1.

Mention 2G main voice KPIs:

SD Drop Rate
TCH Drop Rate
SD Congestion/Blocking Rate
TCH Congestion/Blocking Rate
Handover Success Rate
CSSR

2. Root Cause Analysis (Reasons and Resolution for Poor KPIs)

SD Drop Rate:
Bad Quality Interference (change frequency, optimize the coverage of serving cell or interferer)
Low SS Poor coverage (Optimize coverage by physical optimization, check if MS/BTS Power
control are set too aggressive, Plan new site if needed
Excessive TA Overshooting cells (Mainly rural areas. Physical Optimization)
Other HW/TX Alarms, TX Errors, Core Network Issues like MGw faults, Check the trend for MSC
Counter retxchk it should be zero or very small, MBC Parameters setting (LOL, SCLDSC, Check the
traffic distribution between UL&OL)
TCH Drop Rate:
Bad Quality DL Interference (change frequency, optimize the coverage of serving cell or
interferer)
Bad Quality UL Interference (change frequency; optimize the coverage of serving cell or
interferer). Missing neighbors will cause a call to drag until it losses coverage and drop.
Bad Quality UL/DL Combination of DL and UL reasons
Low SS DL Poor coverage (Optimize coverage by physical optimization, check if MS/BTS Power
control are set too aggressive, Plan new site if needed.
Low SS UL Poor coverage (Optimize coverage by physical optimization, check if MS/BTS Power
control are set too aggressive, Plan new site if needed, Hardware fault checks: Faulty Antenna,
High VSWR due to incorrect termination of RF cable , RF Jumper and antenna feed mechanisms,
damaged connectors , damaged cables ,water in external RF feed cables faulty TRX.
Low SS UL/DL Combination of DL and UL reasons
Suddenly Lost Connections Drop call when entering the elevator/basement. HW Fault/Outage
during ongoing call, Phone goes off due to low battery during ongoing call: Check Fault antenna,
RF Cables connections, VSWR, Outage issues.
Excessive TA Overshooting cells (Mainly rural areas. Physical Optimization)
Other - HW/TX Alarms, TX Errors, Transcoder congestion/Fault, C7 link problems (link
unavailability, high BER), Blocked A-interface (RALT) and ABIS (RBLT) devices causing A and ABIS
interface problems

SDCCH Congestion Rate:

Check the utilization
If its above 80% for more than 5 days add SD TS/Make sure ACSTATE=ON
It can also be due to overshooting (in case of new site which is yet to be optimized). The output of
the command RLCRP:CELL=XXXXXX; will show ICMBAND 4 and 5 which implies the site is carrying
traffic from far and causing interference.
It can be due to SDCCH Timeslots which are missing due to HW faults. Check alarms and escalate.
It can be due to outage of the neighboring sites causing this site to be congested by carrying high
traffic. Escalate the neighboring outage issue

TCH Congestion Rate:

Check the utilization
If its above 80% for more than 5 days add TRX/ Increase Half Rate (HR)
 It can also be due to overshooting (in case of new site which is yet to be optimized). The output of
the command RLCRP:CELL=XXXXXX; will show ICMBAND 4 and 5 which implies the site is carrying
traffic from far and causing interference.
It can be due to TCH Timeslots which are missing due to HW faults. Check alarms and escalate.
It can be due to outage of the neighboring sites causing this site to be congested by carrying high
traffic. Escalate the neighboring outage issue
Use features like CLS(Cell Load Sharing), HCS(Hierarchical Cell Structure), HR(Half Rate),
AW(Assignment to Worst Cell), ASSOC(Assignment to another cell)

Handover Success Rate:

Missing neighbors Perform neighbors review
TCH Congestion at Target cell Target cell doesnt have TCH Timeslot for incoming HO. Resolve
TCH Congestion on target cell
Swapped sectors HO Failure due to swapped sector, a call will drag until it drops because the
neighbors are in a different direction. There will be a call drop and handover failure.
Co-BCCH/BSIC For a handover to occur the correct BCCH-BSIC combination of the target cell
must be decode. If there is more than one cell having the same BCCH-BSIC the call might be
handed over to the wrong target hence resulting into a failure.
Interference High interference may cause difficulty in decoding the measurement reports for
handover and hence causing a failure.
Incorrect handover parameters Handover parameters like TINIT, HYSTSEP, TALLOC, SSLENSD can
be tuned to improve handover success rate
Poor coverage at cell boundary - Poor RF coverage across the cell boundary will make decoding of
SACCH and FACCH difficult leading to handover failure or TCH drop
Too Many Neighbors - Too long neighbor list will be truncated during measurement report. This
may leave good neighbors and remain with weak neighbors hence resulting into a failure. Also
too long neighbor list can lead to high BSC CP load.
3. Paging Optimization:
Reasons for poor paging
SDCCH Congestion Make sure cells have sd congestion less than the target threshold
MSC&BSC parameters and timers settings T3212, ATT, BTDM, PAGTIMEFRST1LA, TMSIPAR,
TIMNREAM, MFRMS can be tuned to improve paging
LAC Dimensioning Large LA may cause poor paging success rate. Re-dimension LA by splitting
Coverage gaps Improve areas with poor coverage by physical optimization or deploying new site

