COVERAGE OPTIMISATION

The coverage was optimized using RSCP (received signal code power) parameter. In the UMTS cellular communication system, RSCP denotes the power measured by a receiver on a particular physical communication channel. It is used as an indication of signal strength, as a handover criterion, in downlink power control, and to calculate path loss. In CDMA systems, a physical channel corresponds to a particular spreading code, hence the name (Received signal code power). A drive test was done in Kimihurura area as shown on the map below:

Fig.1. Drive test area-Kimihurura The coverage was optimized by increasing the electrical tilt at Mburabuturo site on the second sector from 1 degree to 9 degrees, by changing the parameter electricalAntennaTilt in the NodeB from 10 to 90.

Fig.2. Coverage map before optimisation

Fig.3 Coverage map after optimisation

The RSCP was measured before and after optimization. As shown in Fig.2 and Fig.3 legend, the area having between -60dBm and -40dBm was 0.3% but after optimization, it increased to 3.18%. The area between -70dBm and -60dBm increased from 0.99% to 12.72%. The area between -80dBm and -70dBm increased from 7.74% to 22.97%. The area with bad coverage between -105dBm and -90dBm reduced from 46.33% to 18.37%. 3G Network Quality Optimisation The network quality was measured by considering the Ec/No (energy per chip over the noise) received in the drive tested area. The value between -13dBm and 0 dBm is acceptable. The quality was improved by increasing the primaryCpichPower parameter for Mburabuturo sector 2 in NYRNC1 (Nyarutarama RNC) from 290dBm to 320dBm using Moshell tool as shown below. PrimaryCpichPower is the power to be used for transmitting the PCPICH. The Primary Common Pilot Channel (PCPICH) is used by the UEs to first complete identification of the Primary Scrambling Code used for scrambling Primary Common Control Physical Channel (P-CCPCH) transmissions from the Node B. The primaryCpichPower was increased to make Mburabuturo sector 2 a dominant cell in that area.

Fig.4. Ec/No before optimization

Fig.5 Ec/No After Optimisation As it can be seen from Fig.5, after the optimization the area with Ec/No between -9dBm and 7dBm has increased from 3.27% to 9.54%. Before optimization there was no area between 7dBm and -5Bm as well as -5dBm and 0dBm. 3G Network Accessibility Optimisation If a cell has poor accessibility it is typically due to either some form of congestion or a hardware/software fault or a misconfiguration. Accessibility should be monitored independently for the different RAB types (e.g. Speech, CS Video, PS Interactive R99, PS Interactive HSDPA, etc.) as in certain situations only one of the RAB types will be affected. To optimise the accessibility for both data and voice we concentrate on two main radio resources. The channel elements (CEs) and HS-PDSCH codes. Channel Element (CE) is the required baseband processing capacity and hardware for one Speech RAB (AMR 12.2 kbps) connection. The definition of Channel Elements as the capacity resources in WCDMA radio base stations is not standardized by 3GPP, which implies differences in expressing Base Station capacity by different vendors. Ericssons definition of a Channel Element is linked to Dedicated Channel (DCH) resources of the RBS, i.e. only to the resources required for user data handling for the different RAB types. This definition includes both dedicated data channels and dedicated signaling channels. Processing capacity required for common signaling channels and certain radio network functionality is not included in the definition of a Channel Element.

High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) is an enhanced 3G (third generation) mobile telephony communications protocol in the High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) family, also dubbed 3.5G, 3G+ or turbo 3G, which allows networks based on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) to have higher data transfer speeds and capacity. Current HSDPA deployments support down-link speeds of up to 42 Mbit/s. Further speed increases are available with HSPA+, which provides speeds of up to 337 Mbit/s with Release 11 of the 3GPP standards. For HSDPA, a new transport layer channel, High-Speed Downlink Shared Channel (HS-DSCH), has been added to UMTS release 5 and further specification. It is implemented by introducing three new physical layer channels: HS-SCCH, HS-DPCCH and HS-PDSCH. The High Speed-Shared Control Channel (HS-SCCH) informs the user that data will be sent on the HS-DSCH, 2 slots ahead. The Uplink High Speed-Dedicated Physical Control Channel (HSDPCCH) carries acknowledgment information and current channel quality indicator (CQI) of the user. This value is then used by the base station to calculate how much data to send to the user devices on the next transmission. The High Speed-Physical Downlink Shared Channel (HSPDSCH) is the channel to which the above HS-DSCH transport channel is mapped that carries actual user data. The tests were done on Mburabuturo site (W_0004) which was performing badly for both data and voice in terms of accessibility. The KPIs that are considered in this work are; the radio resource control (RRC) set up, Radio Access Bearer (RAB) establishment and call set up in general for both data and voice. RAB is a term used in UMTS to identify the service the AS (Access Stratum) provides to the NAS (Non Access Stratum) for transfer of user data between the UE (User Equipment) and the CN (Core Network). The first step was to check the available resources in the RBS for both CEs and HS-PDSCH codes. The number of available channel elements available in the RBS in the uplink is given by the parameter availableRbsChannelElementsUplink and as shown below, we had 192CEs in the uplink.

The maximum number of HS-PDSCH codes (maxNumHsPdschCodes) allowed per cell was 5 codes per cell as shown below:

The accessibility optimization was done by installing two RAX boards of 128CEs capacity each in Mburabuturo RBS and increasing the number of HSDPA codes to 15 codes per cell. After the changes the CEs increased to 448CEs in the uplink as shown below:

After these changes the accessibility, and throughput for data has increased tremendously as show in figures below:

Fig.6 RAB Assignment Success Rate As shown in Fig.6, the RAB assignment success rate has increased

Fig.7 RRC Control Success Rate for Packet Switched (PS), R99 data

Figure 7 shows an increase in RRC success rate for R99 data after increasing the channel Elements.

Fig.8 Call Set Up Success rate for Speech Fig.8 also shows that the call set up speech has also increased, the fact that some values go beyond 100% is because some calls are started in one cell and handed over to W_00041 and the call is ended there. For example RRC is started in one cell and RAB assignment happens in W_00041.

Fig.9 Call Set Up Success Rate for HSDPA Fig.9 shows an increase in HSDPA call set up success rate after increasing the HSDPA codes from 5 to 15 codes per cell.

Fig.10 Average HSDPA Throughput per User in W_00043 Fig.10 shows increase inAverage HSDPA throughput per user from about 300Kbps to 600Kbps after increasing HSDPA codes from 5 to 15 codes per cell.