Traffic Analysis and Optimization of GSM Network

Saraju Prasad Padhy

Janardan Sahay

Sub Divisional Engineer

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited
Bhubaneswar , Orissa,PIN-751007

Asst. Professor
Birla Institute of Technology
Mesra, Ranchi,PIN-835215

sppadhy@bsnl.co.in
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.

jsahay@bitmesra.ac.in
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.
There are two types of channels in the air interface: physical
channels and logical channels. The physical 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: half-rate (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.

General Terms
Wireless communication, GSM, Traffic analysis

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
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

Figure: 1. GSM Network Architecture

2. PARAMETERS AND DEFINATIONS

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.

In this chapter 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 measurements
from several counters. The summery of measurements are shown
in a tabular form below.

3.1 Determination of Busy Hour

3. TRAFFIC MEASUREMENT AND

ANALYSIS
Table:1 Traffic Measurements
Network
Performa
nce
BSC1BER
BSC2BER
BSC3BER
BSC4BER
BSC1CK
BSC2CK
BSC3CK
BSC1BBSR
BSC2BBSR
BSC3BBSR
BSC1SMB
BSC2SMB
BSC3SMB

Traffic
Handling
Capacity
(Fullrate)
in Erlang

Measured
Actual
Traffic in
Erlang

TCH
Avali
bility
Rate
(%)

TCH
Conj
estion
(%)

SDCCH
Conje
stion
(%)

3407

3348

95.7

0.58

0.03

3876

3391

89.6

0.41

8364

9826

87.5

1.02

0.09

2831

4178

84.5

0.88

0.16

7355

4740

85.3

0.31

0.01

8464

4936

81.6

1.23

0.21

4816

4732

91.4

0.03

0.17

2349

1391

90.5

0.22

6141

5912

97.4

0.48

0.2

8464

4936

90.9

1.31

0.03

7476

4456

82

0.68

0.06

6403

3889

80.8

0.56

0.11

For Cuttack MSC area it is: 1000 hrs to 1100 hrs

5990

6288

91

0.73

0.29

Following conclusions are made from the above graph

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

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

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.

3.3 Resource Availability & Usage

3.3.1 TCH Availability (in %)
The following facts were established from below two graphs at
fig: 4 & fig: 5.

3.2 Traffic Estimation

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

3.3.2 Congestion of TCH & SDCCH Channels

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.
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.
Figure: 5. Graph: 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 upto 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%.

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.

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5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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Our thanks to the officers of BSNL who had contributed

towards the measurement of Traffic on live GSM Network.

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6. REFERENCES

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