GSM TCH Congestion & Solutions

ZTE university

Training goals

To know the signaling flow of TCH occupation and

relevant counters;
To know causes of TCH congestion;
To know the process of investigating TCH
congestion;
To know the common methods of handling TCH
congestion

Contents
TCH

occupation signaling & relevant counters

Causes of TCH congestion
Problem investigation process
Common methods of solving TCH congestion
Typical cases

What is TCH congestion?

TCH congestion means MS applies for TCH

during the access process; MSC will send
Assignment Request signaling to BSC after it
confirms MS application for TCH; BSC will search
for suitable TCHs; if no TCHs are available, BSC
will refuse the request, and record congestion as
one time.
Congestion often brings inconvenience to
subscribers, thus it is the most complained
problem . High TCH congestion rate has harmful
effect on call establishment rate, handover
success rate and call drop rate.

TCH congestion & relevant counter

KPI
name

TCH blocking rate

Indicator
TCH congestion times/TCH call attempts)*100%/
definition

(C900060020+C900060031+C900060043+C900060047+C900
Counter 060022+C900060033+C900060045+C900060049)*100%/
formula (C900060019+C900060030+C900060042+C900060046+
C900060021+C900060032+C900060044+C900060048)

TCH congestion & relevant counter

Counter

Counter Description

C900060019 Number of voice TCH/F seizure attempts for assignment

C900060020 Number of voice TCH/F seizure failure for assignment
C900060021 Number of voice TCH/F seizure attempts for handover
C900060022 Number of voice TCH/F seizure failure for handover
C900060030 Number of data TCH/F seizure attempts for assignment
C900060031 Number of data TCH/F seizure failure for assignment
C900060032 Number of data TCH/F seizure attempts for handover
C900060033 Number of data TCH/F seizure failure for handover

TCH congestion & relevant counter

Counter

Counter Description

C900060042 Number of voice TCH/H seizure attempts for assignment

C900060043 Number of voice TCH/H seizure failure for assignment
C900060044 Number of voice TCH/H seizure attempts for handover
C900060045 Number of voice TCH/H seizure failure for handover
C900060046 Number of data TCH/H seizure attempts for assignment
C900060047 Number of data TCH/H seizure failure for assignment
C900060048 Number of data TCH/H seizure attempts for handover
C900060049 Number of data TCH/H seizure failure for handover

Signaling of TCH congestion

Upon receiving Assignment Request from MSC, BSC will

search for suitable TCHs.
If no usable TCHs are available, BSC will send a Assignment
Failure message to MSC, and the system records congestion as
one time.

Contents

TCH occupation signaling & relevant counters

Causes of TCH congestion
Problem investigation process
Common methods of solving TCH congestion
Typical cases

Causes of TCH congestion

High dense
traffic
exceeds BTS
capacity

Problem with
adjacent cells

Low TCH
usability due to
hardware
problem

TCH
channel
Congestion

Unreasonable
setting of radio
parameters

Large Traffic burst

Too large
coverage,
isolated island
effect

Contents

TCH occupation signaling & relevant counters

Causes of TCH congestion
Problem investigation process
Common methods of solving TCH congestion
Typical cases

Process of handling TCH congestion

Expand the BTS with
enough TRXs

A cell with high TCH

congestion rate

TCH
availability is
low?

Yes

Investigate
hardware

If the BTS
reaches its
max
configuratio
n?

Yes

Lower BTS power,

increase down-tilt to
abate congestion

Due to high traffic density

Any problem
with adjacent
cell?

Caused by
too many
handovers?

Yes
Investigate
adjacent cells

Yes

Optimize HO
parameters to
reduce HO

Isolatedeffect exists
due to too
large
coverage?

Yes
Reduce coverage and
eliminate the effect

Yes
Check radio
parameters

Adjust parameters

Contents

TCH occupation signaling & relevant counters

Causes of TCH congestion
Problem investigation process
Common methods of solving TCH congestion
Typical cases

Common methods of solving TCH congestion

Traffic
control

expansion

Solutions
to
congestion

Control
coverage

Open
HR

Common methods of traffic control

Control cell selection

Control cell
reselection
Control Handover

Control coverage
range

C1 CBA CBQ

C2 CRO CRH

PBGT HO Macro-micro
HO, Traffic HO
TRX static Power class,
Down tilt

Traffic control cell selection

Cell selection

When MS is open or it enters coverage from blind area, it detects the cells
signal and stays synchronous with the cell, then it scans BCCH in different
cells and select one to reside according to cells priority and the principle
C1>1.

C1: parameter for cell pathloss judgment principle

C1 = RXLEVEL DLRXLEV_ACCESS_MIN MAX(MS _TXPWR_MAX

-P)

RXLEVEL: MS receive level average

DLRXLEV_ACCESS_MIN: minimum MS access level
MS_TXPWR_MAX max BCCH power level
P max MS output level

Traffic control cell selection

Cell selection priority

In PHASE2+ regulations, parameters CBA and CBQ to represent

the cells priority are added. Through combined settings of the two
parameters, we can get different selection priorities, and we can
set lower priority for congested cells.

