3.

Paging (PCH) Success

3.1 Define
3.1.1 Paging Process

 Paging Success by far is the most complex KPI to deal with as the process of paging touches
almost all the nodes in GSM system and is influenced by performance of each of them. That’s
the reason why this write up on paging looks too interwoven and cross refers to too many
things. But the good news with paging is by the time paging success rate in a network gets
improved; almost all the other KPIs too stand improved.
 In response to an incoming call, the MSC initiates the paging process by broadcasting a
“paging request” message on the paging sub channel (IMSI or TMSI of the MS and its Paging
Group) and starts timer T31131.
 A “paging message” consists of the mobile identity (IMSI or TMSI) of the MS being paged and
its “paging group number”.
 A Paging Request Message may include more than one MS identification. The maximum
number of paged MS per message is 4 when using “TMSI” for identification of the MS
(maximum number of paged MS per message is 2 when using IMSI).
 The BSC receives this page and processes the paging request and schedules it for
transmission on the PCH at appropriate time.
 The MS on its part will analyse the paging messages (and immediate assignment messages)
sent on the paging sub channel corresponding to its paging group.
 Upon receipt of a “paging request” message, MS will initiate within 0.7s an immediate
assignment procedure.
 Upon receipt of a page at the MS, the MS responds by transmitting a channel request on the
RACH.
 BSS in response to the received “channel request”, will process it and immediately assign the
MS a SDCCH (immediate assignment / assignment reject; done over AGCH).
 MS Paging response- After receiving the immediate assignment command, MS switches to the
assigned “SDCCH” and transmits a “Paging Response”.
 The establishment of the main signalling link is then initiated (E1) with information field
containing the “PAGING RESPONSE” message and the “paging response” is sent to the MSC.
 Upon receipt of the “Paging Response” MSC stops the timer T3113.
 If the timer T3113 expires and a “Paging Response” message has not been received, the MSC
may repeat the “Paging Request” message and start T3113 all over again. The number of
successive paging attempt is a network dependent choice.

3.1.2 Paging Capacity and Paging Group at the RBS

 One control channel Multi Frame is made of 51 TDMA frames 2 with a time duration of 235 ms.
 Each 51 TDMA frame Multi Frame will have 9 Common Control Channel (CCCH) blocks.
 Each of these 9 CCCH block is made of 43 TDMA timeslots

