IJCSI International Journal of Computer Science Issues, Special Issue, ICVCI-2011, Vol.

1, Issue 1, November 2011 ISSN (Online): 1694-0814 www.IJCSI.org

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Traffic Analysis and Optimization of GSM Network

Madhusmita Panda1 and Saraju Prasad Padhy2
1 ITER, SOA University Bhubaneswar, Orissa, PIN-751007

Sub Divisional Engineer, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited Bhubaneswar , Orissa,PIN-751007

Abstract
Accurate traffic dimensioning plays an important role in telecommunications network planning and is particularly important for the performance analysis of mobile and wireless networks. The main goal of cellular operators now a day with the increasing number of mobile subscribers is to keep the subscribers satisfied with the delivered quality of service ( QoS ) . Traffic analysis & optimization is thus paramount importance for network planning and design. They are useful in areas such as network architecture comparisons, network resource allocations and performance evaluations. In order to achieve the best performance, service providers have to monitor and optimize their network continuously .A Operation Support Subsystem (OSS) with an online database is responsible for collection of data on live networks. In this paper, we have summarized the measurements taken on an operative GSM-900 & GSM-1800 network to evaluate and optimize traffic. Here we have established statistically the following facts (i) The peak hour in Orissa varies in four different MSC areas.(ii) Week day traffic is different from weekend traffic and the traffic intensity of weekday traffic is more than that of weekend traffic.(iii) Traffic channel availability is well within limits which implies that the network is well planned.(iv) SDCCH congestion is beyond threshold limits which implies operator is losing big revenue due to this. (v) In some cases the traffic carried exceeds the maximum full rate traffic resulting utilization of half rate TCH & thus reduction in speech quality.

infrastructure equipment, GSM decided to specify not only the air interface, but also the main interfaces that identify different parts. There are three dominant interfaces, namely, A interface between MSC and BSC, A-bis Interface between BSC & BTS and an Um interface between the BTS and MS. The BSS includes two types of elements: BTS which handles radio interfaces towards MS & BSC which manages the radio resources and controls the handover. A BSC can control several BTSs. The main function of the MSC is to coordinate the set up of calls between GSM mobiles and also between GSM mobiles and PSTN users. Specifically, it performs functions such as paging, resource allocation, location registration, and encryption. In addition GSM specifies three databases: Home location Register (HLR), Visitor Location Register (VLR) and Authentication Centre (AuC). Here radio transmission is performed by assigning carriers and timeslots to logical channels. The frame duration is 4.615 ms and each frame is divided into eight timeslots.

Keywords: GSM, Traffic Analysis, Busy Hour, BSC, BTS, TCH,

SDCCH, FR, HR.

1. Introduction
GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) is the most popular second generation digital cellular standard published by ETSI. In 2010 there were over 526 million GSM subscribers in India. It accounts for 78% of the digital cellular market. A GSM system is basically designed as a combination of three major subsystems: the network subsystem (NSS), the radio subsystem (BSS), and the operation support subsystem (OSS). In order to ensure that network operators will have several sources of cellular

Figure: 1. GSM Network Architecture

There are two types of channels in the air interface: physical channels and logical channels. The physical

IJCSI International Journal of Computer Science Issues, Special Issue, ICVCI-2011, Vol. 1, Issue 1, November 2011 ISSN (Online): 1694-0814 www.IJCSI.org

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channel is the time slots (TS) and Logical channel refers to the specific type of information that is carried by the physical channel. Logical channels can also be divided into two types: traffic channels (TCH) and control channel (CCH).There are again two types of traffic channels: halfrate (HR) and full-rate (FR). The FR channel is a 13 kbps coded speech or data channel with a raw data rate of 9.6, 4.8 or 2.4 kbps, while the HR supports 6.5 kbps coded speech or data rate of 4.8 or 2.4 kbps.

measurements from several counters. The summery of measurements are shown in a tabular form below.
Table:1 Traffic Measurements Traffic Handling Capacity (Fullrate) in Erlang 3407 3876 8364 2831 7355 8464 4816 2349 6141 8464 7476 6403 5990 TCH Measure Avali Actual bility Traffic Rate in Erlang (%) 3348 95.7 3391 89.6 9826 87.5 4178 84.5 4740 85.3 4936 81.6 4732 91.4 1391 90.5 5912 97.4 4936 90.9 4456 82 3889 80.8 6288 91 TCH Conj estion (%) 0.58 0.41 1.02 0.88 0.31 1.23 0.03 0.22 0.48 1.31 0.68 0.56 0.73

Network Performance

SDCCH Conje stion (%) 0.03 0 0.09 0.16 0.01 0.21 0.17 0 0.2 0.03 0.06 0.11 0.29

2. Parameters and Definitions

Traffic: It represents hours of calls in Erlang. No of TCH: It is the total number of TCH available in that sector. Normally one ARFCN (absolute radio frequency carrier number) generates 8 physical channels which can be configured as 8 Full rate TCH (13 Kbps) or 16 Half rate TCH (6.5 Kbps). No of SDCCH: One logical channel generates 8 SDCCH or CBCH channels. Normally two logical channels are used in a sector and out of 16 chls generated, 15 are used as SDCCH & one CBCH. TCH Traffic: Traffic carried by TCH channels SDCCH Traffic: Traffic carried by SDCCH Channels SDCCH Availability Rate: It is the number of SDCCH Channels available divided by maximum number of SDCCH channels possible for carrying control information & signalling. TCH Availability Rate: It is the number of TCH available divided by maximum number of TCH channels possible for carrying traffic. SDCCH Drop: It is call drop at SDCCH level. It may be due to low signal strength or TCH conjunction etc. TCH Drop: It is the call drop at TCH level .It may be due to bad quality link, low signal strength, suddenly lost connection or any other. SDCCH Congestion: Non availability of SDCCH due to traffic Subscriber Perceived TCH Congestion: Non availability of TCH due to traffic.

