Frequency ranges

 GSM 900 890 MHZ – 915 MHZ Uplink and 935 MHZ – 960
MHZ Downlink .There are 124 carriers per channel and carrier
width is 200 KHZ, Bandwidth 25 MHZ, Wavelength 33cm. and
Channel separation 20 MHZ. ( Freq MHz = 890 + 0.2 * n )
where 1≤ n ≤124
 GSM 1800 in Europe, Asia Pacific and Australia. With 1710 – 1785
MHZ Uplink and 1805 – 1880 MHZ Downlink. The carrier width is
200 khz , Band width 75 Mhz, and channel Separation is 20 Mhz.
There are 375 carriers per channel.
 Freq. MHz = 1710 + 0.2 * (n – 512) , where 512 ≤ n ≤ 885

 GSM 1900 US , Canada, Latin America and Africa.With 1850 –

1910 MHZ Uplink and 1930 – 1990 MHZ Downlink. There are 300
Careers per channel, 60 MHZ Band width, Channel Separation is 20
MHZ.

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 CHANNEL
 Broadcast Channels: - operates on forward link and transmit data on first time slot. It Contains.
 SCH (Synchronization Channel) it is used to identify the serving BS and allowing each mobile to
frame synchronize with the BS. The frame no. is sent with the BSIC during SCH burst. And also 6 bit
BSIC.
 FCCH (Frequency Correction Channel) The FCCH allows each MS to synchronize its internal freq.
with exact freq. of the BS.
 BCCH (Broadcast Control Channel) It carries information’s such as cell and network identity. It also
broadcast a list of channels that are currently in use within a cell.
 CBCH (Cell Broadcast Channel) Used to transmit short alphanumeric text msg. to all MS within a
cell.
 Common Control Channels (CCCH): - CCCH helps to establish the call from the MS. Three
different types of CCCH are defined.
 The Paging Channel (PCH). It is used to alert the MS of an incoming call.
 The Random Access Channel (RACH). Is used by MS to access the network.
 The Access Grant Channel (AGCH). Is used by the Base Station to inform the MS that which channel it
should use.
 Dedicated Control Channels (DCCH): - These channels are used for message exchange between
several mobiles or a mobile and network. Two types of DCCH are there.
 Stand Alone Dedicated Control Channels (SDCCH). Authentication, Registration, Location area
updation, SMS etc. needed for setting up a TCH.
 Slow Associated Control Channels (SACCH).
 Associated Control Channels: - Associated with the TCH.
 Slow Associated Control Channel (SACCH). Associated with TCH, Channel quality, Signal power
level.
 Fast Associated Control Channel (FACCH). Uses time slots from TCH, Handover info.

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

TIMING ADVANCE
 The timing of the bursts transmissions is very important.
Mobiles are at different distances from the base stations.
Their delay depends, consequently, on their distance. The
aim of the timing advance is that the signals coming from
the different mobile stations arrive to the base station at
the right time. The base station measures the timing delay
of the mobile stations. If the bursts corresponding to a
mobile station arrive too late and overlap with other
bursts, the base station tells, this mobile, to advance the
transmission of its bursts.
 1 TA = 554m.

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Objective of Drive test

Following steps are taken to fulfill the objective of using

a drive test tool.
 
•a) Collection of Data and extraction of relevant
information from it.

•b) Analysis of the extracted data.

•c) Suggesting changes in the network configurations

based on the analysis.

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

a) Collection of Data

1)       Rx Level

2)       Rx Quality

3)       Timing Advance

4)       Handover messages

5)       Details of six best neighbor cells

6)       Layer 2 and layer 3 messages.

