Release Notes

Radio network troubleshooting and optimization November 2004

Release Notes

Contents
1 ABOUT THIS RELEASE ........................................... 3
Drive Test Troubleshooting ................................... 3
About radio network troubleshooting and optimization .... 3 Diagnostics and Troubleshooting .................................... 5 Network Acceptance and Optimization............................ 5 Quality and Benchmarking .............................................. 6 Process Management ..................................................... 6

New License Requirement .................................... 6

2 3

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS ....................................... 7

Hardware requirements................................................... 7

WHAT'S NEW? ...................................................... 8

New Analyzer entry screen ................................... 8 Using DT Troubleshooting .................................... 9
Load the data .................................................................. 9 Identify and prioritize the issues using the Dashboard... 10 Diagnose the cause and confirm problem resolution ..... 11

Changes to the User Interface .............................12

Attribute Explorer .......................................................... 12 Replay control moved to main toolbar ........................... 12

KNOWN ISSUES .................................................. 13

Maps ............................................................................. 13 Replay........................................................................... 13 DT Troubleshooter Pages ............................................. 13 Attribute Explorer .......................................................... 14

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Release Notes

About this release

Drive Test Troubleshooting

The major new feature in this release is Drive Test Troubleshooting. About radio network troubleshooting and optimization Actix' line of products for radio network troubleshooting and optimization help to accelerate the rollout of wireless networks, lower network deployment costs and improve the quality of service delivered to wireless customers. Developed specifically for wireless 2.5G and 3G networks, Actix' enhanced troubleshooting and optimization products cut through the complexity of new wireless technologies, establishing best practice processes throughout radio engineering teams.

Example UMTS Dashboard and related data

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Actix products automate, simplify and streamline radio engineering. Built in diagnostics and troubleshooting processes embed Actix' global wireless experience to deliver accurate, instant solutions to radio problems. Configurable analysis and KPI reporting provides clear, vendor-independent visibility of true network performance. Actix is also a process management solution allowing teams to build in their own KPIs and processes establishing consistent best practice engineering focused and evolving with the organizations priorities and challenges. There is immense pressure during rollout to realize a return on new technology investment. Multiple teams with diverse skills need to overcome new technology complexity and meet tight deadlines. Actix cuts through the complexity providing clear visibility of real network performance and driving best practice knowledge and skills throughout an organization.

By working with 90% of 3G operators, Actix continues to capture solutions to the most difficult rollout challenges, embedding the solution in software. Also, Actix high configurability ensures organizations can build on this with their own processes and KPIs focused on their own particular challenges and business goals. By harnessing unprecedented levels of teamwork and focus, Actix users can rollout with quality and confidence.

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Diagnostics and Troubleshooting Troubleshooting is one of the most time-consuming radio engineering tasks. Actix diagnostics identify and prioritize critical issues and then recommend a fix, accelerating the resolution of dropped calls, setup failures, missing neighbors, pilot pollution, poor coverage, system interference, handover problems, intersystem handover and more. Diagnostics can be configured to suit specific network environments, configurations and priorities. Powerful visualization features let you drill into any problem and verify a diagnosis. By building in automated solutions to the most common radio engineering problems, your organization can standardize on bestpractice processes to the most important problems, leading to faster rollout and higher service quality, with minimal training and management costs.

Example showing CDMA Failed Calls diagnostic views Network Acceptance and Optimization

An unbiased, vendor-independent solution with powerful, configurable analysis and reporting capabilities. Extract your KPIs from the large data haystack.

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Used by leading 3G teams to verify network performance during cluster acceptance. Used for network expansion, helping teams perform new site integration and network retunes as well as configuration changes and upgrades. Gives a clear, independent vision of true network performance, allowing confident rollouts and expansion.

Quality and Benchmarking Extract key performance indicators for voice as well as push-totalk, MMS, http and more. Understanding true service performance is critical during the deployment of new services and when performing periodic or competitive benchmarking. It is also important to monitor service performance during new site integration and network upgrades, and Actix helps you to focus on the wireless users. Process Management

Actix products are an alternative to both shrink-wrapped replay tools and costly in-house systems, providing the best of both worlds by offering a highly tailored solution with no development costs. Configure Actix' predefined processes with the settings and thresholds used by your teams. Define new KPIs and reports which represent your organization's priorities. Define new analyses and processes which capture the knowledge of top new technology specialists so these skills can be employed by every radio engineer. Optionally, use Actix Professional Services to configure your system on your behalf. Cut down on training costs. Cut down on complex process documents and crib sheets. Manage engineering by deploying simple, effective processes.

