14 November 2014

Made By: J.R.DOLEY,SDE(NWO-II)CM

Why perform a Drive test?

Every alive Network needs to be under continuous

control to maintain/improve the performance.

Optimization is basically the only way to keep track of
the network by looking deep into statistics and
collecting/analyzing drive test data.
Drive test helps operation and maintenance for
troubleshooting purposes.

14 November 2014

Made By: J.R.DOLEY,SDE(NWO-II)CM

GSM Parameters
RxLevel
RxQuality

Frame Erasure Rate ( FER )

Bit Error Rate ( BER )
Carrier to Interferer ( C/I )
Speech Quality Index ( SQI )

14 November 2014

Made By: J.R.DOLEY,SDE(NWO-II)CM

RxLev
The power level corresponding to the average received

signal level of the downlink as measured by the mobile

station.
Normal Range is from -47 to 80.
Level lower than -80 shows low signal levels.
Amplifiers, New site proposal, Hardware check could
alter the low signal level.

14 November 2014

Made By: J.R.DOLEY,SDE(NWO-II)CM

RxQuality
The level corresponding to the mobile station's

perceived quality of the downlink signal.

Range is from 0 to 7.
Quality higher than 5 can result in Call drops, Call
blocks, Muted calls, Handover failures, Interference.

14 November 2014

Made By: J.R.DOLEY,SDE(NWO-II)CM

Frame Erasure Rate ( FER )

A speech quality degrade factor that indicates fading

and interference.
Normally should be less than 4%.
FER greater than 4% that degrades RxLevel, RxQuality,
BER, SQI and C/I indicates fading that leads to Call
drops, Call blocks, Muted calls and Handover failures.
FER plays a major role in troubleshooting of
Interference.

14 November 2014

Made By: J.R.DOLEY,SDE(NWO-II)CM

Bit Error Rate ( BER )

The number of received bits that have been altered

due to noise, interference and distortion, divided by

the total number of transferred bits during a studied
time interval.
For a perfect system, no bits are to be lost.
Loss of bits can result in fading and interference that
leads to Call drops, Call blocks, Muted calls and
Handover failures.

14 November 2014

Made By: J.R.DOLEY,SDE(NWO-II)CM

Carrier to Interferer ( C/ I )
Cochannel

interference is the term used for

interference in a cell caused by carriers with the same
frequency present in other cells.
Normal Range of C/I should be greater than 12 dB.
Value lower than 12 dB indicates interference with a
certain frequency that could be co-channel or adjacent
channel interference.
Neighbor sites should be properly planned to
overcome interference problems.
14 November 2014

Made By: J.R.DOLEY,SDE(NWO-II)CM

Speech Quality Index ( SQI )

SQI is an estimate of the perceived speech quality as

experienced by the mobile user, is based on handover

events and on the bit error and frame erasure
distributions.
SQI should be greater than 18.
Low SQI indicates degraded speech quality and
interference.
RF parameter tuning could level the SQI back to its
normal value.
14 November 2014

Made By: J.R.DOLEY,SDE(NWO-II)CM

BER Actual
Ratio of the number of bit errors to the total number

of bits transmitted in a given time interval. BER is a

measure for the voice quality in network.
Depending on BER RxQual is measured. E,g, BER 0 to
0.2 % corresponds to RxQual 0. Max. BER countable
and useful is up to 12.8 % which corresponds to
RxQual of max. 7.

14 November 2014

Made By: J.R.DOLEY,SDE(NWO-II)CM

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DTX
Discontinuous transmission (DTX) is a mechanism

allowing the radio transmitter to be switched off

during speech pauses.
This feature reduces the power consumption of the
transmitter, which is important for MSs, and decreases
the overall interference level on the radio channels
affecting the capacity of the network.

14 November 2014

Made By: J.R.DOLEY,SDE(NWO-II)CM

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Timing advance
Value that the base station calculates from access

bursts and sends to the mobile station (MS) enabling

the MS to advance the timing of its transmissions to
the BS so as to compensate for propagation delay.
Value of 0 means MS in radius of 550mt. From BS.