1
GSM Timer T3113 at the Ericsson MSC is PAGING_timer (guard time for paging initiated from the MSC)
2
One TDMA frame = 8 Radio timeslots of duration 4.615 ms
3
Signaling Requirement in GSM : One complete “Signaling Message” in GSM system requires 464 bits (or 4*116 bits or
58 bytes) , one TDMA burst on one timeslot can code 58+58=116 bits ; hence it requires 4 TDMA frames to complete one message
(E.g. One MR or Measurement Report or One Paging Message).
  Each CCCH block can carry Paging Messages for 2 MS if IMSI based paging is used or 4 MS if
TMSI4 based paging is used.
 Thus the paging capacity for one 51 TDMA frame Multi Frame 5 will be 9(number of CCCH
blocks available per Multi Frame) * 4 (when TMSI based paging is used) = 36 mobiles per 235
ms or 9*2 = 16 mobiles per 235 ms when IMSI based paging is used.
 Thus the paging capacity of a cell is 153 mobiles per second when TMSI based paging are
used and 68 mobiles per second when IMSI based paging are used.
 This means we can improve the “paging bandwidth” for a cell (if there are too many “paging
discards at the cell level”) by using TMSI based paging rather than IMSI based (at the expense
of increased processor load at the BSC and MSC).
 When the rate of “paging load” at the RBS becomes higher than what the RBS is able to handle
(paging capacity of RBS), RBS will start discarding pages (check for high “page discard” stats
at the cell level).
 If the “page discard” at the cell is very high then increase the paging bandwidth at the cell level
by setting AGBLK=0 (all the 9 CCCH blocks in the 51 frame multi frame available for PCH with
preference for AGCH6 ) and use TMSI based paging instead of IMSI based paging.
 If the “PAGE MODE ELEMENT” is set to “extended paging” , the MS will not only listen to its
own paging group but also to its “next but one page group” (example , say an MS is assigned
23 as its paging group , with extended paging MS will also listen to the page group 25).
Configuration parameters for extended paging are hard coded in the BSC and it is not usually
modified during optimization.
 The cell parameter MFRMS and AGBLK together defines the “number” of paging groups
available at the cell level.
 Number of Paging Groups at cell = MFRMS*(9-AGBLK) for a “non combine BCCH”7
 MFRMS decides the repeat interval of paging messages for MSs that belongs to the same
paging group across multiple 51 frame multi frames (for an example if an MS belongs to paging
group 23 and if MFRMS is set to 4, then pages for all the MSs falling under the paging group
23 will be broadcasted after every 4th 51 frame multi frame).
 Once an MS deciphers its paging group, in an idle mode, it will tune in and check for an
incoming page only during broadcast time for its paging group (so further the paging groups are
places across multiple 51 frame multi frames (say MFRMS=9), less frequently it will tune in to
check for an incoming page and longer will be its battery life. But the problem in this case for a
cell with high paging load is higher paging discards. For cells with high paging load it’s
recommended to keep MFRMS between 4 to 6.
 If MFRMS<= 3, then the IMSI/TMSI is discarded if it has not been retransmitted within two
scheduling of its paging group. If MFRMS>3, then the IMSI/TMSI is discarded if it has not been
retransmitted within one scheduling of its paging group. That’s the reason why for a site with
ABIS over VSAT it is recommended that MFRMS be set to 2 (to compensate for the delay on
satellite system).
 One “Paging Queue” per “Paging Group” is available at the cell level (that means when we
decrease the number of paging groups for the cell by reducing MFRMS to lower numbers, we
actually reduce the number of available paging queue).
 Paging Queue Length = 14 – (Number of Paging Groups/10); which means higher the number
of paging groups in a cell (that is higher the MFRMS settings), lower will be the Paging Queue
length, this will compensate for lower number of Paging Queue available at lower MFRMS.
 MFRMS does not affect the processor load of BSC and MSC too much (though very low
settings of MFRMS are seen to increase the BSC and MSC load slightly).

4
At the expense of increased processing load at the MSC and BSC
5
with the cell parameter AGBLK = 0 (here all the 9 CCCH blocks will be available for PCH with preference for AGCH)
6
AGCH has to have high priority over PCH as AGCH deals with immediate assignment for either a successfully paged MS
or for an MS that has made a successful Random Access.
7
In a “combined” BCCH cell, 4 SDCCH sub channels shares the same timeslot with BCCH, this drastically reduces the
SDCCH capacity and proportionately reduces the cells paging response capacity. For cells with high paging load always use the
non-combined mode of BCCH/SDCCH, in other words use SDCCH/8 mode (i.e. at least one dedicated time slot for SDCCH and
one dedicated SDCCH timeslots gives 8 SDCCH sub channels) than SDCCH/4 mode as in a combined BCCH case.
  Also call setup time is seen to be shorter for the cell when MFRMS is set low as compared to
high value of MFRMS.
 MFRMS also influences downlink signalling failure rate in idle mode leading cell reselection.
High values of MFRMS can lead to high (unnecessary) cell reselection. (When an MS camps
on a cell , the counter DSC gets initiated to 90/MFRMS , and each time the MS successfully
decodes a page DSC gets incremented by 1 till DSC=90/MFRMS and if MS fails to decode a
page , DSC is decremented by 4. If DSC gets decremented to 0 a downlink signalling failure
gets flagged and the MS will do cell reselection).

