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Soft and Hard blocking measurement procedure

Content
1
2
3
3.1.1
3.1.2
3.2
3.2.1

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Objective............................................................................................2
Scope.................................................................................................2
Concept..............................................................................................2
Soft Blocking (Concept)......................................................................2
Soft Blocking (formulae).....................................................................3
Hard Blocking (Concept).....................................................................3
Hard blocking (formulae)....................................................................3

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Objective
The purpose of publishing this document is to clarify the concept of hard and
soft blocking in case of GPRS network KPI. This document will clarify the
concept of these terms for GPRS network engineers and further implementing
the same in daily MAPA.

Scope
The scope of this document is clarify these terms and propose the formulae
for the same.
The term soft and hard blocking are not used in Ericsson BSS, however as
these values have to be reported in daily MAPA we have develop the
formulae for the same.

Concept
For a GPRS network, PDCH has same importance as we have TCH in voice
network i.e. it is the basic channel where a GPRS cal originates. However
there are some fundamental and conceptual differences between the two.

A FR TCH allows only one user at a time whereas there can be many
users in one PDCH simultaneous

Normal Voice call will not use more one TCH for making a cal i.e.
there is no concept of Multislot phenomena, however this is basic
criteria for GPRS network performance, in fact this is one of the main
KPIs for GPRS network performance.

A TCH can not be pre-empted whereas, a PDCH can be pre-empted if

the channel is needed for the voice trafiic.

So the concept of blocking is bit different in case of GPRS network.

3.1.1

Soft Blocking (Concept)

The term soft blocking means, a MS has asked for deserving resources
(PDCH) based on his Multislot class but it is not allowed to get all resources
from the BSS due to the reason, free resources are not available. In this way
BSS allows a MS to make GPRS session but at reduced capability in terms of
bandwidth available for the GPRS session. There are counters available in
Ericsson BSS system where we can measure, these are called Multislot
counters and they are
MUTIL21,
MUTIL22,
MUTIL31,
MUTIL32,
MUTIL33,

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MUTIL41,
MUTIL42,
MUTIL43,
MUTIL44,
MUTIL51, New counter in BSS06A
MUTIL52, New counter in BSS06A
MUTIL53, New counter in BSS06A
MUTIL54, New counter in BSS06A
MUTIL55, New counter in BSS06A
Note:- More explanation of these counters is available in LAEX

3.1.2

Soft Blocking (formulae)

The proposed method and formulae for the measuring soft blocking is as
under
Total Time slots requested = (MUTIL12+MUTIL22) x2 +
(MUTIL13+MUTIL23+MUTIL33) x3 + (MUTIL14+MUTIL24+MUTIL34 +
MUTIL44) x4 + (MUTIL15+MUTIL25+MUTIL35 + MUTIL45 + MUTIL55) x5
Total time slots requested-but-not-allocated =
(MUTIL12+MUTIL23+MUTIL34+MUTIL45) x1 +
(MUTIL13+MUTIL24+MUTIL35) x2 + (MUTIL14+MUTIL25) x3 + MUTIL15
x4
Soft blocking = Total time slots requested-but-not-allocated/Total Time
slots requested.

3.2

Hard Blocking (Concept)

The hard blocking concept is not applicable on the PDCH level due to sharing
of same PDCH between simultaneous users. The hard concept introduced
here will be at TBF level. Hard blocking means a GPRS enabled terminal was
unable to make a TBF for data transfer i.e. TBF is not established for data
transfer.

3.2.1

Hard blocking (formulae)

The proposed formulae for the hard blocking is as

100*FAILDLTBFEST/DLTBFEST, where
DLTBFEST: - The total number of attempts to establish a downlink TBF.

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FAILDLTBFEST: - The total number of attempts to establish a downlink TBF

that resulted in a failure due to lack of resources. Lack of resources could
mean: no PDCH allocated on which the TBF could be reserved; no TFIs
available (i.e. maximum allowed number of TBF reserved on all allocated
PDCH); the PDCH was pre-empted before it could be reserved. some other
channel fault that prevented the reservation; congestion in MAC (i.e. no frame
number could be returned); congestion in the CP prevented the request being
processed.

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