CAPACITY OF A GSM NETWORK WITH FRACTIONAL LOADING AND

RANDOM FREQUENCY HOPPING

Jeroen Wigard, Preben Mogensen, Jesper Johansen and Benny Vejlgaard
Center for Personkommunikation
Fredrik Bajers Vej 7A, DK-9220 Aalborg @st, Denmark
e-mail: jw@cpk.auc.dk
Abstract: The need for more capacity in GSM
networks is increasing. Using random frequency
hopping and fractional loading is a potential way to
obtain more capacity. In this paper the optimal reuse
scheme for a GSM system with random frequency
hopping is presented along with some methods to
increase the capacity and to improve the link quality,
like using DTX and fractional loading. The 113 reuse
scheme appears to be best if the capacity is
determined by looking at the distribution of signal to
interference (CIR) values, while the 3/9 reuse scheme
seems best if the focus is at the percentage of
dropped calls (with the used dropped call, power
control and handover algorithm). The 1/3 reuse
scheme has the advantage over the 3/9 reuse scheme
that it is able to profit from fractional loading, which
gives better quality to the individual user.

The GSM standard is based on Multi Carrier, Time

Division Multiple Access and Frequency Division
Duplex, MC/TDMA/FDD [ 11. Two frequency bands are
defined for GSM: the band from 890 MHz to 915 MHz
is used for the uplink and the band from 935 MHz to
960 MHz is used for the downlink. These bands are in
most countries divided among 2 or 3 operators. Beside
these 900 MHz bands there are two bands in the 1800
Mhz from 1710 MHz to 1785 MHz and from 1805 MHz
to 1880 MHz. The Carrier spacing is 200 kHz allowing
for 124 (900 Mhz) or 374 (1800 Mhz) radio frequency
channels, thus leaving a guard band of 200 kHz at each
end of the subbands.
Each radio frequency channel is time divided into
TDMA frames of 4.615 ms. Each TDMA frame is
subdivided into 8 full slots. Each of these slots can be
given to a full rate traffic channel, two half rate traffic
channels or one of the control channels.

I.

Introduction
The GSM standard is a huge success: more than 60
zountries have implemented the system and the number
of subscribers increases quickly. This leads to a demand
for more capacity in the existing GSM networks. There
are several methods to achieve more capacity, but most
of them, like for example cell splitting, are quite
zxpensive, because more base stations have to be used.
By making the reuse distance smaller by changing the
Frequency planning, more capacity is achieved with
relatively low costs. However the quality of the
individual connection decreases, due to the increased
interference. By using random frequency hopping and
Fractional loading this decrease in quality can be
:ompensated, because it gives a quality gain to every
mobile station.

Class l a

150

Class 2

Class l b

132

78

CRC
check

so

132

convolutional code
r=1/2, K=S

378

- .....

-..

78

Figure I Channel coding of the TCH/FS

In GSM the databits are coded. The channel coding

introduces redundancy into the data flow, by increasing
the bit rate. For the TCWFS mode, a 3 bit CRC is at first
applied to the Class l a bits, and secondly all class 1 bits
are encoded by a convolution code. The class 2 bits
remain unprotected. The reordering and interleaving
process mixes the encoded data block of 456 bits, and
groups the bits into 8 sub-blocks (half bursts). The 8
sub-blocks are transmitted on 8 successive bursts

The GSM standard is described shortly in section II,

Followed by a description of the simulation setup in
section III.Section IV discusses the optimal frequency
:euse scheme together with the influence of some
system parameters. Section V presents the gain from
Fractional loading and synchronization.

1-7803-3692-5/960 1996 IEEE

GSM

11.

723

resolution is set to 4.615 ms, corresponding to one

TDMA frame.
In the simulations the handover algorithm is based on
distance and a simple power control algorithm,
described in [ 3 ] ,is used. Since the handover and power
control have quite an influence on the number of
dropped calls, the capacity based on the percentage of
dropped calls might be improved by using another
power control and handover algorithm.

(interleaving depth equals 8). The channel coding can be

seen in Figure 1, while the reordering and interleaving
can be seen in Figure 2.

1234

...........................................

455

123

..........................................

