GSM TCH Congestion & Solutions

Special Subject Training V1.1

Suitable for staff with junior P&O skill certificates (lower than certificate
III)
Issued by GSM Network Planning & Optimization Dept.
March, 2009
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Version introduction

Version Date Writer Assessor Amendment records

V1.0 2009-03-15 Jiang Yi Gan Wenjun Common methods for
handling congestion
problem were added.
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Training goals

To know the signaling flow of TCH occupation

and relevant counters;
To know causes of TCH congestion;
To know the process of investigating TCH
congestion;
To know the common methods of handling TCH
congestion
Contents

TCH occupation signaling & relevant counters

Causes of TCH congestion
Problem investigation process
Common methods of solving TCH congestion
Typical cases
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What is TCH congestion?

 TCH congestion means MS applies for TCH during the access process; MSC
will send Assignment Request signaling to BSC after it confirms MS’
application for TCH; BSC will search for suitable TCHs; if no TCHs are
available, BSC will refuse the request, and record congestion as one time.

 Congestion often brings inconvenience to subscribers, thus it is the most

complained problem . High TCH congestion rate has harmful effect on call
establishment rate, handover success rate and call drop rate.
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TCH congestion & relevant counter

KPI name TCH blocking rate

Indicator
（ TCH congestion times/TCH call attempts)*100%/
definition
V2 （ C11612-C11699 ） *100%/ （ C11611-C11698 ）
(C900060020+C900060031+C900060043+C900060047+C9000
Counter
60022+C900060033+C900060045+C900060049)*100%/
formula V3 (C900060019+C900060030+C900060042+C900060046+
C900060021+C900060032+C900060044+C900060048)
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Signaling of TCH congestion

Upon receiving “Assignment Request” from MSC, BSC will search for
suitable TCHs.
If no usable TCHs are available, BSC will send a “Assignment Failure”
message to MSC, and the system records congestion as one time.
Contents

TCH occupation signaling & relevant counters

Causes of TCH congestion
Problem investigation process
Common methods of solving TCH congestion
Typical cases
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Causes of TCH congestion

High dense Low TCH

traffic usability due to
exceeds BTS hardware
capacity problem

TCH
Problem with
channel
adjacent cells Traffic burst
Congestion

Too large
Unreasonable coverage,
setting of radio isolated island
parameters effect
Contents

TCH occupation signaling & relevant counters

Causes of TCH congestion
Problem investigation process
Common methods of solving TCH congestion
Typical cases
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Process of handling TCH congestion
Expand the BTS
A cell with high with enough TRXs
TCH congestion rate

If the BTS
TCH Yes reaches its Yes Lower BTS power,
Investigate
availabilit hardware
max increase down-tilt to
y is low? configuratio abate congestion
n?
Due to high traffic density
Any Isolated-
problem Yes effect exists Yes
Investigate Reduce coverage and
with due to too
adjacent cells large eliminate the effect
adjacent
cell? coverage?

Caused by Yes Optimize HO Check Yes

too many parameters to radio Adjust parameters
handovers? reduce HO parameters
Contents

TCH occupation signaling & relevant counters

Causes of TCH congestion
Problem investigation process
Common methods of solving TCH congestion
Typical cases
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Common methods of solving TCH congestion

Traffic
control

Solutions
Open
expansion to
congestion HR

Control
coverage
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Common methods of traffic control

Control cell selection C1 ， CBA ， CBQ

Control cell C2 ， CRO ， CRH

reselection

Control Handover PBGT HO ， Macro-micro

HO, Traffic HO

Control coverage TRX static Power class, Down

range tilt
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Traffic control － cell selection
 Cell selection
When MS is open or it enters coverage from blind area, it
detects the cell’s signal and stays synchronous with the
cell, then it scans BCCH in different cells and select one to
reside according to cell’s priority and the principle C1>1.
 C1: parameter for cell pathloss judgment principle
C1 = RXLEVEL － DL‑RXLEV_ACCESS_MIN － MAX(MS _TXPWR_MAX - P )
RXLEVEL: MS receive level average
DL‑RXLEV_ACCESS_MIN: minimum MS access level
MS_TXPWR_MAX ： max BCCH power level
P ： max MS output level
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Traffic control － cell selection
 Cell selection priority
In PHASE2+ regulations, parameters CBA and CBQ to represent the
cell’s priority are added. Through combined settings of the two
parameters, we can get different selection priorities, and we can set
lower priority for congested cells.