BSC1BER BSC2BER BSC3BER BSC4BER BSC1CK BSC2CK BSC3CK BSC1BBSR BSC2BBSR BSC3BBSR BSC1SMB BSC2SMB BSC3SMB

4. Determination of Busy Hour

3. Traffic Measurement and Analysis

Figure : 2. Graph : Busy hour of different MSCs of Orissa

In this section the measurements that were carried out on an operative GSM network GSM-900 & GSM-1800 are summarized to evaluate the performance of GSMs air interface during last six months. In the study the statistical modeling of voice traffic in the state of Orissa consisting of 4 MSCs,13 BSCs and 4467 BTSs are taken into account . All the measurements are taken from OSS (Operation Support Subsystem) using the software Business Object and are stored in different counters. Each counter can produce only a narrow view of the network .Furthermore one performance data can result a number of different

It is found that busy hour in Orissa varies in four different MSC areas. For Berhampur MSC area it is: 1600 hrs to 1700 hrs For Sambalpur MSC are it is: 1800 hrs to 1900 hrs For Bhubaneswar MSC area it is: 1000 hrs to 1100 hrs For Cuttack MSC area it is: 1000 hrs to 1100 hrs Following conclusions are made from the above graph.

IJCSI International Journal of Computer Science Issues, Special Issue, ICVCI-2011, Vol. 1, Issue 1, November 2011 ISSN (Online): 1694-0814 www.IJCSI.org

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There is a non-uniform traffic distribution in different MSC areas & the Busy Hour of different MSC areas are different. Weekend traffic is different from weekday traffic but its intensity is normally less than weekday traffic. Further analysis needs to be carried out at each BSC level to find out the BUSY HOUR of Location Area which can be used for dimensioning BSC.

3.1 Traffic Estimation

In some BSCs the actual traffic is more than the theoretical traffic. It is occurring for BSC3BER, BSC4BER & BSC3SMB. It is happening due to the fact that whenever all the TCH are occupied system automatically divides the traffic channel (TCH of 13 Kbps) into 2 parts resulting 2 traffic channels (TCH/2 of 6.5 Kbps).That way the traffic channels can be increased to twice the theoretical value because of one channel becoming 2 channels. But the drawback with this is the speech quality of the channel which reduces as it is directly proportional to the bit rate. So for these cases and also for BSC1BER, BSC3CK & BSC2BBSR where both the values are almost equal, immediate increase in channels by addition of hardware is required.

3.2 Resource Availability & Usage TCH Availability (in %)

The following facts were established from below two graphs at fig: 4 & fig: 5.

Congestion of TCH & SDCCH Channels

TCH availability of 30.9% to 61.4% indicates that the network is well planned. The resource addition should take place as soon as TCH availability reaches 20% . Congestion of TCH with Less than 2% threshold is what many operators adopt in the world. The congestion on SDCCH must be very low, less than 0.1%.It is very critical because if a call is blocked at this stage, the operator will lose big revenue. Here maximum congestion measured on TCH channels is up to 1.8% which may be acceptable but maximum congestion on SDCCH channels which is 0.29 % is not acceptable .So some Time Slots (Logical Channels) meant for TCH may be immediately diverted and configured as SDCCH channels for those BSCs with which SDCCH congestion exceeds 0.1%.

Figure : 3. Graph : Theoretical Vs Actual traffic

The actual traffic carried obtained by BO software is compared with the theoretical traffic obtained from Erlangs -B table and the graph is plotted. The following conclusion is drawn from the Graph at figure 3.

Figure: 4. Graph: Availability of TCH in different BSCs

Figure: 5. Graph: Congestion of TCH & SDCCH Channels

IJCSI International Journal of Computer Science Issues, Special Issue, ICVCI-2011, Vol. 1, Issue 1, November 2011 ISSN (Online): 1694-0814 www.IJCSI.org

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4. Conclusions
In this paper we have presented the results of an extensive study of a GSM network utilization. The experimental analysis focused on the following parameters. (i) The peak hour in Orissa varies in four different MSC areas (ii) Week day traffic is different from weekend traffic and the traffic intensity of weekday traffic is more than that of weekend traffic.(iii) Traffic channel availability is well within limits which implies that the network is well planned.(iv) SDCCH congestion is beyond threshold limits which implies operator is losing big revenue due to this. (v) In some cases the traffic carried exceeds the maximum full rate traffic resulting utilization of half rate TCH & thus reduction in speech quality. These findings prove to be useful to network planning engineers as they provide them the data that help decide on timely and efficient management and investment on infrastructure. This experimental study can be easily extended to GPRS, UMTS and other wireless networks. Acknowledgments
Our thanks to the officers of BSNL who had contributed towards the measurement of Traffic on live GSM Network.

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