What is Drive Test?

Drive test involves setting up a call to best carrier and driving along the roads. While driving, the radio parameters and air interference signal data are collected as a log file.

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Drive Test Setup

Drive Test system comprises of a test mobile phone, software to control and log data from the phone and a Global Positioning System(GPS) receiver for position information External Antenna for Test mobile phone & GPS can also be used for drive test.

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Objective of Drive test

a) To verify whether the network meets the given requirements, on the basis of which network was designed.

b) To verify whether the parameters and configurations are defined correctly or not.

c)

To investigate network problems related to poor quality, signal level, interference etc

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Objective of Drive test

Following steps are taken to fulfill the objective of using a drive test tool.

a) Collection of Data and extraction of relevant information from it.

b) Analysis of the extracted data. c) Suggesting changes in the network configurations based on the analysis.
Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

a) Collection of Data
During drive test, the radio parameters and air interference signal data are collected as a log file. Following parameters are checked during the drive test for different clutters categories like dense urban, sub-urban, open, rural etc.

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

a) Collection of Data
1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) Rx Level Rx Quality Timing Advance Handover messages Details of six best neighbor cells Layer 2 and layer 3 messages.
Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

a) Extraction of relevant information

From the data collected various information can be extracted which depict the performance of BTS sites and the network as a whole.

Following information can be extracted from this drive test data-

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

a) Extraction of relevant information

1) Coverage probability (edge & area prob. can be extracted for cell/site if detail drive test is done for cell/site Speech quality Frequency and BSIC reuse Neighbor cells details Handover details
Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

2) 3) 4) 5)

a) Extraction of relevant information

6) Additional features like Hopping, DTX, power control etc.

7)

Typical n/w settings such as LAC, CI, Tx power, RLT

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Cell edge probability

With the help of drive test tool, coverage boundary of the cell based on received signal level (RXLEV), is obtained and is plotted over the geographical map of the area.
The coverage boundary of a cell is considered to be made up of equal received level points on the field. With the help of this coverage plot, edge probability or the probability of getting a signal level better than a specific value over the boundary of all cells is obtained which helps in determining the performance of the network with respect to coverage boundary requirements.
Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Cell area probability

The obtained signal levels from the cells at all the points of the network, are then used to make, a best server plot. This best server plot is drawn by categorising it on the basis of in building coverage, in car coverage and on street coverage. With the help of this server plot, area probability or the probability of getting a signal level better than a specific value over the areas of all cells is obtained

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

RxQual measurement
RXQUAL, is the Bit error rate (BER) derived from the 26 bits midamble on TDMA burst. Speech quality is inferred by the RXQUAL measurements during the drive test. Its level characterizes speech quality where 0 indicates the highest quality and 7 the worst.

Thus during drive test, poor quality areas can be found and marked by looking over the quality on the scale of 0 to 7.
RXQUAL can be poor due to poor RXLEV, Co-channel interference, adjacent channel interference or Multipath. RXQUAL is measured and tested for all the categories of clutters. Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Frequency & BSIC reuse

The frequency plan& BSIC (Base Station Identity Codes) planning for the cells can be obtained from the collected data . This gives an idea of the freq reuse pattern & reuse distance.

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Neighbor Cell details

With the help of collected data, details of 6 best serving neighbours can be determined. The details like-

BSIC BCCH ARFCN Cell Id Rx Lev C1 & C2

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Layer 2 & 3 messages

Decoding of layer 2 and 3 messages helps in analysing the cause of call set-up failures, delayed call set-ups, blocking, drop calls, causes of handovers, reasons for selecting particular target call & handover failures or any other abnormality in the performance of the network.

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Drive tests applications

Drive test activity can be utilized for the following applicationsa) b) c) d) e) f) g) CW test RF coverage verification Optimization Troubleshooting Competitive analysis Interference Monitoring Planning Tool Model Tuning
Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Optimization
The optimisation of the network, is done to check the performance of the network, just after it is made operational and to get best possible quality of service. Optimization includesSuggesting changes in the defined parameters & configurations on the basis of drive test data analysis. Changes can be of two types - Hard & Soft conf. changes

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Hard configuration
The hard configuration parameters include antenna type, antenna gain, antenna orientation, effective height of antenna and effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP), TRX, cables/feeder cables Changes are made to meet the requirements and to deal with the analysed problems.

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Soft configuration
The soft configuration parameters include categories such as common BTS parameters, cell access parameters etc. GSM defines around 150 soft parameters for each cell. e.g. BSIC, BCCH, neighbors cells, Tx power, Handover margin, enable or disable add-on features etc-

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Optimization
Optimisation of the network using drive test system is an iterative process. Thus after deploying discussed changes in the network,drive test is done again and mentioned steps are repeated until required performance objective is fulfilled.
Drive test is very effective part of the optimisation of the network but drive test data is not very effective to find out some of the very specific problems their cause and solutions to rectify them. On the other hand drive test is the only medium with the help of which users perspective of quality of service can be visualised hence
Prepared By : Shashank Sharma

Optimization
simultaneous monitoring of the BSS statistics and drive test data gives most practical and optimum cause and the solution of a problem.

Prepared By : Shashank Sharma