CellBarQualify CellBarAccess Cell selection Cell reselection

priority status

0 0 Normal Normal

0 1 Barred Barred

1 0 Low Normal

1 1 Low Normal
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Traffic control － cell reselection
 Cell reselection
When C2 algorithm is open, MS reselects the cell with max
C2 to reside.

whenPT≠11111
C2 ＝ C1 ＋ CRO － TO×H （ PT － T ）
With the adoption of C2, cell
whenPT ＝ 11111 selection range can be adjusted.
Flexible setting of C2 can reduce cell
C2 ＝ C1 － CRO real coverage and congestion.
of which
When x<0, H （ x ）＝ 0 ；
When x0, H （ x ）＝ 1
CRO: cell reselection offset
TO: temporary offset (temporary correct value of C2. “temporary”
means the value works on C2 just during a period, which is decided
by PT.)
PT: penalty time
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Traffic control － handover based on layers
 PBGT HO
Through setting PBGTHoLayer and NCellLayer, we can control whether
the handover can be carried out among undefined layer, same layer
different frequency band, upper layer, and lower layer, thus we can reach
flexible control over traffic distribution.
 Traffic HO
Through setting parameters: layer relation-TrafficHoLayrCtl (same layer,
upper layer, lower layer), frequency band TrafficHoFreqCtl and
NCellLayer, we can contol the layer and frequency band for target cell of
traffic handover, and traffic distribution can be controlled flexibly as
well. For specific parameters,
please refer to relevant
 Macro-micro HO technical guidebooks.
Macro-micro handover is to handover the MS moving with slow speed
from macro cell layer to micro cell layer. The micro cell mentioned here
is just a concept in logic. In this example, DCS1800 cell can be regarded
as micro cell, and the macro-micro handover can only be carried out to
adjacent cells on lower layer. Use （ MacroMicroHoThs ） to control
the difficulty of handover to lower layers.
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Traffic control － coverage control
 Control antenna down-tilt

 Static power class

Static power class Max real transmitting power
static RF power step Pn
0 Maximum output power
1 Maximum output power – 2dB
2 Maximum output power – 4dB
3 Maximum output power – 6dB
4 Maximum output power – 8dB
5 Maximum output power – 10dB
6 Maximum output power – 12dB
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HR function
Features of HR

Fast expansion of TRX is not necessary; Note radio interference at areas with HR open;
Increase capacity at the cost of speech quality; Note subscribers’ sensitivity of speech quality;
Flexible setting of cell layers and configuration; Note setting of HR threshold;

Some terminals (MS) can not support HR. Note rate of terminals supporting HR.

Application of HR
 HR application in area with burst traffic
 HR application at area with dense traffic
 HR application at areas with lower-end subscribers

Flow of network expansion
Gather each cell’s traffic
report of a week
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Rate of open HR
Open certain percent of shall not be too
HR, calculate theoretical high
traffic to be supported

Filter out each cell’s max Traffic

traffic volume to be the (actual)> No Open HR for
base of expansion traffic HR expansion
calculation. (theoretical)

Look up in Erl B, obtain the Calculate number of TRX

cell’s theoretical busy hour needed for expansion
traffic Erl (theoretical) (actual need)

TRX(actual
Traffic need)>max No
(actual) Yes Complete
number of
>traffic TRX expansion plan
(theoretical) allowed

No expansion need
Add new BTS Cell split
Contents

TCH occupation signaling & relevant counters

Causes of TCH congestion
Problem investigation process
Common methods of solving TCH congestion
Typical cases
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Typical case 1
TCH congestion rate at an overseas BTS was shown higher than usual after it's been
swapped with ZTE equipment.

Problem description
From the dynamic data management, we observed that all FR TCHs have been
occupied, while a lot of HR TCHs were idle.

