Question:

What counters to look for when looking for Throughput improvement in LTE ?

Answer: It is better to understand the behavior of a certain part of the network. After
that you can always figure out, where to go and look for counters. (Find the exact
counter name in the documentation of the specific vendor)

What Sections and their

Counters to Look for w.r.t
Throughput?
As from the diagram above, you can look at the 7 sections to start with in order to
improve throughput at RAN side.
 Consider checking corresponding counters

In order to check the throughput being effected due to each of the section. One
recommendation is to check the counters for each of the
 section. The counters value, will tell you, how throughput is performing with respect to
that specific section of the network. Based on the

value , you can take respective action to mitigate the negative influence (if that’s the
case)

Channel Quality Indicator CQI :

Look for CQI counters. I am not going to list counters here specifically. For Samsung, it
will have different counters compared to what Ericsson will have and same goes on for
other vendors.

Throughput:
 Look for Throughput counters for a specific vendor in Downlink and Uplink.

 Counters such as which show , how much data is there in PDCP , or how much data
volume was accumulated in the last Transmission Time Interval (TTI) .

 Also the counter which keeps track of how throughput is being estimated for the UE is
important to know.

Interference :
In Downlink (DL) ,
There are no counters at the UE side.
 But the way we measure DL RF conditions is based on the following which measure
interference on the UE side.

For example, CQI distribution counters.

UE Rank Reporting distribution counters and Transmission rank distribution counters,

will give you RF information,

which will translate to interference condition at the DL UE side. .

For Uplink (UL)

In this case check for Interference counters for Interference on :

 PUCCH

 PUSCH

 SINR Distribution on PUCCH

 SINR Distribution on PUSCH

For Block Error Rate (BLER)

In Downlink (DL):
 For Downlink measure, you need to look for Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ)
Acknowledgements and Negative acknowledgements counters for each modulation
type such as:

 QPSK

 16-QAM

 64-QAM

Having information of these counters, can help identify BLER.

In Uplink (UL) :
For Uplink. Measure HARQ UL success and Failure for each modulation type in uplink
such as:

 16- QAM

 QPSK

Using the above counters, you can identify BLER for UL case
Scheduling:

For Downlink
In this case, look for counter which keeps track of UEs in Active mode at cell level. Also
counters, which keep track of UEs which are being scheduled in the DL.

For Uplink :
In this case, look for counter which keeps track of UEs in Active mode at cell level in
Uplink. Also counters, which keep track of UEs which are being scheduled in the UL.