CellBarQualify

CellBarAccess

Cell selection

Cell reselection

priority

status

Normal

Normal

Barred

Barred

Low

Normal

Low

Normal

Traffic control cell reselection

Cell reselection

When C2 algorithm is open, MS reselects the cell with

max C2 to reside.

whenPT11111

C2 C1 CRO TOH PT T
whenPT 11111
C2 C1 CRO

With the adoption of C2, cell

selection range can be adjusted.
Flexible setting of C2 can reduce
cell real coverage and congestion.

of which
When x<0, H x 0
When x0, H x 1
CRO: cell reselection offset
TO: temporary offset (temporary correct value of C2.
temporary means the value works on C2 just during a period,
which is decided by PT.)
PT: penalty time

Traffic control handover based on layers

PBGT HO

Traffic HO

Through setting PBGTHoLayer and NCellLayer, we can control whether

the handover can be carried out among undefined layer, same layer
different frequency band, upper layer, and lower layer, thus we can reach
flexible control over traffic distribution.
Through setting parameters: layer relation-TrafficHoLayrCtl (same layer,
upper layer, lower layer), frequency band TrafficHoFreqCtl and NCellLayer,
we can contol the layer and frequency band for target cell of traffic
handover, and traffic distribution can be controlled flexibly as well.

Macro-micro HO

For specific parameters,

please refer to relevant
technical guidebooks.

Macro-micro handover is to handover the MS moving with slow speed from

macro cell layer to micro cell layer. The micro cell mentioned here is just a
concept in logic. In this example, DCS1800 cell can be regarded as micro
cell, and the macro-micro handover can only be carried out to adjacent
cells on lower layer. Use MacroMicroHoThs to control the difficulty of
handover to lower layers.

Traffic control coverage control

Control antenna down-tilt

Static power class

Static power class
static RF power step
0
1
2
3
4
5
6

Max real transmitting power

Pn
Maximum output power
Maximum output power 2dB
Maximum output power 4dB
Maximum output power 6dB
Maximum output power 8dB
Maximum output power 10dB
Maximum output power 12dB

Half Rate

Features of HR

Fast expansion of TRX is not necessary;

Note radio interference at areas with HR open;

Increase capacity at the cost of speech quality;

Note subscribers sensitivity of speech quality;

Flexible setting of cell layers and configuration;

Note setting of HR threshold;

Some terminals (MS) can not support HR.

Note rate of terminals supporting HR.

Application of HR

HR application in area with burst traffic

HR application at area with dense traffic
HR application at areas with lower-end subscribers

Half Rate
One speech channel TCH includes 26-frame multi-frame, time is
120ms.
FR
1

12

TCH/F TCH/F TCH/F

HR

TCH/H1 TCH/H2 TCH/H1

13

14

24

25

SACCH

12

13

26

idle

14

TCH/H2 SACCH1 TCH/H2

24

TCH/H2

25

26

TCH/H1 SACCH2

Half Rate

Activating HR solution achieves fast expansion of wireless network, relieves

network intense capacity, effectively solves partial traffics congestion, and can
be supplement for urgent expansion solution.

Proportion of the MS supporting HR codec

Using HR will lower the speech quality during conversation in worse radio C/I areas
HR solution suits for low-value areas with outburst heavy traffics

HR solution increases the capacity

and spectrum efficiency.
The ZTE BSC avoids the occurrence
of HR fragmentations to reserve
continuous and complete timeslot for
FR allocation and data services. In
addition, the BSC can gather the
fragmental HR channels by internal
cell handover, which is re-packaging
mechanism for ongoing half rate
calls.

Two HR subscribers share 16

kbps transmission of Abis
interface; therefore, the
transmission in Abis interface is
not affected.

In poor radio environments, the speech quality

of the HR decreases.
The ZTE BSS monitors the strength of radio
signals and speech quality to dynamically
switch between the HR and FR for a
subscriber. In this way, the network capacity
increases with the satisfying service quality.

Half Rate
Full name

Preferred speech version (half)

Description

When implementing the CS channel allocation

policy,describe the preferred half-rate speech
version. Halfrate version 1 refers to HR, and
version 3 for AMR

Value Range

Not specify the preferred version, Half-rate version

1, Half-rate version 3

Half Rate
Full name

Low priority of channel select priority

Description

When implementing the CS channel allocation

policy,BSC describes the channel select strategy
while TCH allocation

Value Range

No change, Full rate first, Half rate first, Only full

rate allowed, Only half rate allowed

Half Rate
Full name

High priority of channel select priority

Description

When implementing the CS channel allocation

policy, BSC describes the channel select strategy
while TCH allocation

Value Range

No change, Full rate first, Half rate first, Only full

rate allowed, Only half rate allowed

Half Rate
Full name

Dynamic ts

Description

YES: Representing dynamic timeslot; NO:

Representing fixedly configured timeslot

Value Range

Yes/No

Flow of network expansion

Gather each cells traffic
report of a week

Open certain percent of HR,

calculate theoretical traffic
to be supported

Filter out each cells max

traffic volume to be the base
of expansion calculation.