Problem analysis
 Through signaling analysis, we found congestion just occurred on assigning FR
TCH. Basically, it was confirmed that the assignment failure was caused by
congestion due to lack of FR TCH ;
 After checking the channel assignment parameters of MSC, BSC and cells, we
found the system takes the first speech version assigned by MSC as default;
after most TRXs were configured with HR TCH, the channel assignment priority
in radio parameters has not been changed accordingly;
 Since most TRXs in these cells were configured with static HR TCHs, there
were just a few FR TCHs, which led to congestion due to lack of TCH/F;
 The primary cause of congestion is there is still a certain number of MSs do not
support HR.
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Typical case 1
Problem handling
Adjusted “ChanSelectPrio” (channel selection priority), changed the default “No
Select” to “half Rate First” , The problem was solved.
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Typical case 2
Frequent congestion due to improper parameter settings
Problem description
 During optimization of a local network, the busy hour congestion rate
(incl. HO) of two cells was high (10%), while that (excl. HO) was
normal. And “number of TCH assignment failure” was high, which for
the two cells were 89 and 61.
 Traffic volume was lower than that before optimization.
 Interference band was normal.
 Congestion rate was normal before optimization.

Problem analysis
 Since the congestion rate deteriorated after optimization, and only the
rate with HO included went bad, so we could exclude reasons like
antenna interference, hardware problem, etc., but focus on HO.
 Recorded the two cells’ handover statistical performance of 15mins,
we found almost all handovers from a certain cell （ CGI=**1768 ）
to these two cells failed.
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Typical case 2

Problem handling
 Checked the two cells’ HO statistics, we found they were co-channel
and co-BSIC, and they were adjacent cells to a certain cell at the
same time, so almost all handovers from the certain cell to each of
these two cells failed inevitably, and the failure just occurred during
TCH assignment.

 After the two cells’ BCCH and BSIC were adjusted, HO and
congestion returned to normal.
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Typical case 3
Serious congestion due to traffic burst

Problem description
 Congestion rate in two cells under a certain BTS increased suddenly
during 21 ： 00 ～ 23 ： 00 pm, and the rate even reached 30%, while
there was no congestion during other periods.
 Number of call attempts and traffic volume were obviously increased
when congestion occurred.
 Other radio indicators were in normal status.

Problem analysis
 Checked if high dense traffic existed within coverage of the two cells,
it’s found that there was a high school dormitory building, and traffic
burst occurred after school.
 We checked the two cells' configuration, which has already reached
the max allowed.
 After checking we found HR in the two cells was off, so it’s suggested
that HR be open for cell expansion.
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Typical case 3
Problem handling
 Obtained the two cells’ busy hour traffic of 7 consecutive days from performance
report.
 Found out the number of TCHs supporting traffic from Erl B.
 From calculation, we found that HR of 40% TCHs had to be open to satisfy the actual
traffic need.
 Opened the two cells’ dynamic HR, and set the threshold as 60%.
 When HR was open, the congestion disappeared.
TCH TCH
TCH TCH call
date UserLabel TCH traffic congestion overflow
available attempts
rate times
2008-4-11 21:00 Site77_bts1 26 24.78 23.51 612 2603
- 22:00 Site93_bts2 25 23.48 18.17 428 2355
2008-4-12 21:00 Site77_bts1 26 24.27 23.39 589 2518
- 22:00 Site93_bts2 25 23.14 17.95 407 2267
2008-4-12 21:00 Site77_bts1 26 24.89 28.9 737 2550
- 22:00 Site93_bts2 25 23.72 20.89 507 2426
2008-4-14 21:00 Site77_bts1 37 29.73 0.44 13 2831
- 22:00 Site93_bts2 35 28.42 0.26 7 2692
2008-4-15 21:00 Site77_bts1 40 30.12 0.53 15 2881
- 22:00 Site93_bts2 36 28.14 0.11 3 2655
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Questions for thinking

Why congestion occurs when traffic per TCH channel reaches 0.4Erl in
cells with single TRX?

What methods can be used to achieve traffic balance?