14 November 2014

Made By: J.R.DOLEY,SDE(NWO-II)CM

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RL Timeout Counter
This parameter define the maximum value of the radio

link counter expressed in SACCH blocks. Range of 4

64 in step size of 4. It shows current value of RLT.
Decrease by 1 but increase by 2. When it reaches zero
it results in normal DROP Call.

14 November 2014

Made By: J.R.DOLEY,SDE(NWO-II)CM

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Drive Test Modes

IDLE MODE
DEDICATED MODE

14 November 2014

Made By: J.R.DOLEY,SDE(NWO-II)CM

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Dedicated Mode Drive

Dedicated drive is an important part of Drive Test.

Here call is made to a test number and drive is done for

the potential areas of the Site. During drive being
carried out one has constantly monitor parameters
such as RX Level, RX Quality, SQI, DTX, C/I Ratio,
Hopping Channel, Neighbor list, TA (Timing
Advance).
Constant changes in these parameter are helpful for
post Optimization of the site.

14 November 2014

Made By: J.R.DOLEY,SDE(NWO-II)CM

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TRX TEST
TRX Test is done to check whether calls originated are

being handled by all the TRXs. Call made during the

process is tracked by the MAIO number displayed on
the screen for all the TRXs.
e.g. for Site of configuration 6 TRX per sector the
MAIO values for TRX test shall be 0,1,2,3,4. Call can be
originated on the BCCH or the TCH frequencies.
Hence MAIO values will be reflected only for calls on
TCH frequency and not on BCCH frequency.
14 November 2014

Made By: J.R.DOLEY,SDE(NWO-II)CM

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14 November 2014

Made By: J.R.DOLEY,SDE(NWO-II)CM

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HANDOVER
Intra Site Handover
Intra Handover is performed to check whether handover is
taking place both ways on the Site.
Handover is performed among all the Sectors of the Site.
Inter Site Handover
Inter Handover is performed to check whether handover is
taking place both ways on the Site with its adjacent
neighbor. Handover needs to checked mandatorarily for
primary neighbor.
Handover is performed with all the defined neighbor's in
the integration sheet.
14 November 2014

Made By: J.R.DOLEY,SDE(NWO-II)CM

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14 November 2014

Made By: J.R.DOLEY,SDE(NWO-II)CM

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SUMMARY OF RF PARAMETERS
Given are parameter need to be checked while performing

MOC and MTC

RX Level (-47 dbm to -110dbm)
RX Quality (0 to 7)
SQI (20 to 30)
DTX
HSN (Hopping Sequence Number) (0 to 63)
MAIO
Hopping Frequency
C/ I Ratio (>15 dbm)
C/ A Ratio (>12 dbm)

14 November 2014

Made By: J.R.DOLEY,SDE(NWO-II)CM

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14 November 2014

Made By: J.R.DOLEY,SDE(NWO-II)CM

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Problem

Detection

Solutions

Coverage

- Access failure rate

- Call drop rate
- Important RXLEV HO
rate

- New sites
- Antennas (tilt,
azimuths)
- TMA installation

Interference

- Communication quality
- RXQUAL HO rate
- Call dropping

- Frequency change
- Power control tuning
- Antennas action

Capacity

- Blocking rate
- HO failure rate

-TRX adjunction
-Cell load distribution
HO thresholds and cell
access
-parameters adjustment

Handover
Ping Pong

- Bad quality
- Micro-communication
interruption

- HO parameters
adjustement
- BTSs power adjustment

14 November 2014

Made By: J.R.DOLEY,SDE(NWO-II)CM

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CONCLUSIONS
Network optimisation is a continuous process.
Requires well-trained and experienced staff.
Many problems can have various origins

(maintenance, parameters tuning, features activation,

frequency planning, equipment installation etc.).
Close interaction between Network Monitoring Team,
and Maintenance Teams is necessary.

14 November 2014

Made By: J.R.DOLEY,SDE(NWO-II)CM

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THANK YOU
14 November 2014

Made By: J.R.DOLEY,SDE(NWO-II)CM

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