Comparison of Networks with different Frequency Reuses, DTX, and
Power Control using the Effective Frequency Load Approach
Jeroen Wigard*, Preben Mogensen*, Per Henrik Michaelsen*,Juan Melero' and Timo Halonen'
*Center for PersonKommunikation
Fredrik Bajersvej 7A-6, DK-9220 Aalborg Ost, Denmark
#Noha Telecommunications, System Performance Group, UK.
Abstract - Networks with different reuses, with and
without DTX are compared by using the effective
frequency load concept (EFL).EFL makes it possible to
compare networks under different circumstances, like for
example different weekdays or networks using different
configurations. The simulations results show that
networks using high frequency reuse factors give the
best quality, while the gain from DTX is higher than the
gain from power control. Both features can be combined
to get an even higher gain. Included field uial results
show the same tendencies.
I. INTRODUCTION
Different frequency reuses for the GSM system with and
without DTX and power control have been studied in
[ 13. However, synthesised frequency hopping has not
been considered in those studies.
In this paper, networks using synthesised hopping with
different frequency reuses and with and without DTX
and power control are compared. Field trial results will
be shown as well as simulation results.
The different frequency reuses are characterised with a
reuse factor. The reuse factor indicates the cluster size of
cells within which each frequency is used only once. The
reuse factor is typically denoted as xlv, where x is the
reuse factor for base stations andy the reuse factor for
cells. This means that a reuse factor of 3/9, corresponds
to a cellular network consisting of 3-sectors per site, and
each frequency is only used once within 3 sites per
cluster, i.e. once per 9 cells.
When using synthesised hopping the reuse factor can be
changed, while maintaining the number of transceivers
(TRX) per cell. The interference situation becomes
worse, as the reuse factor is decreased, since the
interferers come closer. At the same time the gain from
frequency hopping is improved, since the number of
hopping frequencies is increased and more fractional
loading is introduced [2].
To compare the different reuses, the effective frequency
load (EFL,)concept has been used. EFL, takes the actual
traffic into account and thus enables a fair comparison
between different conditions (different week days,
different networks, etc.). Basically, EFL describes how
much each frequency is loaded in average per cell.
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The frame erasure rate (FER) for the full rate traffic
channel (TCWFS), indicating the percentage of erased
frames, is used as a quality measure. Two different FER
quality thresholds have been used throughout the article:
5.4% and 10.9%. These thresholds have been used since
they are believed to represent respectively good and
acceptable quality. The comparisons use the percentage
of samples having a FER worse than 5.4 or 10.9%
In Section TI the network simulator CAPACITY is
described, followed by an explanation of the effective
frequency load concept in Section III. Section IV,V, VI
and W contain the simulation results, while the field
trial results can be found in Section VIII.
II. CAPACITY
The capacity simulator CAPACITY has been used for
the network simulations. It is able to simulate the factors
that affect the performance of the GSM network, like
frequency hopping, DTX, and power control and returns
the quality experienced by each individual mobile station
of every single frame (0.48 seconds) at a given system
load. The most important quality measures, which can be
extracted are the C/I, BER, FER,RXQUAL, number of
blocked calls, dropped calls and blocked handover
attempts.
In the simulations, both multipath and shadow fading are
included. The lognormal fading process is simulated, so
the spatial correlation function follows an exponential
decaying function, with a decorrelation distance of 110
m. The standard deviation Osh equals 6 dB. The fast
fading corresponds to fast fading in a typical urban (TU)
channel [3]. The fast fading on adjacent frequencies is
assumed to be uncorrelated. Measurements, which are
used in the power control and handover algorithm are
made for each SACCH multi frame (0.48 sec.). The time
resolution of the simulator is 4.615 msec., corresponding
to one TDMA burst.
The mobile stations are initialised at a uniform
distributed random place in the network and they move
with a constant speed in a randomly selected direction
(uniform distributed). In each simulation, at least 10000
connections are simulated. The presented results are the
results of downlink simulations only.
The investigated network structure is based on cells with
a radius of 2 km and a regular base station grid with 48
3-sector base stations, corresponding to 144 cells. Each
cell has 3 transceivers (TRXs), while the BCCH is
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 disregarded. The other simulation parameters can be Figure 1 shows the relative frequency of the FER being
seen in Table 1. worse than 5.4% for networks with different bandwidths.
All networks use a 1/1 frequency reuse with random
Table 1 Simulation parameters frequency hopping. The results are obtained by
Path loss Lp = 35 log d simulations with CAPACITY.
Shadow fading O s h 6 dB It can be seen that with the EFL the results from the
Shadow fading 110 m different bandwidths seem to fit quite well. In other
decorrelation distance words, networks of different bandwidths seem to give
Fast fading according to the TU channel the same curve.
Call mean hold time 80 s (exponential. dist.)
When looking at the 1/1 results, a slight degradation in
Mobile velocity -
3 50 km/h (uniform dist.)
the quality can be seen when the bandwidth becomes
Cell radius 2 km
lower than 2 MHz. This is caused by the fact that at
Antennas 65 sectorized
lower bandwidths the probability for bursts within the
Type of frequency
interleaving depth3 using the same frequency is getting
hopping Random hopping higher. This lowers the gain from frequency hopping
since the optimal gain is achieved, when the bursts
within the interleaving depth use different uncorrelated
III. EFFECTIVE FREQUENCY LOAD frequencies [4].
In reality the fading on adjacent frequencies is not
Effective Frequency Load (EFL)
is defined as: uncorrelated, as it is in the simulator. This will cause that
the degradation at small bandwidth increases, since the
probability for the bursts within the interleaving depth
using the same or an adjacent frequency increases when
where L m is the hardware utilisation and Ref is the the bandwidth decreases at a fixed frequency reuse.
effective reuse, as defined below.
35,00%
Hardware utilisation indicates the utilisation of the
30,0096~
hardware at a given traffic load:
h 25,0096