3.1.3 Paging Capacity at the BSC

 The key bottleneck in paging performance is the Location Area dimensioning (as the first page
usually gets done to Location Area) and BSC capacity.
 Number of cells in a Location Area ranges from as low as 10 to more than 100. Once a page
reaches the BSC from MSC, BSC sends it across to “all the cells within the BSC” 8. Hence an
incoming page to a BSC gives rise to a considerably large number of outgoing paging
commands from the BSC (point to multipoint). This is the reason why the BSC is more likely to
be the unit “limiting” paging rate than the MSC.
 All the RBSs within this BSC will now broadcast this page at least once , this means the RBS
sets the limit on overall paging capacity (158 mobiles per second if TMSI based paging is used
or 68 mobiles per second if IMSI based paging is used).
 Paging Bottleneck at the BSC usually is the number of RP signals that can be sent from the CP
to the RPDs in the TRHs9.
 Calculations for number of pages per second:

RPSIG
NO PAGE=
NO TRH⋅RPp (1)
TRXpTRH
NOCELLS
RPp=1− 1−
(
NO TRX⋅NO LA ) (2)

Where:
RPSIG10 Maximum number of RP signals per second
TRXpTRH11 Average number of TRXs per TRH
NO_LA Number of Location Areas
NO_TRH Number of TRHs belonging to the BSC
NO_TRX Number of TRXs belonging to the BSC
NO_CELLS Number of cells
RPp Probability that an RP signal is sent to an TRH
NO_PAGE Number of pages per second
 With “more” TRHs the paging capacity for the BSC decreases.

8
Unfortunately unlike UMTS there is no localised (page to registered cell) paging in case of GSM.
9
CP is the central processor of the BSC, the CP controls numerous Regional Processors (RP); each of these RPs can
control up to 16 EMs (Equipment Modules, which are the hardware software function responsible for a particular task / tasks). “RP
signals” refers to the number of messages that CP can pass onto RPs for control as well as messaging purpose)
10
“Maximum number of RP signals per second” is a BSS release version (R#) dependent, please refer to revision release
notes.
11
again release version dependent ; for R11 with RPG3 , one TRH can handle up to 32 TRXs
  With “more” LACs within a BSC the paging capacity for the BSC increases.
 In the BSC there also exists a “paging queue” with 32 slots (i.e. 32 TIMSI or IMSI can be
queued at the BSC , this means the supervision timer for “page response” of the first page
PAGTIMEFRST1LA should not be set too short (shorter than 6 seconds)

3.1.4 Paging Strategies and MSC paging timers

F
irs
tpa
ge S
eco
ndp
age 1L o
cA rea
(T
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I/IM
S I)
1
PAGR
EP-
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ocA
rea 1
LA 2
P
AGET
IME
REP
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1L
ocA
rea
y
es (IM
SI)
PAGTIME-
F
R S
T1 L
A 3
LAIin
fo
inVLR? 0
P
F
R
AG
S
T
T
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IM
E
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-
OB
G
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o 1 P
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E
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IM
LO
E
B
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AG RE
P-
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osec
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O B 0
Figure 1: Paging Strategies and MSC paging timers

 It’s more efficient to have the Location Area based first page. At the MSC, the chance of having
the correct location area where the mobile is based at any moment is always very high 12. Hence
9
702
634
having the first page based on Location Area will reduce the amount of paging load at the BSC
and MSC; caused by first page being global (the MS being paged across all the LACs falling
under the MSC).
 Second page can be Local or Global, but if the paging success rate of second page is seen to be
low then trying out global second paging can be a good option.
 Usually it’s seen to be a good strategy to have the first page to be TMSI based (due to higher
paging bandwidth through and through) and the second page to be IMSI or TMSI based. This
becomes a good option if the paging load / paging discard at the cell level are high and MSC/
BSC processor load is not a major concern.