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma
Prepared By : Shashank Sharma
ranges
 Rx level -10 to –120 dbm
 RX Quality 0 to 7
 Speech Quality Index (SQI) -20 to 30.
-20 to 30 Maximum value is good.
 Carrier to Interference (C/I) or Co-channel interference ratio.
 -5 to 25 db
 > 15 Good
 Carrier to Adjacent Interference Ratio (C/A)
 > 23.
 FER should be 0
 Spech Q 0-5 5 is good

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Abt level
 RX Lev Full:
is nothing but the Mobile transmit the measurment report(SACCH
multiframe) for every 480ms. this multiframe containes 104 TDMA
frames, in 104 TDMA frames 4 TDMA frames for Decode the BSIC
and remaining 100 TDMA frames for Average measurment of
serving cell and neighbouring cell
This average measurment of 100 TDMA frames are RX Lev Full
RX Lev Sub:
DTX is a discontinouse trasmission, When the mobile conversation
40% of the time either Trasmitter or Receive is idle. When DTX is
ON, DTX will switch off the Trasmitter or Receiver when they is no
speech Pulses. only few TDMA frames will trasmit, the average of
this TDMA

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Hsn Ang MAIO
 HSN - MAIO
 HSN (values 0-63) is basically an Algorithm that
assigns frequency to the cell from block/list of
frequencies... Assignment of frequency from the
list whatever HSN value is totally
random/algorithm dependent (HSN=0 being
cyclic)... normally HSN assigns frequency after
each TDMA frame (4.615msec)... this hopping
rate is changable...
MAIO is used as an offset from the frquency,
assigned by HSN, to avoid

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

a) Extraction of relevant information

1)       Coverage probability (edge & area prob. can be

extracted for cell/site if detail drive test is done
for cell/site
2)       Speech quality
3)       Frequency and BSIC reuse
4)       Neighbor cells details
5)       Handover details
6)      Additional features like Hopping, DTX, power
control etc.

7)      Typical n/w settings such as LAC, CI, Tx power,

RLT

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

RxQual measurement

RXQUAL, is the Bit error rate (BER) derived from the 26 bits
midamble on TDMA burst. Speech quality is inferred by the
RXQUAL measurements during the drive test. Its level
characterizes speech quality where 0 indicates the highest
quality and 7 the worst.

Thus during drive test, poor quality areas can be found and
marked by looking over the quality on the scale of 0 to 7.

RXQUAL can be poor due to poor RXLEV, Co-channel

interference, adjacent channel interference or Multipath.
RXQUAL is measured and tested for all the categories of
clutters. Prepared By : Shashank Sharma
Frequency & BSIC reuse

The frequency plan& BSIC (Base Station

Identity Codes) planning for the cells can be obtained
from the collected data .

This gives an idea of the freq reuse pattern & reuse

distance.

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Neighbor Cell details

With the help of collected data, details of 6 best serving

neighbours can be determined.

The details like-

• BSIC
• BCCH ARFCN
• Cell Id
• Rx Lev
• C1 & C2
Prepared By : Shashank Sharma
Layer 2 & 3 messages

Decoding of layer 2 and 3 messages helps in

analysing the cause of call set-up failures, delayed
call set-ups, blocking, drop calls, causes of
handovers, reasons for selecting particular target
call & handover failures or any other abnormality
in the performance of the network.

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Drive test’s applications

Drive test activity can be utilized for the following

applications-

a) CW test
b) RF coverage verification
c) Optimization
d) Troubleshooting
e) Competitive analysis
f) Interference Monitoring
g) Planning Tool Model Tuning

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Optimization

The optimisation of the network, is done to check the

performance of the network, just after it is made
operational and to get best possible quality of service.

Optimization includes-

Suggesting changes in the defined parameters &

configurations on the basis of drive test data analysis.

Changes can be of two types - Hard & Soft conf. changes

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Hard configuration

The hard configuration parameters include antenna

type, antenna gain, antenna orientation, effective height
of antenna and effective isotropic radiated power
(EIRP), TRX, cables/feeder cables

Changes are made to meet the requirements and to deal

with the analysed problems.

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Soft configuration

The soft configuration parameters include categories

such as common BTS parameters, cell access
parameters etc. GSM defines around 150 soft
parameters for each cell. e.g. – BSIC, BCCH,
neighbors cells, Tx power, Handover margin, enable or
disable add-on features etc-

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

 Optimization

Optimisation of the network using drive test system is

an iterative process. Thus after deploying discussed
changes in the network,drive test is done again and
mentioned steps are repeated until required
performance objective is fulfilled.
 
