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Agenda What is quality The network tuning process How to monitor the radio network performance
How shall the radio network be managed to meet specified quality criteria. The described procedures and tools can be applied in general. The described functionality and tools are related to Ericsson systems.
Quality of service
Service integrity
Provider (operator)
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Terms are defined in the CCITT Recommendation E.880 Quality of service: How the subscriber is satisfied with the overall service Accessibility: To be able to get in contact with the network Retainability: To continue the connection with the network until all tasks are successfully terminated Service Integrity: To be able to perform a service and to keep the quality of the connection on a level,where the information can successfully be exchanged in the shortest possible time Support Perf.: The ability of the operator to provide the service and to use its utilization Operability Perf.: The ability of a service to be successfully and easily used by the user Security: EIR, secure billing, no unauthorized monitoring, TMSI, etc.
Yes
Performance satisfying?
Yes
Performance satisfying?
No
No Performance Analysis
Change Decision Possible?
Monitor Performance
Changes
Yes
Analysis
No
Which performance can be achieved with the individual network configuration (architecture, terrain, etc.)? Experience from the own network => Reference Network => Performance Requirements Experience from other similar networks => General performance requirements In the flow chart above, the start point is a good network. Of course it is possible to start with a badly performing network. In this case the procedure starts with the box performance analysis, as it is already known, that the performance is bad. In this case the reference network for performance comparison is not available.
Goal:
Perceive the performance at a glance!
Solution:
Extract and calculate, of all available information, key indicators, which are directly connected to the quality Information about why the performance is as it is, does not need to be provided during this step
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Performance Monitoring: - Does the network fulfil the performance requirements - Has the performance changed compared to earlier - Key performance indicators (KPIs) are needed since too much information is available
MS MS MS
Test drives are expensive, therefore it is beneficial to get the information to monitor the radio network performance from the network elements Most of the information is available in the different network elements. Information, which is only available from the mobiles is: - idle mode information - geographical information (position) - information about subjective speech quality
Paging success rate SDCCH establishments out of all random accesses SDCCH drops (also retainability) Assignment success rate Congestion on SDCCH and TCH
Retainability:
Dropped calls
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For call set-ups at originating calls, information is only available in the network elements, if information has been received by the system. For originating calls the best way to collect call set-up performance data is repeated short call set-ups with a test mobile. For monitoring purposes it can be assumed that the information for originating call set-ups, available in the network elements, is exact enough.
Indicators collected from the network which give information about the speech quality:
Dropped calls due to bad quality Call releases due to bad quality Handover failures Handover, quality controlled Intra-cell handover, quality controlled RXQUAL distribution FER measurements/distributions
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Due to the specification of GSM, it is not possible to get information above the real speech quality, as perceived by the subscribers. It is only possible to estimate the subscriber perceived speech quality. In R8, speech quality supervision was introduced which gives statistics based on SQI samples reported to the BSC
RxQual is obtained by transforming the bit error rate (BER) into a scale from 0 to 7. RxQual is the average BER over a certain period of time (0.5 s). By contrast, a listener's assessment of speech quality is a complex process which is influenced by many factors. Some of these, all of which RxQual fails to take into account, are the following: The distribution of bit errors over time. For a given BER, if the BER fluctuates very much, the perceived quality is lower than if the BER remains rather constant most of the time. Different channel conditions give rise to radically different BER distributions. However, since RxQual just measures the average BER, it cannot capture this. (In fact, the logarithmic scale of RxQual gives rise to the opposite effect: a high BER variance gives a better RxQual than a low variance does. This is completely misleading from a speech quality point of view.) Frame erasures. When entire speech frames are lost, this affects the perceived quality in a very negative way. Handovers. Handovers always cause some frames to be lost, which generally gives rise to audible disturbances. This does not show at all in RxQual, however, since during handovers BER measurements are suppressed. The choice of speech codec. The general quality level and the highest attainable quality vary widely between speech codecs. Moreover, each codec has its own strengths and weaknesses as regards types of input and channel conditions.
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SQI can be measured with e.g TEMS Investigation. SQI has been designed to take into consideration all the phenomena discussed in the preceding section. This ensures that it will produce an unbiased prediction of the speech quality, independently of channel conditions and other circumstances. Somewhat roughly, the computation of SQI involves the bit error rate (BER) the frame erasure rate (FER) data on handover events statistics on the distributions of each of these parameters. Furthermore, for each speech codec, SQI is computed by a separate algorithm which is tuned to the characteristics of that codec. Like RxQual, SQI is updated at 0.5 s intervals.
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The curve represents the average RxQual-to-SQI relation for different channels. The figure is based on simulations. The following conditions have been examined: Four different 900 MHz channels: tu0ifh (typical urban, 0 km/h, ideal frequency hopping) tu30mphnfh (typical urban, 30 mph, no frequency hopping) ff12nfh (flat fading, 12 km/h, no frequency hopping) tu3nfh (typical urban, 3 km/h, no frequency hopping). The C/I levels have been varied between 2 and 20 dB For each channel and C/I level a 60 second simulation has been done. The data from the simulations have been divided into 2.5 second long sentences, and the corresponding SQI values (for both the FR and the EFR codecs) have been calculated for each sentence. RxQual have been calculated for each 0.5 second interval, i.e. there are five RxQual values for each sentence. For each simulation, average parameter values has been calculated for each parameter (SQI, RxQual etc.). The graphs in this document are all based on these average parameter values.
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Depending on the status of the network, the methods to be used for the performance monitoring can vary. At the beginning, before there are even users in the network, drive testing is really the only way to handle the performance monitoring. As the number of users increases, it is possible to start using various complaints as well as network statistics (STS).
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Three mobiles are normally used for drive testing. One test mobile could be used for the test of coverage and should work in scanning mode. A second mobile could be used for the test of accessibility using short call test. A third mobile could be used for the tests of speech quality and retainability using long call test.
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Detect problems in the radio network Locate problems geographically Detect areas for expansion Detect money makers
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Detect problems => Quality requirements are not fulfilled. Locate problems => Which area, which cell, which TRX or which time slot shows the problem. Detect areas for expansion => Where do hardware needs to be added. Detect money makers => How important is it to react against the problem.
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Performance Analysis
What creates the problem How can the problem be solved Problems related to the radio network: Dimensioning and Architecture HW Problems Interference Neighbour Cell Definitions Locating Parameters Idle Mode Parameters Other Cell Parameters Power Balance
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Common problems when implementing a high capacity solution are: Dimensioning and architecture of the radio network Interference
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Final Remarks
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About performance and performance optimization:
The best optimization tool is experience The performance can not be better than allowed by the cell configuration and the cell plan Radio network optimization usually means fixing a poor frequency plan
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