Keysight TechnologiesCellular Passive Probe

Key Features

– Network independent and with the flexibility to support multiple Cel-lular Technologies and protocols across different physical inter-faces and framing types in hybrid networks

– High reliability architecture including RAID disk storage, dual redundant DC or AC power, and Enterprise Linux

– Expandable with a selectable number of acquisition cards to grow as requirements change with the monitored network providing a future proof platform

Data Sheet

02 | Keysight | Cellular Passive Probe - Data Sheet

Introduction

The rapid world-wide proliferation of 3 G and now 4 G wireless networks has created unprecedented challenges for cost effective monitoring.

The Keysight Technologies, Inc. Cellular Network Passive Probe provides Law Enforce-ment, Government and Commercial bodies with the means to efficiently capture and process control and user plane information from a wide range of modern cellular net-works.

The latest release of Keysight’s monitoring probe, the Event Report Generator (ERG), adds support for LTE Network technologies to the hardware platform creating a uniform monitoring capability across 2 G, 3 G, LTE and IP network technologies up to 10 GbE rates.

The probe provides a real-time feed of event reports derived from control and user plane information which may be used by third parties to provide Lawful Intercept, Location Based Services and RF Quality of Service applications.

Keysight has designed the probe API to be developer friendly and has the training and support processes in place to fully support third party developers.

As of Spring 2014, there are 508 telecoms operators in 144 countries who have commit-ted to commercial LTE network deployments or are engaged in trials, technology testing or studies. There are 268 LTE networks delivering services around the globe with 158 million subscribers in 100 countries.

Numerous vendor variants and evolutionary changes from 2 G circuit switched networks to 3G & 4 G packet switched networks, including UMTS, HSPA, HSPA+ and LTE make the network operator’s job even more complex. Traditional tools can require manually intensive steps using a hybrid set of hardware.

Supported Technologies

– UMTS (Iub, Iur, IuCS, IuPS, and MAP links) – GSM (Abis, A-interface, Ater and MAP links) – GPRS/UMTS (Gb, Gn and Gs links) – LTE – CDMA

The acquisition cards support a range of physical interfaces including TDM/HDLC, ATM (bulk filled and channelized), and Ethernet 1 GbE and 10 GbE.

They also allow for different optical standards (such as Long Reach and Short Reach) to be accommodated in straightforward manner, along with copper interfaces.

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Architecture

The Keysight probe is a high-performance small footprint 2U server that provides the hardware and software platform necessary for detecting signaling and voice/data pre-sented on various interfaces through acquisition cards inside the server. It also handles the formulation of messages to the applications as well as automatic protocol discovery and supports complex filtering and triggering techniques.

The diagram below depicts the system architecture.

Keysight Event Report Generator

E1/T1 Multiplexer

Ethernet (1G)

OC-3

Ethernet (10 G)

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Hardware Platform and Operating System

The Keysight probe runs CentOS Enterprise Linux. The benefits include high availability through dual RAID 1 disks, dual or hot swappable power supplies, and redundant hot-swap fans.

Acquisition Cards

The Keysight probe offers high density through its capability to host up to four 1 GbE ac-quisition cards (each card has 4 ports) and therefore a fully populated server supperorts up to 8 bi-directional links (i.e. 16 ports for TX and RX of each link). This could be up to 8 OC3/STM-1 or 8 GbE interfaces monitored per server. There is also a 10 GbE card which allows higher rate equipment to be monitored.

The 1 GbE acquisition card for the Keysight probe has a number of key characteristics: – Use of standard SFP interfaces (4 per card). This allows different optical standards

(such as Long Reach and Short Reach) to be easily accommodated. It also supports copper interfaces.

– Support for 2 bi-directional Gigabit Ethernet links per card – Support for 2 bi-directional STM1/OC-3 links per card – Support for TDM/HDLC and ATM (bulk filled and channelized) framing structures

The 10 GbE acquisition card has the following characteristics: – Use of standard SFP+ interfaces (4 per card) – Support for 2-bi directional 10 G Ethernet links per cards - one working and one

protect – One 10 G card is hosted per probe

Standard server hardware configuration

Memory size 64 GB RAM

Number of processors 2 x Intel Xeon E-2658 processor (8 cores/processor)

Hard disk size 600 GB (In dual 600 GB RAID-1 configuration)

Network interfaces 8 x GbE (1000BaseT)

Application Programming InterfacesThe Keysight probe supports an easy to use flexible API:

– Event report output API Real-time TCP/IP stream. Provides event detail reports formulated from analysis of the monitored signaling links, e.g., based upon analysis of Abis and A-interface signaling links.

– Control API Allows the back end application to specify the content of event detail reports.

– Content output API, for example, RTP stream for content forwarding.

The API has been specifically designed to facilitate integration with third party systems (e.g. Lawful Intercept and Geolocation suppliers) and Keysight has experience in inte-grating with and supporting a large number of third party application providers.

The acquisition cards perform filtering and offer additional processing to enable the solution to scale. The cards enable the system to passively monitor a multitude of proto-cols and network interfaces including the following:

– Abis over HDLC – Abis over IP – A-interface over HDLC – A-interface over high speed clear channel SS7 – A-interface over high speed SS7 over ATM – A-interface over IP – Ater – MAP over HDLC – MAP over IP – Iub over MLPPP over HDLC – Iub over IMA over ATM – Iub/r/CS/PS interfaces over ATM – Iub/r/CS/PS interfaces over IP – Gn over IP – Gb over IP – Gs over HDLC – Gs over IP – S1-MME over IP – S1-U over IP – S6a over IP

Due to the Network Equipment Manufacturer independent nature of the platform many vendor specific versions of the above protocols are also supported.