3.2 Measure
12
When a mobile is switched ON, it does a location updating, this process is called as IMSI attach. When in Idle mode, the
MS also does what is called as “periodic location updating” in an interval defined by the timer T3212, also the MS does a Location
Updating every time it crosses to a new Location Area. If the parameter ATT=1(recommended) , then each time the MS is switched
off or goes out of coverage it does an IMSI detach to inform the MSC about lack of its availability.
3.2.1 STS counters and stats for measuring Paging performance

3.2.2 MSC Paging Counters for a Location Area

Counter-name D
escription

NLAPAG1L
O TOT N
umberoffirs
tpageattem
ptstoaLA

NLAPAG2L
O TOT N
umberofrepeatedpageattemptstoaLA

NLAPAG1R
ESUCC N
umberofpageresponsestofirst p
agetoaLA

NLAPAG2R
ESUCC N
umberofpageresponsestorepeatedpagetoaLA

NLAPAGERR N
umberofunsuccessfulpageresponsestoaLA

NLALOCSSRFLT N
umberofloc
ationupdatingrejectionsduetotheC
SSrestriction

NLALOCTOT Totalnumberof locationupdatingattempts

NLALOCSUCC N
umberofsuccessful locationupdating

Table 1: MSC Paging Counters for a Location Area

 To check for the percentage of first page attempts eventually being re-paged due to lack of
response use the formula (NLAPAG2LOTOT/NLAPAG1LOTOT)*100 and to check paging
success rate of second page to a Location Area use
(NLAPAG2RESUCC/NLAPAG2LOTOT)*100, the results of which could be used to measure the
extend to which second paging is needed for a Location Area. Usually this figure averages
around 20 to 25% and this figure could be used to decide upon the second paging strategy. If the
figures for second paging are high try to use TMSI based (if there is high paging discards to
excess paging load and high mobile terminated traffic) second paging and/or global second
paging, provided processor loads at the MSC and BSC not high. Also if the second paging
intensity is very high optimizing page repeat timers (PAGETIMEREP1LA and
PAGTIMERPGLOB) might be an option (always make sure that none of the paging timer exceeds
the MSC page response timer PAGING_timer).
 CSS restriction deals with C7 signalling capacity.
 Use counters NPAG1GLTOT and MPAG2GLTOT to measure the first and repeated global paging
attempts (if global paging is used).
3.2.3 Stats for BSC Paging Success Rate Measure

Stats Formulae W hat isit ? Comm ents

P_TOT NPAG1GLTOT+NPAG1LOTOT Total PageAttem pts(M SClevel) Toget Pages/s; dividebythemeasurement period
Successful First andrepeated
{(NPAG1RESUCC+NPAG2RESUCC)/(NPAGpageAttemptsof Total Number
P_12_SUC-1 1GLTOT+NPAG1LOTOT)}*100 of first PageAttem pts(M SC PagingSuccessRate(MSCLevel)
Successful First pageAttem pts
{(NPAG1RESUCC)/(NPAG1GLTOT+NPAG1 of Total Number of first Page
P_1_SUC-1 LOTOT)}*100 Attem pts(M SCLevel) First PageSuccessRate
Successful First andRepeated
{(NLAPAG1RESUCC+NLAPAG2RESUCC) / PageAttemptsof Total Num ber
PL_SUC-1 (NLAPAG1LOTOT)}*100 of first PageAttem pts(LALevel) PagingSuccessRate(LALevel)
LU_TOT (NLOCOLDTOT+NLOCNRGTOT) Total LU(M SClevel) Toget LU/sdividewiththemeasurem ent period
LU_SUC_TOT (NLALOCSUCC/NLALOCTOT)*100% LUSuccRate(LALevel) Succesfull of total attempta(LALevel)
{(NLOCOLDTOT)/(NLOCOLDTOT+NLOCNRLUattem ptsfromregistered
LU_R GTOT)}*100% Subs. Of total num ber of LA Thisiscalculatedat theMSClevel
{(NLOCOLDSUCC+NLOCNRGSUCC)/(NLO Successful LAattem ptsof total
LU_SUC COLDTOT+NLOCNRGTOT)}*100 n
PeriodicLUAttemptsts
u m be r of LAattemp of(M
toSC
tal) Thisisat theMSClevel
number of LUAttem ptsfrom
Alreadyregisterdsubs(M SC
LU_PERIOD (NLOCPERTOT/NLOCOLDTOT)*100 le
IMvS
eIl)attachattem ptsof total Thisisat theMSClevel
number of LUattem ptsfrom
alreadyregisteredsubs(M SC
LU_IMSI_AT (NLOCATTTOT/NLOCOLDTOT)*100 level) Thisisat theMSClevel
S_TRAFF (CTRALACC/CNSCAN) inErl AverageSDCCHTraffic Cell Level
S_CONG {(CCONGS+CCONGSSUB)/(CCALLS)}*100%
SDDCHCongestionRate Cell Level
Total Num ber of RandomAccess
RA_TOT (CNROCNT+RAACCFA) Attem pts BSCLevel
RAwithall other causes
(LA,Detach,Attachetc) of total
RA_OTHER (RAOTHER/CNROCNT)*100% attem pts. BSCLevel
CP_LOAD (ACCLOAD/NSCAN)*100% CPLoad BSCor M SC