New License Requirement

Users need to upgrade to a new license in order to use this release.
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Release Notes

System requirements
The following section defines the recommended and minimum system requirements for successfully running Actix Solutions. Hardware requirements All Actix Solutions are 32-bit applications that run on the following Microsoft operating systems (Windows XP or 2000 is strongly recommended) and their latest service packs: Recommended: Alternative: MS Windows XP Microsoft Windows 2000

If you install the Solution on a system that does not meet the recommended configuration requirements, you may suffer from: Inability to process large amounts of data Delays when trying to perform certain tasks Failure of some mapping capabilities Low performance of advanced correlation and analysis capabilities

Because Actix Solutions use system memory in a much more efficient way on later operating systems (especially Windows 2000), we strongly recommend that you upgrade to one of these systems. Optimal performance P4 2.6 GHz 1 GB Minimal performance Pentium II 400 MHz 256 MB 1 GB available

Hardware

Processor:

Memory (RAM): Disk space: CD-ROM drive:

60+ GB available

One Parallel Port or USB Port: Monitor: Other:

For single-user hardware key 1600 x 1200 pixels 64K color resolution 1024 x 768 pixels 256 color resolution

To install the application

Mouse and keyboard

Actix Solutions perform best when the Windows Virtual Memory Paging size is set to between 1000 and 1500 MB. The method for setting this parameter varies by operating system. Please consult your OS help for specific instructions regarding this parameter.

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Release Notes

What's new?

New Analyzer entry screen

On starting Analyzer, a new startup dialog allows you to choose how to want to proceed by selecting an engineering process.

Selecting an engineering process Engineering processes guide the user through a series of predefined analyses and reports that encapsulate sophisticated radio engineering decision-making knowledge. However, users can also choose Analyzer Classic, which involves using Analyzer in free analysis mode that is, using a comprehensive set of data-analysis tools to investigate any message or attribute of interest within your logged data. Essentially, this mode is the same as that used in all previous versions of Analyzer. Note that if you only have one engineering process on your license, you will bypass this screen and go straight to the entry screen for
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that process. If your license excludes engineering processes, you will bypass this screen and go straight into Analyzer. Checking the box at the bottom of the screen also lets you bypass this screen and go straight to your selected engineering process. If, in future, you want to display this screen, from the File menu select Start New Engineering Process.

Using DT Troubleshooting
DT Troubleshooter is available for CDMA, GSM and UMTS. With DT Troubleshooter, you can diagnose complex issues faster than ever, in these easy steps:

Load the data Identify and prioritize the issues Diagnose the problem and confirm the resolution

Load the data Configure event recognition thresholds Load multiple logfiles simultaneously Select/deselect logfiles and individual handsets as required

Loading and selecting handset data

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Identify and prioritize the issues using the Dashboard The unique design of the DT Troubleshooter Dashboard displays aggregated information from the loaded data. The Dashboard highlights and summarizes:

Critical & important issues Events and design quality Cell data

Example UMTS Dashboard

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Diagnose the cause and confirm problem resolution With one click from the Dashboard, you can drill down into the data set. Follow the issues through to an analysis page providing a diagnosis table for each offending device. Clicking on a particular device provides a more detailed diagnosis. Appropriate data views are also opened to let you review the diagnosis.

Example showing GSM Dropped Calls diagnostic views

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Release Notes

Changes to the User Interface

Attribute Explorer
The Workspace Explorer window has been renamed Attribute Explorer and is now only available on startup through particular engineering processes. However, you can open the Attribute Explorer at any time by selecting Display Attribute Explorer from the View menu, or by clicking the Attribute Explorer icon from the main toolbar:

Replay control moved to main toolbar

Click on the Step buttons to move forwards and backwards by one message at a time. Note that several clicks may be required before any change is visible on the Map, depending on the binning settings.

Click on the Play buttons to move at a selectable multiple of realtime speed through the data. In this case, some messages may be dropped as necessary to allow the data to be highlighted at the set speed. The Select Options button allows you to override this and force the Replay control to Play All Messages.

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Known Issues
Maps
Cannot create cellrefs if directory nonexistent A default CellRefs file is not created if the directory path specified in the Preferences dialog is wrong.

Replay
Replay loses selected stream when preferences are changed Using Analyzer Classic view, use the Preferences dialog to change any setting (for example, Load Time Filtering from On to Off). Note that the Replay control on the main toolbar does not automatically select a stream.

DT Troubleshooter Pages
No cell info available when displaying Map with UMTS cellrefs on French Windows 2000 Voice Event Navigator causes an internal error. Currently, no cell information is available when displaying Map with UMTS cellrefs on French Windows 2000 OS. Note: The Cellref file has been modified to take into account the OS preference for commas instead of decimal points in latitude & longitude references. CDMA Dashboard The top ten table at the bottom of the Dashboard might not show some dropped calls that would otherwise be reflected in the Critical Issues section.

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Forward button can be used misleadingly The 'forward' button at the top of the Troubleshooter page can be used to display old pages that do not reflect current selections. This button will probably be removed in a future version.

Attribute Explorer
Load time increases with multiple Attribute Explorers Load time increases when opening a workspace with multiple Attribute Explorers, so if you experience this, simply reduce the number of Attribute Explorer windows open if possible. Only one set of search fields with multiple Attribute Explorers If you have more than one Attribute Explorer window open, selecting Tools, Find Attribute only provides search fields for the first Attribute Explorer window. Redraw fails in some high resolutions On high screen resolutions when first displaying, the Attribute Explorer does not redraw correctly on some occasions. This can be corrected by resizing the Attribute Explorer.

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