4. GPRS/EDGE Optimization:
What is required to ensure that a cell is carrying EDGE traffic?
BTS/RBS should be EDGE capable (RBS 2202/2102 with TRU doesnt support EDGE)
TRX should be EDGE capable
FPDCH+SPDCH must be greater than zero
NUMREQEGPRSBPC should be greater than zero
64K Abis Timeslots must be enabled (these must be some 64K=YES Timeslots on Abis)
Minimize interference i.e C/I must be good so as higher modulation coding schemes to be used
(MCS6->9)
Enough capacity for voice calls so as to minimize SPDCH preemption during busy hour
Monitor PCU Congestion to ensure smooth data service (Add RPP Boards in case of PCU
Congestion)
Mention features which can be deployed on the network to improve EDGE performance assume that the
network already has Flexible Abis
Packet Abis over IP (Abis Optimization)
EDGE Performance package
5. Drive Test/Swap Identification:
Drive test Idle mode drive test will show cells serving in wrong direction (Make sure the
Azimuths in a cell file are the same as the one at the site)
HO Attempts to best cell A cell will be performing high number of handover attempts to a
neighbor which is in a different direction than to the one in its proximity

6. Customer Complaint Resolution:

Explain how you can resolve a customer complaint regarding: Call drop, Low throughput
In office: Get CDR from Core network, extract the Cell ID and Check the HW Alarms, TX Errors, Parameters
related to Drop Call/Throughput, check and verify its neighbors on map. Record/Reuse existing MRR to see
RxLev/RxQual/TA distribution
By drive test: Perform the drive test around the location of the complaint to simulate the feeling of the
customer then analyze the logfile to see what can be done to improve the situation, physical optimization,
neighbors review, etc
7. Features:
Mention features which can be deployed to improve call drop rate in the network
Antenna Hopping (mostly applicable for RBS2K) - Improves performance on the downlink in radio
environments by implementing Transmit Diversity.
Leads to a more robust radio environment, improved signaling performance and possibility to
give subscribers a more uniform speech quality (Improves TCH Drop Rate)
Enhanced Handover Success Rate - robustness of the system is expected to improve by enhancing
the FACCH signalling performance. (Improves HOSR and TCH Drop Rate)
Enhanced AMR Coverage - increases the probability of successful decoding of SACCH messages.
(Improves TCH Drop Rate)

8. Tools:
Mention the tools you ever used
OSS-RC: CNA, MRR, NCS, FAS, FOX, NOX,
Winfiol: Command line tool for interfacing with the network
Business Objects: KPIs Reporting Tool
MCOM: Neighbors, Frequency Plan
MapInfo: Neighbors, Site Viewing, Frequency Plan with the help of Add-on tools like MIPT,
WPLANNING etc
9. Channels Utilization Calculation: SD/TCH Utilization:
Utilization=Carried traffic/Offered traffic (Equipped erlang/Capacity)
Carried traffic is obtained from statistics (SD Traffic=CTRALACC/1800,
TCH Traffic=TFTRALACC/360+THTRALACC/360)
Offered traffic is calculated from ErlangB table by checking number of Timeslots at a
desired Grade of Service GoS, eg 0.2% for SD Blocking and 2% for TCH Blocking

10. Radio Network Troubleshooting:

Explain how to check HW Alarms:
By OSS Open Alarm list viewer then search for a particular site
By Winfiol: eaw BSC NAME (Log in the BSC)
rxtcp:moty=rxotg,cell=CELL NAME; (Get the TG)
rxmfp:mo=rxocf-TG NUMBER; (Get alarm code then search the alarm description
from your alarm decode/document
rxasp:mo=rxotg-TG NUMBER; (This too can show some alarms)
rxelp:mo=rxotg-TG NUMBER; (This will show BTS error log, i.e the alarm history)
By Business Object It can be used to query CF alarms
Explain how to check TX Errors:
By Business Object Query the DIP errors then match the BSC-DIP vs BSC-DIP from MO Dump in a
sheet called SNT1
By Winfiol eaw BSC NAME (Log in the BSC)
rxtcp:moty=rxotg,cell=CELL NAME; (Get the TG)
rxapp:mo=rxotg-TG NUMBER; (Get the DEV number, divide it by 32 to get DIP)
dtqup:dip=DIPrbl2; or dtqup:dip=DIPrblt2;

Explain how to check if a cell is active and carrying traffic:

By Winfiol - eaw BSC NAME (Log in the BSC)
rlstp:cell=CELL NAME; (If active you will see Active, if not you will see Halted
rlcrp:cell=CELL NAME; (If carrying traffic you will see SPEECH)
Explain how to check if a cell is defined in a switch:
By Winfiol - eaw MSC NAME (Log in the MSC)
mgcep:cell=CELL NAME; (You will see the CGI, Unless it is not defined)
If theres no MSC pool you will have to know in which MSC the corresponding BSC is
connected (Log in the BSC the run command rrmbp:msc=all; you will see the MSC, then go
back to above step to check the CGI

Explain how to check if a cell has neighbors:

By Winfiol - eaw BSC NAME (Log in the BSC)
rlnrp:cell=CELL NAME,cellr=all,nodata; (You will see a list of neighbors, unless they are not
defined) or if you have the latest BSC CDD Dump you can search