L, =-
Trafic D
B 20,0096~
timeslots e
:, 15,0096~
where Traflc is the average traffic carried by the cells ti
measured in Erlang and timeslots is the average number B 10,00%
of timeslots available in the cells. For example, with 2
transceivers' in non-hopping mode a cell can carry 9
Erlang (assuming 2% blocking). To carry this traffic 15
5,0% 6,096~ 7,096 8,096~ 9,096 10,096 11,0% 12,096 13,0%
timeslots' are offered by the cell. Thus LLw= 9/15.
Effective FrequencyLoad
The efective reuse is essentially the same as the
conventional frequency reuse distance. It is calculated
as : Figure 1 The relativejequency of the FER being worse than
5.4% as function of the EFL for the 1/1 Ji-equencyreuse with
(3) dyerent bandwidths.

where NfieqsTOTis the total number of frequencies in the IV. REUSES

investigated part of the network and N T R is~ the ~ ~
average number of TRXs in a cell Table 2 shows the network configurations, which have
been simulated. The first column contains the frequency
The EFL is related to the spectral efficiency by: reuse pattern, while the number of TRxs can be seen in
N M MEFL
. the second column. The third column shows the number
Spectral - eficiency = (Erlang/kmZ/MHz) (4) of frequencies per cell, i.e. the number of hopping
Avg - Cellsiie
frequencies, while the last column contains the total
where NMh is the number of channels per MHz (in case frequency spectrum.
of full rate traffic channels in GSM this equals 40) and
Avg-Cellsize is the average cell size in km'.

'In GSM one transceiver corresponds to 8 timeslots,

which means 8 full rate channels.
One timeslot is used by the BCCH. The interleaving depth in GSM is 8 bursts