Traffic
(actual)>traffic
HR (theoretical)

Look up in Erl B, obtain the

cells theoretical busy hour
traffic Erl (theoretical)

Calculate number of TRX

needed for expansion
(actual need)

Traffic (actual)
>traffic
(theoretical)

No expansion need

Yes

TRX(actual
need)>max
number of
TRX allowed

Add new BTS

Rate of open HR
shall not be too
high

No

No

Open HR for
expansion

Complete
expansion plan

Cell split

Contents

TCH occupation signaling & relevant counters

Causes of TCH congestion
Problem investigation process
Common methods of solving TCH congestion
Typical cases

Typical case 1
TCH congestion rate at an overseas BTS was shown higher than usual after
it's been swapped with ZTE equipment.
Problem description
From the dynamic data management, we observed that all FR TCHs have been
occupied, while a lot of HR TCHs were idle.

Problem analysis
Through signaling analysis, we found congestion just occurred on assigning FR
TCH. Basically, it was confirmed that the assignment failure was caused by
congestion due to lack of FR TCH ;
After checking the channel assignment parameters of MSC, BSC and cells, we
found the system takes the first speech version assigned by MSC as default;
after most TRXs were configured with HR TCH, the channel assignment priority
in radio parameters has not been changed accordingly;

Typical case 1
Problem analysis
Since most TRXs in these cells were configured with static HR TCHs, there
were just a few FR TCHs, which led to congestion due to lack of TCH/F;
The primary cause of congestion is there is still a certain number of MSs do not
support HR.

Problem handling
Adjusted ChanSelectPrio (channel selection priority), changed the default No
Select to half Rate First , The problem was solved.

Typical case 2
Frequent congestion due to improper parameter settings
Problem description
During optimization of a local network, the busy hour congestion rate
(incl. HO) of two cells was high (10%), while that (excl. HO) was
normal. And number of TCH assignment failure was high, which for
the two cells were 89 and 61.
Traffic volume was lower than that before optimization.
Interference band was normal.
Congestion rate was normal before optimization.
Problem analysis
Since the congestion rate deteriorated after optimization, and only the
rate with HO included went bad, so we could exclude reasons like
antenna interference, hardware problem, etc., but focus on HO.
Recorded the two cells handover statistical performance of 15mins,
we found almost all handovers from a certain cell CGI=**1768 to
these two cells failed.

Typical case 2
Problem handling
Checked the two cells HO statistics, we found they were co-channel
and co-BSIC, and they were adjacent cells to a certain cell at the
same time, so almost all handovers from the certain cell to each of
these two cells failed inevitably, and the failure just occurred during
TCH assignment.
After the two cells BCCH and BSIC were adjusted, HO and
congestion returned to normal.

Typical case 3
Serious congestion due to traffic burst
Problem description
Congestion rate in two cells under a certain BTS increased suddenly
during 21 00 23 00 pm, and the rate even reached 30%, while
there was no congestion during other periods.
Number of call attempts and traffic volume were obviously increased when
congestion occurred.
Other radio indicators were in normal status.

Problem analysis
Checked if high dense traffic existed within coverage of the two cells, its
found that there was a high school dormitory building, and traffic burst
occurred after school.
We checked the two cells' configuration, which has already reached the
max allowed.
After checking we found HR in the two cells was off, so its suggested that
HR be open for cell expansion.

Typical case 3
Problem handling
Obtained the two cells busy hour traffic of 7 consecutive days from performance
report.
Found out the number of TCHs supporting traffic from Erl B.
From calculation, we found that HR of 40% TCHs had to be open to satisfy the actual
traffic need.
Opened the two cells dynamic HR, and set the threshold as 60%.
When HR was open, the congestion disappeared.
UserLabel
Site77_bts1
Site93_bts2
Site77_bts1
Site93_bts2
Site77_bts1
Site93_bts2
Site77_bts1
Site93_bts2
Site77_bts1
Site93_bts2

TCH available
26
25
26
25
26
25
37
35
40
36

TCH traffic
24.78
23.48
24.27
23.14
24.89
23.72
29.73
28.42
30.12
28.14

TCH
TCH overflow
congestion rate
times
23.51
18.17
23.39
17.95
28.9
20.89
0.44
0.26
0.53
0.11

612
428
589
407
737
507
13
7
15
3

TCH call
attempts
2603
2355
2518
2267
2550
2426
2831
2692
2881
2655

Questions for thinking

Why congestion occurs when traffic per TCH

channel reaches 0.4Erl in cells with single TRX?

What methods can be used to achieve traffic

balance?