Table 1: Stats for BSC Paging Success Rate Measure

3.2.4 Calculation of Paging discard rate for cells in a BSC

Use the following equations to calculate paging discard rate in a cell:

Equation 1

If the BSC has more than one LA, paging ratio between LAs is evaluated using establishment cause
(answer) to paging in the channel request message for each LA in the BSC:

Equation 1
For such cases (multiple LACs within a BSC) page discard rate per cell is calculated by:

Equation 1

 PAGETOOOLD (cell): number of discarded paging messages (sent out on the PCH) due to being too
old.
 PAGPCHCONG (cell): number of discarded paging messages due to full paging queue.
 TOTPAG (BSC): number of paging messages received at the BSC from the MSC.
 PAGCSBSC (BSC): number of paging messages received from SGSN (circuit switched data).
 PAGPSBSC (BSC): number of paging messages received from SGSN (packet switched data).
 RAAPAG1 (cell): number of RA, answer to paging (channel required is a TCH/F with dual rate MS).
 RAAPAG2 (cell): number of RA, answer to paging (CR is TCH/F or TCH/H with dual arte capable
MS).

3.2.5 BSC parameters effecting Paging Success Rate

Parameters Explanation MML

M
FRMS M
ultiframesperiod RLDEC

AGBLK No.of res

e rvedaccessgrantblocks RLDEC

BCCHTYPE TypeofBCCH RLDEC

T3212 [Decihours] Time-out, M

SperiodicLU RLSBC

ATT Attach-detachallowed RLSBC

M
AXRET M
ax.retransmissionatacc
e ss RLSBC

C
R H [dB] Cell reselect hy
steresis RLSSC

Table 1: BSC Parameters effecting paging success rate

 Cell parameters MFRMS and AGBLK as explained earlier impacts paging performance.
 For better paging performance BCCHTYPE is recommended to be non-combined.
 T3212, the periodic location updating timer is usually recommended to be set somewhere between 2
Hrs to 4 Hrs. Very high values of T3212 adversely affects paging success rate where as too low
values for the same counter puts unnecessary load on SDCCH (due to higher idle mode period
location updating from mobiles).
 MSC parameters BTDM + GTDM should not be lower than T3212. BTDM + GTDM determines the
implicit detach time at the MSC , that is if the mobile has not done a location updating within the time
 specified by BTDM+GTDM , then it will taken out from the VLR. That’s the reason why implicit detach
time should be greater than periodic location updating time.
 ATT, this is again an MSC parameter that allows IMSI detach, when an MS is switched off (or gone
out of coverage). This parameter should always be set to 1(enabled). This will prevent unnecessary
paging of mobiles which are either switched off or are out of coverage.
 If high paging failure is suspected from a cell due to poor RF environment (weak coverage / high
interference on BCCH radio) , then at times increasing MAXRET (number of retransmission on
random access channel) can improve page response from a mobile suffering from poor RF
environment.
 ACCMIN, CRH and CRO; these are cell parameters that could be optimized to make an MS select
the best possible candidate (from an RF point of view) when in idle mode so that probability of a
successful page response from an MS is high.