455

Reordering

A0

AI

A2

A3

A4

A5

A7

A6

BO

81

82

83

A0
- AI
A2
- A3 - 80 A4 81 A5
wv--uv
~

Burst

84

85

E2

A0

66

87

83

The GSM network operators have only a limited number

of channels at their disposal. This means that the
capacity of the system must be optimized with a fixed
number of channels. The capacity is limited by either the
number of traffic channels (Hard blocking) or the
interference from the neighbor cells (Soft blocking). The
soft blocking is determined by setting a threshold toi
percentage of dropped calls or to the percentage of CJR
values, which are worse than 9 dB.

A7

Figure 2 Reordering and Interleaving of the TCH/FS

Due to multipath propagation, the erroneous receive(

bits tend to appear in bursts. The convolutional code
gives the best performance for random positioned bit
errors, and therefore reordering and interleaving is
introduced in the GSM signal transmission flow.
However, the reorderinginterleaving only improves the
coding performance, if the 8 successive bursts carrying
the data information of one speech block are exposed to
uncorrelated fading. This can be ensured by either a
spatial movement (high user speed) or frequency
hopping.

111.

When the percentage of dropped calls is used, the

maximum capacity is determined by finding the
maximum load for which the percentage of dropped
calls is less than 5%. If the percentage of CIR<9dB is
used, like in [ 3 ] , and the soft blocking threshold is lo%,
the maximum capacity is found by determining the load
for which 10% percent of all CIR values is worse than 9
dB .
With a small reuse factor there is a large number of
frequencies available in each cell but the system is
limited by interference due to the low reuse factor. In a
system with a high reuse factor, the number of users in
the system are limited by the number of available
channels. This gives a high blocking probability when a
call is attempted. The maximum capacity should be:
reached somewhere between an extremely low reuse
factor and a fairly high reuse factor. In the simulations a
I
hard blocking of 2% is used.

Network Simulation setup

A GSM network simulation tool, CAPACITY, has

been developed in order to measure both the
performance and the capacity of a FH-GSM system.
This simulation tool is able to simulate the factors that
affect the performance of the GSM system, like
frequency hopping, DTX, and power control and
returns the quality of the GSM system at a given system
load. This quality is measured in terms of CJR and
percentage of dropped calls.

In the simulations the following call drop algorithm ii

used: each mobile station has a counter. When the
RX-QUAL of a superframe is worse than the call dro$
RX-QUAL threshold (which is set to 5 in the
simulations, i.e. has a raw BER worse than 6.4%), the2
the counter is increased by 1. If the RX-QUAL is betta
or equal to the call drop RX-QUAL threshold, then th;
counter is decreased by 2, if that does not make the
counter negative (in that case the counter is set to 0 ) ~
When the counter becomes greater than the call droJ
threshold (equal to 9 in the simulations), the mobilc
connection is dropped. In most cases this leads to a cal
drop, when the mobile station has 10 followin$
superframes with a RX-QUAL>S. In Figure 3 a
example can be seen of the call drop algorithm.

The cell radius is 2 km and the base station grid is

regularly with 48 base stations. With a transmitting
power of 34 dBm and a path loss slope of 3.5 this leads
to a received power median at the cell edge of -81 dBm.
Hence, the interference will be the limiting factor on the
cell size.

In the simulations Rayleigh and shadow fading are

simulated. The log-normal fading is correlated over 110
m. A standard deviation of 6 dB (for urban area) [2] is
used as the reference in the capacity simulations. For
each SACCH multi frame, measurements are performed
on 104 bursts. For burst measurements the time
724

RX-QUAI,

Counter.

6
3

6
4

6
S

7
6

7
7

6
8

5
6

6
7

First the results, based on CIR limited soft blocking, are

presented. To make these results comparable with what
is obtainable for a single operator, a fixed number of 36
TCH frequencies has been simulated in the system. I.e.
there are more frequencies available per cell in a system
with a reuse factor of 3 than in a system with a reuse
factor 4. The results from the simulations of the
maximum capacity for a hard blocking threshold of 2%
and a soft blocking threshold of 10%is given in Table 2.

6
0

J,
Call Drop
Figure 3: Example of the call drop algorithm with Call Drop
RX-QUAL threshold=5 and Call Drop threshold=9.

