communications other than voice communications although it fe=its also well in voice communication.

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7 REFERENCES
1. DBS3900 Installation Guide (03) by Huawei Technologies Co. LTD 10/06/2011 2. Training by Huawei Engineer Mr. Abdallah about 3G networks 3. 3G installation training by Mhina a TM Director.

8 ABREVIATIONS
3G: means Third Generation DCDB: Direct Current Distribution Board BTS: Base Tranceiver station GSM: Global Systems for Mobile Communications CDMA: Code Division Multiple Access WCDM: Wide CDMA DDF: Data Distribution Frame BBU: Base Band Unit RRU: Radio Remote Unit

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