How to Investigate and Optimize LTE

Throughput in 5 Steps ?
By Azar Leave a Comment
Lets talk about Throughput Optimization.

The reactions you get from colleagues on Throughput

Optimization
If you are going to ask this question from an academic or
researcher.

You would receive one of the two responses below.

1. Maximize SINR available

2. Reduce Network Load

Those are rationally and scientifically proven facts.

However, if you are performance engineer when you see

Throughput Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are getting
degraded ?

What do you do ?
In a live network. Do you always have a choice to perform either
of the above two steps ? If yes, you can start from scratch.

Otherwise, below are the quick steps you can take note of and
start investigating when it comes to improving LTE Throughput

Optimization.

Throughput Optimization
In LTE, end user quality of service is impacted by the
cumulative effect of various nodes and interfaces. There is not
one factor, but a number

of contributing factors which affect the end user throughput.

PREREQUISTE : General Guidelines

Before diving into Throughput
Investigation:
 1. One of the first things to do is: confirm parameter settings,
system configuration and RF environment.
2. KPIs co-relate and depend on each other. Therefore
knowledge of other KPIs such as Accessibility, Retainability
, Mobility etc. is helpful to know , how they are performing .
For example if Accessibility and Retainiabilty KPIs are bad,
this will directly influence the throughput and end user QoS.
3. Do a site hardware audit (including jumpers, cables,
connectors, antennas etc.)
4. Investigation of RF environment is a good idea to perform
such as SINR, antenna types and planning.

Cumulative Effect on Throughput

The main factors which have a cumulative effect on

throughput are shown in the figure below.
Throughput is a cumulative of Whole Network health

The above diagram shows us, how various nodes and factors
can affect the user throughput.

As an RF Performance engineer, you need to have knowledge

of what counters do you need to take a look at in order to
improve throughput?
Different vendors can have different names for the same
counters.

Question:

What counters to look for when looking for Throughput

improvement in LTE ?

Answer: It is better to understand the behavior of a certain part

of the network. After that you can always figure out, where to go
and look for counters. (Find the exact counter name in the
documentation of the specific vendor)

What Sections and their Counters to

Look for w.r.t Throughput?
As from the diagram above, you can look at the 7 sections to
start with in order to improve throughput at RAN side.
Consider checking corresponding counters
In order to check the throughput being effected due to each of
the section. One recommendation is to check the counters for
each of the

section. The counters value, will tell you, how throughput is

performing with respect to that specific section of the network.
Based on the

value , you can take respective action to mitigate the negative

influence (if thats the case)

Channel Quality Indicator CQI :

Look for CQI counters. I am not going to list counters here
specifically. For Samsung, it will have different counters
compared to what Ericsson will have and same goes on for
other vendors.

Throughput:
Look for Throughput counters for a specific vendor in
Downlink and Uplink.
 Counters such as which show , how much data is there in
PDCP , or how much data volume was accumulated in the
last Transmission Time Interval (TTI) .
Also the counter which keeps track of how throughput is
being estimated for the UE is important to know.

Interference :
In Downlink (DL) ,

There are no counters at the UE side.

But the way we measure DL RF conditions is based on the

following which measure interference on the UE side.

For example, CQI distribution counters.

UE Rank Reporting distribution counters and Transmission rank

distribution counters, will give you RF information,

which will translate to interference condition at the DL UE side. .

For Uplink (UL)

In this case check for Interference counters for Interference on :

PUCCH
PUSCH
SINR Distribution on PUCCH
SINR Distribution on PUSCH

For Block Error Rate (BLER)

In Downlink (DL):

For Downlink measure, you need to look for Hybrid Automatic

Repeat Request (HARQ) Acknowledgements and Negative
acknowledgements counters for each modulation type such as:

QPSK
16-QAM
64-QAM

Having information of these counters, can help identify BLER.

In Uplink (UL) :

For Uplink. Measure HARQ UL success and Failure for each

modulation type in uplink such as:

16- QAM
QPSK

Using the above counters, you can identify BLER for UL case

Scheduling:

For Downlink

In this case, look for counter which keeps track of UEs in Active
mode at cell level. Also counters, which keep track of UEs
which are being scheduled in the DL.
For Uplink :

In this case, look for counter which keeps track of UEs in Active
mode at cell level in Uplink. Also counters, which keep track of
UEs which are being scheduled in the UL.

Conclusion:
The above list is not exhaustive. However it gives the starting
pointers in order to investigate whenever you are faced with
Throughput Optimization in LTE from Access Network
perspective.

Still have Questions ? Speak Up your mind below in the

comments.