Measuring User Experience Accurately in Wireless Networks

Sanjay Kodali and Dr. Jey Veerasamy,

Wireless Networking Group, Advanced Technologies Lab
Samsung Telecommunications America
1301 E. Lookout Dr. Richardson, Texas 75082 USA
{j.veerasamy,s.kodali}@samsung.com
Abstract

2.1

Measuring user experience accurately has been a

challenge in wireless networks. Perceived customer
experience is computed by measurements from the Radio
Access network. This is a flawed approach due to multiple
reasons. Mobiles location and the coverage at that location
play a major role. This paper details the flaws in the
current measurement techniques and also proposes a few
remedies to improve the measurement techniques. Some of
the proposed solutions have been accepted in 3GPP2
standards.

Mobiles that are in idle mode (i.e. no dedicated RF

resources) use the access channel to send the messages to
RAN. The access channel is mainly used to perform
registration, to send short messages (SMS) and to send
the initial call setup messages (i.e. origination & page
response). All the mobiles share one or more access
channels within each cell. So, there is probability that two
or more mobiles may transmit messages at the same time
which can result in collision. Due to the simultaneous
transmission by mobiles, messages can get corrupted and
RAN may not able to decode any one of messages. Apart
from the collision, messages can be lost in the access
channel (in other words, RAN may not be able to decode
the messages) when the mobiles transmit messages with
inadequate power. Messages can also be lost due to
fading in the air-interface.

1 Introduction
Wireless telecommunication networks add more
complications to the measurement of user experience due
to the unreliable air interface. Call block% is the most
important user experience metric tracked by the wireless
service provides.

2.2

Call Blocks

A call block is defined as call setup failure during

origination or call delivery (also known as termination).
This section describes the issues and the enhancements for
mobile originated calls. But the same issues and the
enhancements are applicable to mobile terminated calls as
well. Figure 1 shows the message flow for a mobile
originated call.
MS

RAN

MSC

CM service req

2.3

Assignment Req

the

current

measurement

Collision in the Access Channel

Though the recent enhancements [2] to access

channel reduces the probability of collision in the access
channel, but it does not avoid collision in the access
channel 100%. Collision probability in the access channel
depends on the number of mobiles using that access
channel. If a cell is heavily loaded, then some or all of the
access probes of a call may be lost due to collision. If
RAN fails to receive all the access probes of an

Channel Assignment Message

Traffic channel acquisition

Parameter negotiation
Assignment complete

Fig. 1: mobile originated call setup procedure

1-4244-0419-3/06/$20.00 2006 IEEE

Flaws in
techniques

All current measurements techniques are

completely based upon the number of origination
messages that is received at the RAN. Unfortunately, the
number of received origination messages at the RAN is
not the actual number of users' origination requests.
When the mobile is the poor, RAN may fail to receive all
the access probes for an origination attempted by a mobile.
Then the user experiences a call block. However, the
network does not report this call block since the RAN did
not receive the origination message.

Origination message
BS ACK order

Access attempt procedure

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the failures. When a mobile fails to complete the call

setup, it can store the call failure data in a call failure
record. This record consists of GPS co-ordinates of the
failure location, the time, and the call setup failure state.
After the call failure, the mobile tries to reacquire the
network. Upon successful acquisition, it can send the call
failure record in an explicit message to the RAN or it can
send that record as part of registration message. Mobiles
can also send these messages at random intervals to
distribute the load on the access channel and the network.
Then, RAN can compute the user experienced call blocks
using the received call failure records.

origination message then user experiences a call block.

However, the network does not report it since RAN did not
receive the origination message.

2.4

Duplicate user requests for single call from

a user

It is possible that the mobile fails to receive the

acknowledgement in the paging channel for its access due
to reasons like fading, link imbalance etc. When the mobile
failed to receive the acknowledgement, it continues the
access attempt procedure and retransmits the origination
message. But the RAN might have already progressed to
the next step in the call setup procedure since it received
the origination message successfully earlier and also sent
the acknowledgement. RAN may count this scenario as one
call block (corresponding to the first received origination
message) and one successful call (for the later received
origination message), whereas the user actually made only
one call. In this case, the user does not experience a call
block, but the RAN reports an extra call block.

2.5

Figure 2 shows how network reported call blocks may

differ from the user experience call blocks in various
message loss scenarios in the access channels.
Current network reported Vs User experienced call blocks
16

Network reported call

Blocks

14
12
call block
10

Technique to measure the user experienced

Call block

User experienced call

blocks at 2%
message loss

Identifying duplicate origination messages.

The following two enhancements proposed to address this

issue:

User experienced call

blocks at 1%
message loss

User experienced call

blocks at 3%
message loss

Fig.2: analytical result: network reported vs. user

experienced call blocks.

Idea is to store a portion of call context (e.g. calling

party and called party numbers) as the mini call context
whenever RAN releases the call context and resources of
a call due to a call setup failure. RAN stores the mini call
context for maximum possible duration of access attempt
to identify duplicate origination messages. This does not
impact the resource utilization and gives the flexibility to
identify the duplicate origination messages.

2.6

Improving network performance

Apart from computation of user experienced call blocks,

call failure records can be used to find the static coverage
holes in the network. Based upon the GPS co-ordinates,
RAN can identify the exact geographical location of the
coverage holes. Cell coverage varies based on many
factors like call load, interference of other cells, etc.
Using the time of failure along with GPS co-ordinates,
RAN also identify the dynamic coverage holes due to the
changes in cell coverage.

Mobile increases the access probe number as well

as the access probe sequence number and includes that
information in the access probe. When RAN receives the
origination message with a non-zero access probe number
or non-zero the access probe sequence number then it
searches the stored mini call contexts to find whether the
received origination message is retransmission or not. If
so, it clears the mini call context without counting a call
block. If the mini call context timer expires (i.e. mobile
completed access attempt procedure) then the RAN
releases the mini call context and counts it as call block.

3 References
[1] IS-2000 Rel-0 CDMA air-interface standard,
http://www.3gpp2.org/Public_html/specs/index.cfm
[2] IS-2000 Rel-D CDMA air-interface standard,
http://www.3gpp2.org/Public_html/specs/index.cfm
[3] IS-856 EVDO Rel-A standard
[4] J. Veerasamy, J. Jubin, S. Kodali, Practical Approach
to Optimize Paging Success Rate in CDMA Network, 2005
IEEE Wireless Communications Networking Conference, Vol.
3, pp. 1353 1358.

Call block reports by mobile.

As explained in section 2.2, RAN may fail to receive all
the access probes in the access attempt procedure. This
problem can be solved by enabling the mobiles to report

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