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 Table 2 Simulated Network that the quality of each network degrades with increasing
load.
Reuse No. Frequencies Total
Spectrum The EFL calculation can be turned around to calculate
what the actual average frequency reuse is. This is done
5.4MHz by setting the hardware load to 100% and calculate the
4.8MHz effective frequency reuse for a given outage with
113 5.4MHz equation (1). When for example only 10% of all mobiles
313
. . 3 9 5.4 MHz can have to FER higher than 5.4%, the minimum
319 3 I 5.4MHz average frequency reuse is respectively 15.4, 14.3, 12.5
and 11.7 for the 111, 113, 212 and 313 frequency reuse
patterns.
W O (Mobile Allocation Index Offset) management
[5] is used, meaning that adjacent and cochannel
interference between the sectors and within each sector V. DTX
at a site is avoided.
DTX has been simulated with a DTX factor of 50%. The
Figure 2 and Figure 3 show the relative frequency of the on - off intervals have an average length of 1 seconds
FER being higher than respectively 5.4% and 10.9%. and are exponentially distributed.
The Figures are generated from the FER samples, where
one FER sample is the average FER over 4 SACCH The results can be seen in Figure 4 and Figure 5. Again
multiframes (1.92 sec) of one connection. it can be seen that higher reuse factors lead to better
quality. Also the improvement from using DTX can be
seen. At 7% EFL the relative frequency of the FER
being worse than 5.4% is decreased with a factor 3 -
4.5. The highest gains are achieved by the networks
using a small reuse. This is due to the fact that the
interference is worst in those cases.

5,0% 6,096 7,0% 8.0% 9.0% 10,0%

Effective Frequency Load

Figure 2 The relativejkequency of the FER being worse than

5.1% asfirnction of the EFL.

EWectlve FruquencyLoad

1O,OO%

400% Figure 4 The relativejkequenq of the FER being worse than

3 5.3% asfinction of the EFL when using DTX
9 6.00%

ZOO%

I
i

5,0% 6,0% 7,0% 8,0% 9,0% 10,0%

Efi.ctin Frequency Lo8d

Figure 3 The relativejkequency of the FER being worse than

IO. 9% asfirnction of the EFL.

It can be seen that networks with high frequency reuse

factors give better quality, than networks with low
frequency reuse factors, i.e. the probability of the FER
being worse than 5.4% or 10.9% is higher for a networks
with a low frequency reuse factor. The Figures also show Figure 5 The relativefrequency of the FER being worse than
10.9% asfunction of the EFL when using DTX