The following table summarizes the parameters in the

GSM network simulation tool.
Path loss
Shadow fading standard deviation
Shadow fading correlation distance
Call mean hold time
Mobile velocity
Time slots used
Cell radius
Max. effective BS output power
Min. effective BS output power
Antennas
Frequency hopping algorithm
Handover
Power control
DTX factor
Call Drop RX-QUAL threshold
Call drop threshold

1/1
313
414
113
319
4112

Lp= 35 log d
6 dB
l/e at 110 m
100 s (exponential distribution)
50 km/h
1 (due to simulation time)

Random frequency hopping

Erlanglcell
Erlanglsite
20.2
20.2

Reuse

61.4
60.5

28.8

61.4
60.5
86.4
71.0
49.7

49.7

23.7
16.6

Blocking

Soft
Soft
Hard
Soft
Hard
Hard

2km

34 dBm
4 dBm
90 O sectorized and omnidirectional
random hopping
based on distance
both level and quality
0.5

4/12

16.6

Hard

5
9

Table 1: Summary of the simulation parameters in the dynamic

simulations

IV.

Results

The following conclusions were taken after the initial

network simulations [2]:

\ 3/9

/'

In an interference limited environment random

hopping has better performance than sequential
hopping, because w& random hopping not only
frequency diversity, but also interference diversity is
obtained.

\4/12

The quality increase from power control and DTX

can be translated into a capacity increase when
using random frequency hopping since the quality
increase is averaged; among all the
mobiles. In othe
case where no frequency hopping is used this quality
increase can not completely be translated into a
capacity increase since only some mobiles benefit
from the increase in quality.

l 00

10

12

14

Fraction of total frequencies per cell [36k freq./cell]

Figure 4: Illustration of the maximum capacity obtainable

with various reuse factors and a 90% coverage with a CIR
limit of 9 dB. * indicates reuse schemes with omni directional
antennas. + indicates sectorized reuse schemes. o indicates
calculated points for hard blocking in omni systems, these are
not simulated.

In order to illustrate the capacity of the various reuse

schemes when frequency hopping is utilized the
maximum capacity of each reuse scheme was simulated.
The maximum capacity is defined as the limit where
either hard blocking, or soft blocking (dropped calls or
CIR limited) is reached.

The maximum capacity per site is reached for the

sectorized reuse schemes with the 1/3 reuse scheme as
the maximum. This was also found by [3], although they
725

optimal, and these algorithms have a great influence on

the dropped calls. So the capacity, based on the
percentage of dropped calls might be improved, by using
another power control and handover algorithm. The
result might even be that the 1/3 reuse scheme becomes
better than the 3/9.

used a slightly different system, with a simplified

averaging method. The 1/3 reuse scheme along with 36
frequencies available gave a maximum capacity of 86.4
Erlang/site (30% load) as opposed to the static 4/12 with
a capacity of 49.7 Erlanghite. The capacity of the 1/3
reuse scheme is a 74% increase compared to the static
4/12 reuse scheme. -

From the figure also can be seen that the capacity can be
increased quite a lot by getting more bandwidth.

The capacity curves shown in Figure 4 are calculated

from the received CIR values and is thus completely
independent of the receiver structure and its
performance. When the percentage of dropped calls is
used as measure for the soft blocking, then the results
are receiver dependent.
When we use the percentage of dropped calls as
measure for the soft blochng, then we find some
different results. The results are more negative.
Simulations have shown that the 1/3 reuse scheme with
30% load, which was found to be optimal, when soft
blocking based on CIR is used, gives a dropped call
percentage of 16% with the used call drop algorithm!
The capacity when a limit of maximal 5 % dropped calls
is used, we find the results as depicted in Figure 5. The
capacity for 3 different bandwidths can be seen.

V.

The GSM link simulation tool, developed at Aalborg

University (AUC), has been used for the analysis of gain
of fractional loading. The whole program is described in
[4]. Each of the operations in the GSM transmission
path including a fading radio channel and thermal noise
(white Gaussian) are included.
The results are obtained by simulations for different
loads with multiple interferers. The simulations are done
with 6 interferers and one background interferer with a
C/I level of 7.5 dB lower than the other 6 interferers. In
Figure 6 the locations of the different interferers can be
seen. The background interferer is always on, because it
represents all the interference from outside the first tier.
The other six interferes are sometimes on sometimes off,
depending on the load of the system. Shadow and
Rayleigh fading are included.