Drive test is very effective part of the optimisation of
the network but drive test data is not very effective to
find out some of the very specific problems their cause
and solutions to rectify them. On the other hand drive
test is the only medium with the help of which user’s
perspective of quality of service can be visualised hence
Prepared By : Shashank Sharma
tilts
 Mechanical tilt:- in this you bend the
antenna mechanically without any change
in the internal ckt.

 Electrical tilt:-
this is done with the help of phase shifters

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Effect of tilts
 Mechanical Tilt Causes:
Beam Peak to Tilt Below Horizon
Back Lobe to Tilt Above Horizon
At ± 90° No Tilt
Electrical Tilt Causes:
Beam peak to tilt below horizon
Back lobe to tilt below horizon
At ± 90° to tilt below horizon

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Window in tems
 Current chaneel parameter- CELL
NAME,CGI,BCCH,TCH AFCCN,BSIC,HOPPING CH, FRE,HSN
 Radio param-RX level,QL,BER,FER,SQI,C/I,TA
 CERVING AND NEIGHBOR- CELL
NAME,BSIC,ARFCN,C1,C2
 C/I- Time slot,ARFCN
 MAP

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

 Handover failures other than Co-Bcch
and Neighbour

 1. Weak cell boundaries,

2. Congestion on target cell,
3. Bcch and TCH interference,
4. Too many neighbouring cell, and
5. incorrect handover paramerets

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

SD DROP

 1) Bad Radio link quality (any sort of

interference, if highly destructive)
2) Non availability of TCH timeslots.
3) could b a problem at NSS end.
4) hardware problem

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

IMSI
 The IMSI attach/detach operation is an
action taken by an MS to indicate to
 the network that it has entered into idle
mode/inactive state. When an MS is
 powered on, an IMSI attach message is
sent to the MSC/VLR. When an MS is
 powered off, an IMSI detach message is
sent

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

 Reason for Call Drop
 Poor Rx Level.
 Poor Rx Quality.
 Handover Failure
 Interference.
 Power Budget (Mobile can not transmit
with enough power ).
 Hardware issues (like TRx is faulty or
disconnection in TRx) .

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Reason for Handover
 Poor Rx level
 Poor Rx Quality.
 Offloading due to congestion.
 Interference (in this case, intracell
handover takes place) .
 Power Budget ( Mobile can not transmit
with enough power ).

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Reason for Handover Failure
 Neighbor relations not defined.
 Timer T3124 expires.
 Threshold not properly defined. (improper
threshold level)
 Hardware issues ( like TRx is faulty or
disconnection in TRx) .
 Congestion.

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

main functions of SDCCH
 Call set-up and its Authentication.
 Ciphering initiation.
 SMS (Short Messages Sending)
 Location Updation.

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

main functions of SACCH?
 Uplink Measurement Reports.
 Downlink Timing Advance .
 Downlink Power Control Information

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Types of Drive Tests
 Test New Site Drive Test (Coverage
Drive)
 Bench-marking Drive Test (Comparative
Drive)
 Migration Drive Test (Night activity and
Software Up-gradation)
 Roaming Drive.

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Main Factor
 IMSI = MCC + MNC + MSIN (11)
 LAI = MCC + MNC + LAC
 CGI = MCC(3) + MNC(2) + LAC(1-
65536) + CI(1-65)
 BSIC = NCC + BCC(1-7)

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

SIM is used to provide storage on
subscriber
 IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity).
 Temporary network data like TMSI, LAI, Location update
status.
 Subscriber Authentication Key (Ki) and Ciphering Key
(Kc) which are used for security purposes.
 BCCH information : List of carrier frequencies to be used
for cell selection.
 Forbidden PLMN.
 Language preference.
 PIN number (Personal Identification Number) and PIN error
counter.
 PUK number (Personal Unlock Key) and PUK error counter

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma