Wireless Network Technologies

Tutorial 2: GSM and GPRS

Part 1: GSM Network Coverage Planning and Traffic Dimensioning
1. A telecom company aims to set up a GSM network in a small city and ask you to carry out the network planning and dimensioning process. All parameters related to the system are summarised below: Total coverage area: 10,000 km2 Average active subscribers during busy hour: 4 users/km2 (assume uniformly distributed) Average call duration 110s during busy hour Maximum Tx Power: 20W Receiver sensitivity: -103 dBm Pathloss (L) is given by: L = 119+ 31.8 log(dkm) Fading margin: 5dB Others loss : 5 dB Transmit antenna gain: 15dBi Thermal noise: -108dBm Minimum GoS guarantee during busy hour: 0.02 Control channels per cell: 2 timeslots

4.1 Compute the number of GSM cells to cover the city. 4.2 Compute the number of TRXs required in each cell.

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Part 2: GPRS Network Dimensioning

The telecom company has decided to extend GSM network to support GPRS whose users requirements are given in Table below.

Packet Switched Traffic during GPRS Peak Hour

(Assume 85% channel occupancy for GPRS channels)

Mean data rate (kbps) Online radio Video Web browsing Total 32 128 64

Average session/ hour 0.1 0.1 0.2

Average duration per session (s) 300 320 450

Amount of Data/h (kbits) 960 4096 5760 10.8Mbits

20% of GSM users subscribe GPRS services. During the GPRS peak hour, 25% of GPRS users and 50% of GSM users are active, respectively.

2.1 Determine if the existing network configuration (i.e. number of TRXs per cell) is sufficient to support additional GPRS requirements as shown in Table above. 2.2 Determine the maximum packet switched traffic in kbps that the existing network configuration can support during GSM busy hour. 2.3 The GSM busy hour and GPRS peak hour in a cell in this GSM/GPRS network occur at the same time. Prove if this requirement is achievable based on the existing configuration. Provide suggestions for network upgrade if applicable.

d) Determine the number of timeslots that are available for GPRS traffic using information in table below.

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Appendix: Erlang Table and Worked Examples

Erlang B Table

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#Channels (TRX, timeslots) Erlang formula needs two of these parameters as the inputs Erlang (Erl.) Blocking probability (%)

xErlangs =

(calls per hour )(averageconversationtime) 3600 Seconds

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