TM

Cellular Access Network

Audit/Benchmarking/Optimization

TM

SCOPE

� Drive testing has regained importance

� Competitive Benchmarking

� Location based analysis

� Closest to customer experience

� Method of analysis

� Sample to show Potential, Possibilities

� Comprehensive, Customer-Centric, Focused

TM

SCENARIO

Call

• Voice: Long Call

• Data: Downloading, uploading using ftp

• Timing: Daytime

• Speed: Moderate < 40Km/h

Area & Operators

• City: Karachi – Sharahe Faisal from Airport to Metropole and back

– DHA Phase 5 and 6

• Voice: Mobilink, Telenor, Warid, Zong

• Data: Mobilink, Telenor

Analysis

� Drive Testing: TEMS Investigation

� Analysis: Fast Drive Investigation

TM

Criteria

GSM Voice

• Availability: Received Level > -85 dBm

• Integrity: Receive Quality < 4

• Confinement: Timing Advance < 3

• Dominance: Server-6th neighbor <8 dBm

• Speech Protection: AMR FR

• Power Efficiency (UL): MS Tx Power < 19 dBm

• Mobility: Handover Failures

• Retainability: Dropped Calls

GSM Data (GPRS-Edge)

• Accessibility: Data Mode is EDGE

• Integrity: BLER < 10%

• Throughput RLC: More than 50 Kbps

• Resource Efficiency: Control %age < 20%

• Data Efficiency: MCS 6 – MCS9

• Capacity: > 2 TS

• Instability: Idle events vs Reselections

• Experience: Throughput average

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Colors

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HIGH LEVEL SUMMARY OF RESULTS

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DHA (Voice) Result

Availability

Integrity

Confinement

Power Efficiency (UL)

Dominance

Speech Protection

Retainabiltiy

Mobility

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Shahrahe Faisal (Voice) Result

Availability

Integrity

Confinement

Power Efficiency (UL)

Dominance

Speech Protection

Retainability

Mobility

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Sharahe Faisal (GPRS/Edge) Result

Accessibility

Integrity

Data Efficiency

Throughput (RLC)

Resource Efficiency

Capacity

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DETAILSDHA Phase 5 and 6

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Availability

• Illustrates Receive Level

• Values better than -85 dBm are good coverage, this eliminates power control affect

• Poor coverage points will have call quality issues especially in-building

Mobilink best; Warid worst

• Zong has poor coverage in DHA Phase 6 near Misri Shah due absence of sites

• Warid has poor coverage near Khadda Market due absence of sites

• Mobilink and Telenor don’t have any major coverage issue

Mobilink Telenor Warid Zong

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Integrity

• Illustrates Downlink Received Quality (BER)

• Low values are better, 0 to 4 is the best range

• Values more than 4 are call affecting

Zong and Mobilink best; Telenor worst

• Telenor has one poor quality spot due to poor optimization, although a site nearby

Mobilink Telenor Warid Zong

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Speech Protection

• Illustrates speech codecs used

• AMR Full Rate is the best

• AMR FR provides the best protection against interference and poor quality

Warid best, Zong second best; Mobilink worst

• Mobilink worst probably due to high traffic utilization forcing calls to go on AMR HR

• Mobilink dimensioning needs to be revisited

• All operators using AMR throughout which is great

Mobilink Telenor Warid Zong

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Uplink Power Efficiency

Mobilink best; Telenor close second; Zong and Warid worst

• The main reason for Zong and Warid poor performance is lack of sites

• Zong uplink power control needs optimization

• Illustrates Uplink power level

• Lower values are good, better PC optimization

• A way to measure UL performance with drive

Mobilink Telenor Warid Zong

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Confinement

• Illustrates the proximity of serving sites with drive samples

• Low values are good, 0 to indicates the serving cell is within 1 Km

• High values can indicate lack of sites or poorly optimized areas

Mobilink is the best , Warid is the worst along with Zong.

• Most issues due to poor penetration of sites in Warid and Zong

• Some issues where nearby sites are not serving due to poor optimization

Mobilink Telenor Warid Zong

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Dominance

• Illustrates lack of dominant cells, 6th neighbour within 8 dB

• Map thematic shows Rx Level of servers where there was no dominant server

• Low dominant areas encourage interference, and is a result of poor optimization

Mobilink Telenor Warid Zong

Warid and Zong the best; Mobilink the worst.

• Mobilink has not optimized its coverage and too may cells overshooting

• Warid and Zong are helped by the lack of sites

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DETAILSSharah-e-Faisal

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Availability

• Illustrates Receive Level

• Values better than -85 dBm are good coverage, this eliminates power control affect

• Poor coverage points will have call quality issues especially in-building

Mobilink Telenor

Warid Zong

Mobilink the best; Warid the worst

Warid has most issues around Base Faisal area, even though there is a site nearby

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Integrity

Mobilink Telenor

Warid Zong

• Illustrates Downlink Received Quality (BER)

• Low values are better, 0 to 4 is the best range

• Values more than 4 are call affecting

Mobilink , Zong and Warid best; Telenor the worst.

Frequency plan needs optimization

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Speech Protection

Mobilink Telenor

Warid Zong

• Illustrates speech codecs used

• AMR Full Rate is the best

• AMR FR provides the best protection against interference and poor quality

Warid the best; Mobilink the worst.