Note that different transport types can be mixed within the probe, for example IP, ATM and HDLC.

The Keysight Mux is used when the physical link is electrical E1 or T1. It converts up to 63 E1s/64 T1s to two optical OC3/STM1s. The mux also has built-in bridging isolation, so there is no need for separate isolation.

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Software Scalability

The Keysight probe is designed to be deployed in a distributed manner to cover either a subset or the entirety of telecommunications networks. The probes track all events simultaneously and report data to host (third party applications) based upon the filter criteria set by the host. The filter criteria are extremely broad and can be changed dy-namically without the need to stop/start the probe.

To date, the largest single probe deployment covers 150 physical customer sites com-prising 718 deployed probes. As mentioned previously the probe API can connect to third party applications (back-end systems). The back-end system is responsible for providing the probe with the correct filter criteria and acting as a collection point for resulting event detail reports. The back-end system may be connected to a single probe or many probes depending upon the physical size of the network being monitored.

When the Keysight probes are connected to a network, they automatically discover the underlying network configuration. This is a key requirement when connecting to (for example) Abis signaling links for the purposes of providing measurement data for geolocation. There may be hundreds of E1s carrying the Abis links and the assignment of the links within the E1s is dynamic, making configuring these links manually unrealistic. Auto-discovery ensures that the system is providing useful data in the shortest possible time and, since it is an ongoing activity, ensures that the probes are always in synchroni-zation with the network configuration.

In addition to automatically discovering the network configuration the Keysight probes automatically discover the mapping between IMSI and MSISDN, this provides customers with the flexibility for monitoring events via IMSI or MSISDN.

Please note that in order for the individual probe servers to distribute necessary informa-tion and support handover scenarios, Keysight recommends a minimum WAN bandwidth of 256 Kb/s.

UMTS and LTE Scalability

Individual RNCs have a large number of physical links. This drives the requirement for multiple probes being deployed to monitor a single RNC. This model is supported by the Keysight probe.

Physical Scalability

The Keysight probe has four PCI slots into which interface cards may be inserted. Note there are no small PCI slots in this server. Each interface card has four ports allowing eight bi-directional links to be monitored per probe server.

Adding an E1/T1 link at a particular probe site may (normally) be accommodated within existing probe capacity; addition of STM1 links (8 per server) will require provisioning of new acquisition cards up to the probe server limit, the same is true for Gigabit Ethernet links if using the 1 GbE card. If using the 10 GbE card, one is supported per probe.

GSM Scalability

The Keysight probe is designed to accommodate the monitoring of one or more BSCs, if the link capacity of a probe is exceeded by the addition of a new BSC then simply adding another probe and connecting it into the existing probe network via the WAN ensures seamless scalability.

07 | Keysight | Cellular Passive Probe - Data Sheet

1000BASE-T Copper SONET OC-48/SDH STM-16 & 1000 BASE-LX 10 G BASE-LR & 1000 BASE-LX

– RJ-45 – Hot-pluggable – Up to 100 m Cat 5 UTP – Auto crossover detection

– LC connector – Hot-pluggable – 1310 laser – Up to 2 km on 9/125 µm SMF – Receiver sensitivity –8 dBm to –18 dBm

– LC connector – Hot-pluggable – 1310 Laser – Up to 10km on 9/125 μm SMF – Receiver sensitivity -12.6 dBm to -19 bBm

Specifications

Dimensions HeightWidth Depth Front clearanceSide clearance Rear clearance

3.45 inches 17.14 inches 20 inches 2 inches 1 inch 3.6 inches

87.6 mm435.3 mm508 mm51 mm25 mm92 mm

Power 650 W AC or –48 V DC hot-swap, redundant power supplies

Cooling Hot-swap, redundant fans

Temperature operating 5 °C to 35 °C (41 °F to 95 °F)

Temperature non-operating –40 °C to 70 °C (–40 °F to 158 °F)

Altitude 0 to 1,800m (0 to 5,900 feet) @ 35 °C, 1,800 to 4,000m (5,900 to 13,100 feet) @ 30 °C

Humidity non-operating 95%, non-condensing at temperatures of 23 °C (73 °F) to 40 °C (104 °F)

Vibration non-operating 5 Hz @ 0.001 g2/Hz to 20 Hz @ 0.01g2/Hz (slope up)20 Hz to 500 Hz @ 0.01 g2/Hz (flat)Input acceleration is 2.2 g RMS10 min per axis in all 3 axis on all samplesRandom control limit tolerance in ±3 dB

Safety UL 60950-1, 2nd Edition, 2011-12-19 (Information Technology Equipment - Safety - Part 1: General Requirements) CSA C22.2 No. 60950-1-07, 2nd Edition, 2011-12 (Information Technology Equipment - Safety - Part 1: General Requirements)

Electrostatic discharge (ESD) Tested to ESD levels up to 15 kilovolts (kV) air discharge and up to 8 kV contact discharge without physi-cal damage. Reliable operation up to 10 kV air discharge and 8 kV contact discharge.

Acoustic Sound power: 65 dB(A) re 1 µW at 35 °C

Acquisition Card SFP/SFP+ Options

Environmental

08 | Keysight | Cellular Passive Probe - Data Sheet

This information is subject to change without notice.© Keysight Technologies, 2014Published in USA, November 14, 20145991-1900ENwww.keysight.com

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