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 The DTX factor could also be taken into account in the
EFL calculation, since it indicates the reduction in the
frequency load. A 50% DTX factor would mean dividing
the EFL by 2. Doing this and comparing the results to
Figure 2 and Figure 3 shows that the curves with DTX,
where the EFL is divided by 2, seem to fit nicely with
the curves without DTX.
VI. DOWNLINK POWER CONTROL
The networks configurations, shown in Table 2, are also
simulated with downlink power control. The power
control tries to minimise the output power of the base
stations based on the measured signal level and the
quality of the connection.
If the averaged received signal level (AV-RXLEV) is
below -95 dBm or if the averaged quality (AV-
RXQUAL) is above 3 (uncoded BER is higher than
1.6%), the output power at the base station is increased.
If neither of the above is true and if either the AV-
RXLEV is above -80 dBm or if the AV-RXQUAL is
below 2 (uncoded BER is lower than 0.4%), the output
power at the base station is decreased.
O,W% 4
5,046 6,046 7,096 8,0% 9,096
ER.ctive Frequency L a d
Figure 6 The relativejequency of the FER being worse than
5.1% asfunction ofthe EFL, when using PC.
5,096 6,046 7,0% 8,046 9,046
mativsFrequency Lord
Figure 7 The relativejequency of the FER being worse than
10.95%asfunction of the EFL, when using PC.
Figure 6 and Figure 7 show the relative frequency of the
FER being higher than respectively 5.4% and 10.9%.
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When compared to the results without power control it
can be seen that the quality in the networks has
improved. The gain is less than the gain from using
DTX. At 7% EFL the relative frequency of the FER
being worse than 5.4% is decreaxd by a factor 1.6-1.8.
Again it can be seen that a higher frequency reuse factor
gives better quality.
VII. DTX AND POWER CONTROL
Power control and DTX can also be combined. The
settings from the previous 2 sections are used. When a
mobile station is in DTX mode, the reported RXQUAL
value is based on an average of 12 bursts4 instead of the
100 bursts. This introduces inaccuracies, as reported in
[6], which means that some of the gain from power
control is lost.
J
5.0% 6.0% 7,040 8.096 9.0% 10,096
E f f d j w Fnguoncy Lord
Figure 8 The retafivejequency of the FER being worse than
5.1% asfunction of the EFL, when using DTXand PC.
10,046
5,0% 6,0% 7,046 8,0% 9,OYo 10,0%
EfkctinFnguncrLord
Figure 9 The relativejequency of the FER being worse than
10.9 % asfunction ofthe EFL, when using DTXand PC.
It can be Seen that the quality of the networks is further
10,0% improved, compared to just using either DTX or power
control. It also can be seen that the 3/3 reuse now gives
the best quality, whereas the other curves cross each
other. It seems like the small frequency reuses are the
In the silent periods still 12 bursts are transmitted,
containing control and comfort noise information.
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 best at low EFL, whereas when the load increases the
higher frequency reuses give the best quality.
VIII. FIELD TRIAL RESULTS
During the autumn 1999 Nokia trialed several reuses in
Brisbane, Australia in co-operation with Cable and
Wireless Optus. The trial area was 14.5 km2 and the
number of cells was 49, leading to an average cell size
of 0.27 km’. The average number of TRXs per cell was
2.4. The network setups, shown in Table 3, are trialed5.
The power control settings are very similar to the ones
used in the simulations. To get points with a different
frequency load, the number of frequencies is varied.
Table 3 Network setupf o r trialed networks
Frequency Power Control
Reuse (PC)
111 No
212 No
212 Yes
212 Yes
I 717 I Nn
In the field trial the dropped call rate instead of the FER
has been used a$ quality measure. Figure 10 shows the
dropped call rate as function of the effective frequency
load. Some polynomial trendlines are shown a$well.
It can be seen that also here the network with the greatest
reuse factor (313) gives the best quality and also that
power control and DTX give a quality gain. So the
tendencies found in the simulations are similar to the
ones found from the field trial. However, it is hard to
compare the results directly to the simulated cases since
the EFL is much lower.
111, no PC, no DTX
+ 92.PC.DTX
33, no PC. no DTX
A 33, PC,noDTX
IX. CONCLUSIONS
GSM networks with different reuses with and without
DTX and power control have been compared in this
article. For the comparison the effective frequency load
(EFL) concept is used. It is shown that with EFL
networks under different circumstances, like for example
different weekdays, and networks with a different setup
or frequency reuse, can be compared.
Simulation results show that the higher reuses give the
best quality, when looking at the relative percentage of
FER samples above 5.4 and 10.9%. It is shown that DTX
decreases the percentage of FER samples worse than
5.4% at 7% effective frequency load with a factor 3-4.5.
The gain of power control is lower: the gain in the same
situation is about 1.7. Both features can be combined to
DTX get an even higher gain.
Field trial results from Brisbane, Australia show the
No same tendencies as the simulations: higher reuses give
No better quality.
No
Yes It should be noted that the power control settings in the
I Nn I simulations are quite optimal, but not necessarily the
most optimal settings. Also notice that the simulated
network is completely regular: the base stations are
placed in a regular grid and the 3 sectors point in the
exact directions 60, 180 and 300 degrees. Also the
frequency plans are completely regular. Irregularities in
the frequency plan, base station location and/or sector
direction are believed to have a greater impact on the
higher reuses than on the smaller reuses. Because of this
and since real networks are irregular, in reality small
frequency reuses might be better than high frequency
reuses. This is subject for further study.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We like to thank Cable and Wireless Optus for the co-
operation during the field trial.
1
LITERATURE

--- -- -- -
-Poly
Poly
(111, noPC, no DTX)

-Poly (ZE.
(m, no PC, no DTX)
PC. no DTX)
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H. Olofsson, J. NBslund and J. SkSld, Interference
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Effective Frequency Load Zako B. et al., The GSM radio link performance with
space diversity and slow frequency hopping, IEEE Proc.
VTC ‘93, pp. 480-482.
Figure 10 The dropped call rate asfinction of the EFL for T.T.Nielsen, J. Wigard, P.H. Michaelsen and P.
diflerent setups in the trials. Mogensen, Slow Frequency Hopping Solutions for GSM
Networks of Small Bandwidth, IEEE Proc VTC ’98, May
1998, Ottawa, Canada, pp. 1321-1325.
J. Wigard, T.T. Nielsen, S. Skjaerris and P.E.
Mogensen, On the influence of Discontinuous
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to the simulated cases, are mentioned.

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