• In case of poor Link Quality Mobilink customers will feel it the most

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Uplink Power Efficiency

Mobilink Telenor

Warid Zong

• Illustrates Uplink power level

• Lower values are good, better PC optimization

• A way to measure UL performance with drive

Mobilink, Telenor the best; Zong the worst

UL window needs optimization and Zong requires a new site in Base Faisal area

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Confinement

Mobilink and Telenor best; Zong worst

Zong has no sites near Base Faisal, which causes far sites to serve

Mobilink Telenor

Warid Zong

• Illustrates the proximity of serving sites with drive samples

• Low values are good, 0 to indicates the serving cell is within 1 Km

• High values can indicate lack of sites or poorly optimized areas

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Dominance

Mobilink Telenor

Warid Zong

• Illustrates lack of dominant cells, 6th neighbour within 8 dB

• Map thematic shows Rx Level of servers where there was no dominant server

• Low dominant areas encourage interference, and is a result of poor optimization

All similar

All networks have significant number of low dominance points due to high number of sites and poor

optimization

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GPRSSharah-e-Faisal

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Accessibility

• Illustrates Edge usage

• Lack of Edge usage can indicate fault with parameters settings or lack of resources

Mobilink DL

Telenor DL

Mobilink UL

Telenor UL

Telenor best; Mobilink worst

• Both networks have GPRS points, which is a concern, it should all be Edge

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Throughput (RLC)

• Illustrates Radio Layer Control Throughput

• Average of than 50 Kbps is deemed good for Edge-GPRS

• There are various factors that adversely affect RLC Throughput

Mobilink DL

Telenor DL

Mobilink UL

Telenor UL

Telenor best; Mobilink worst

• This is the most important factor in Customer experience and Mobilink fails miserably

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Data Efficiency

Mobilink DL

Telenor DL

Mobilink UL

Telenor UL

Telenor best; Mobilink worst

• Telenor has MCS9 for majority of points which is good, Mobilink has a mixed distribution

• Illustrates the usage of Coding schemes

• Average of than 50 Kbps is deemed good for Edge-GPRS

• There are various factors that adversely affect RLC Throughput

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Resource Efficiency

• Illustrates Control data percentage, with respect to own data and other data

• High values indicate an impediment to high throughput

Mobilink DLMobilink DL

Telenor DL

Telenor best; Mobilink worst

• Control data utilization is unusually high in Mobilink, which is a major concern

• Parameters and statistics need to be checked for further investigation

Control Data %age0 – 2020-5050-8080-100

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Integrity

• Illustrates DL Block Error Rate

• High values indicate poorly optimized network

Mobilink DL

Telenor DL

Mobilink UL

Telenor UL

Mobilink best; Telenor worst

• Its misleading for Mobilink since most of the time BLER samples were missing due to high idle

mode

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Capacity

• Illustrates number of Timeslots used for data

• High values are preferred and result in higher throughput

Mobilink DL

Telenor DL

Mobilink UL

Telenor UL

Mobilink best; Telenor worst

• If Mobilink can improve other issues it will have better throughput than Telenor

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SPECIFIC ISSUES’ INVESTIGATION

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Throughput AnalysisMobilink

0

200

400

600

8000

50

100

150

200

250

RLC Thr DL (kbit/s) % own Data

0

50

100

150

200

250

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1

Idle mode RLC Thr DL (kbit/s)

Telenor0

50

100

150

200

250 0

200

400

600

800

% Own Data RLC Thr DL (kbit/s)

0

50

100

150

200

250 0

1

Idle Mode RLC Thr DL (kbit/s)

• Mobilink DL Throughput (15 Kbps) is extremely poor relative to Telenor (74 Kbps)

• Two reasons: numerous idle mode (225/39, 94/54) & high %age of control data (13, 49)

• Statistics analysis and parameter audit required to investigate and solve the problem

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Overshoot Warid

• High overshooting cells identified with a button click

• Footprints of two overshooting cells unusually large

• Redesign required to contain these cells and prevent possible interference

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Dropped Call Telenor

Servers Neighbour & RxQual Neighbours & Events

• High overshooting cells identified with a button click

• Footprints of two overshooting cells unusually large

• Redesign required to contain these cells and prevent possible interference

Missing

Neighbor

Missing

Neighbor

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Radio Link Timeout

Mobilink best; Zong worst

• Zong has an unusually high value in almost all the points

• Illustrates the time before a poor quality call drops

• Values are per half second, i.e. 24 indicates 12 seconds

• High values indicate poor customer experience

Mobilink Telenor Warid Zong

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GPRS on Edge Cells Mobilink

• Some samples on GPRS instead of Edge

• The same cell has Edge samples so its not a case of Edge disabled

• Statistics and Parameters investigation required; Congestion on another interface can be a

possible reason

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High Uplink Power Zong

Overview Detailed

• Most of samples have high UL power

• Close analysis shows some samples have lower power

• It takes a long time to reach low power; PC window requires optimization and standardization

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Low Coverage Zong

Overview Detailed

• Sites not present in a populated area in DHA

• Sites serve from more than 3 Km away, cause low coverage

• Site density needs improvement, no logistic issues since commercial area

500m500m

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Zong Timing Advance

• Comparison of TA between Zong and Mobilink is depicted.

• KRZ1 (BCCH 996 , BSIC 5, LAC 208) is serving strongly resulting in high TA (approx 2km coverage)

High TA for

Zong

MobilinkZongZong

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Aggressive power Control

• Actual RSSI from KA21253 (BCCH_BSIC: 13_60 ) is between -75 to -80 dBm.

• Power control decreases power up to -90 to -96 dBm

• Calls on DCS (preferred layer) but with poor RxQual

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Mobilink Warid Handover Comparison

• Many Handovers

• Far away cells serving

MOBILINK WARID