100
h

E0

tii0

Fractional loading

a0

60
S

c
.-d

40

U)

fp.
20

B
0

10

12

Frequency reuse

/ .BACKGROUNDMTERFERU(

Figure 6: Assumed network set-up for the simulations. Each

hexagon is a cluster, not a cell. I1 to I6 are the 6 interferers
of the first tier, whilst BS is the base station from which the
desired signal is received. A background Interferer
represents the interfering signals from the second tier.

Figure 5: The capacity for different bandwidths and

reuse schemes, achieved with a soft blocking based on
maximal 5% blocked calls.

It can be seen that the capacity decrease in the case of 36

TCH channels (9.6 Mhz) is about 20% and that the 1/3
reuse scheme is no longer preferable above the 3/9 reuse
scheme. We think the method of determining the
capacity with the percentage of dropped calls is more
realistic than the method based on the CIR values, since
dropped calls is something, which is really being
experienced in a mobile network by the individual user,
while the CIR values method does not look at the
individual user at all. However the power control and
handover algorithm, which are used, might not be

The Figures 7 and 8 show the gain of fractional loading.

In Figure 7 the FER of a TU3 link with frequency
hopping, power control and no synchronization. The
power control compensates completely for the shadow
fading of the desired user. The results without power
control show the same gain from fractional loading and
random frequency hopping. In Figure 8 the relative gain
in BER (class 1 or protected bits) of fractional loading
726

with and without synchronization can be seen with as

reference a 100% loaded network without DTX, where
no gain is achieved by fractional loading and
synchronization.
-. -- -- .. -- -. .
- -- ..

+15% load
-A25% load
-C 50% load

0.1

.
. .

- -

..
. . . .

VI.

LL

0.01

0.001

Figure 7: The FER in a TU3 full hopping link with 6

interferers and one background interferer for different loads
in the case of power control and no synchronization

0.5

1.5

2.5

3.5

4.5

Relative gain [dBl

Figure 8: The relative gain of the BER class 1 in dB of

fractional loading and synchronization in a GSM network.

From these 2 Figures the following observations can be

made:
0

load in the Figures, approximately 3 dB is gained by

fractional loading, while synchronization gives a further
gain of 0.5 dB. It should be noted however that this kind
of synchronization is ideal synchronization, so the gain
will be even less in reality. When a 319 reuse scheme is
used no extra gain is achieved from fractional loading or
synchronization, because the system is loaded more than
75% due to the high soft blocking limit.

The gain from fractional loading is between the 3

and 4 dB, when going from a 10% load to a 100%
load.
By synchronization a gain is achieved. This gain
depends very much on the load. 10% load leads to a
gain of about 1 dB, while in the case of 100% load
the gain has disappeared.

If a 1/3 reuse scheme is used with 25-30% load, which

corresponds in the case of a DTX factor of 0.5 to 15%

Conclusions

For getting the maximum capacity out of a GSM

network, random frequency hopping with fractional
loading has to be applied. The optimal reuse pattern has
been found to be either 1/3 or 3/9 depending on whether
the CIR distribution or the percentage of dropped calls is
used as parameter. We think the percentage of dropped
calls is a better measure than the CIR distribution, since
it says something about what the individual user
experiences in the network. With the dropped call
algorithm, which we have used, the 3/9 reuse scheme is
better in terms of capacity than the 1/3 reuse scheme.
However this might change by using another handover
and power control algorithm, since these two algorithm
have a great influence on the number of dropped calls.
In the simulations a very simple power control and
handover algorithm was used. The 3/9 reuse scheme is
limited by the hard blocking (number of available
channels), so no fractional loading gain can be achieved.
The advantage of the 1/3 reuse scheme is that soft
blocking is the limiting factor, because there are enough
channels per sector. This means that a gain can be
achieved by using fractional loading. This gain can
however not be translated direct into capacity, it gives
only a better quality.

Acknowledgment
We would like to thank Nokia telecommunications
Finland for co-sponsoring the project.

Literature
[ 13 GSM Recommendations

[2] Johansen Jesper and Vejlgaard Benny, Capacity analysis

of a Frequency Hopping GSM System, Master Thesis Report,
Aalborg University, June 1995
[3] Carenheim Caisa, Jonsson Svend-Olof, Ljungberg Malin,
Madsfors Magnus and Naslund Jonas, FH-GSM Frequency
Hopping GSM, IEEE Proc. of VTC'94, Stockholm, pp. 11551159.
[4] Jeroen Wigard, GSM Link Simhation Tool, version 2.0,

Aalborg university, October 1995.