Brief discussion about iSStar application

in LTE radio network optimization

Huawei Technologies Co., LTD

All rights reserved

 Brief discussion about iSStar application in LTE radio network Internal
optimization use

Release history
Date Version Description Author

2011-12-30 V1.00 Draft Wen Qiang

 Brief discussion about iSStar application in LTE radio network Internal use
optimization

Content

Abstract........................................................................................................................................
Engineering parameters list of the whole network plays a very important role in current
LTE radio network planning and optimization (RNP & RNO), how to easily grasp the
current status of the live commercial network can save a lot of time for our daily
optimization. In this report, we consider a new method as a secondary development by
using iSStar, in this method, the program will traverse all types of eNodeBs to export
basic engineering parameters like cell active status, PCI etc. for the whole network in
excel file, While this algorithm also presents a way to export the information for some
selected eNodeB, and this algorithm is also easy to modified and redistributed for future
use.............................................................................................................................................

1 Background..........................................................................................................................
2 Basic principles.....................................................................................................................
2.1 Interactions between iSStar and eNodeB......................................................................
2.2 Required MML commands.............................................................................................
2.3 MML message format....................................................................................................
2.4 Process flow...................................................................................................................

3 Algorithm implementation.....................................................................................................
3.1 Inquire NE list.................................................................................................................
3.2 Connect to NE................................................................................................................
3.3 Send MML command.....................................................................................................
3.4 Receive MML message..................................................................................................
3.5 Process MML message..................................................................................................
3.6 Save result in Excel.......................................................................................................

4 Conclusion and future work................................................................................................

5 Bibliography........................................................................................................................

6 Appendix.............................................................................................................................

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 Brief discussion about iSStar application in LTE radio network Internal use
optimization

Brief discussion about iSStar application

in LTE radio network optimization

Abstract

Engineering parameters of the whole network plays a very important role in current
LTE radio network planning and optimization (RNP & RNO), how to easily grasp the
current status of the live commercial network can save a lot of time for our daily
optimization. In this report, we consider a new method as a secondary development
by using iSStar, in this method, the program will traverse all types of eNodeBs to
export basic engineering parameters like cell active status, PCI etc. for the whole
network in excel file, while this algorithm also presents a way to export the
information for some selected eNodeBs, and this algorithm is also easy to modified
and redistributed for future use.

Keywords: LTE, RNO, iSStar, engineering parameters, cell active status, PCI

1 Background
Being an enhanced tool component of the M2000, Integration Script Star (iSStar) is a
powerful script secondary development platform. The iSStar provides an easy-to-
learn programmable script language - High level Script Language (HSL), powerful
High-level Foundation Classes (HFC), and an integrated development environment
for editing, debugging, and executing the HSL scripts. [1]
Some technical cases discuss iSStar application in 2G and 3G, while as a totally new
radio access technology of LTE, there is rare case discussion about the iSStar
application in it. Due to the fast development of LTE, its demands for fast
data/statistics handling also requires easy use optimization tool and easy grasp of
the engineering parameters of the whole network.
With this requirement in mind, in the following sections we will present the application
of iSStar for LTE radion network optimization. We will discuss basic principle of
iSSTar, the interaction of between iSStar and MML, and the basic procedure flow of
the algorithm. Then, we explain the algorithm in details to show the whole procedure
of it. Moreover, we show that with some easy modifications, we can generate specific
reports for selected eNodeBs. At last, we give some future work and make a
conclusion of this report.

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2 Basic principles
2.1 Interactions between iSStar and eNodeB

|-------- MML command ------>> ---|

iSStar—— | |——eNodeB
|-----<<-- MML response ------------ |

As stated in the above figure, iSStar sends MML command to the eNodeB, then the
iSStar receives the MML response report, at last by processing the MML report using
HSL and HFC functions, we can get the information we required.

2.2 Required MML commands

In LTE radio network planning and optimization, some basic engineering parameters
are required, like cell name, local cell ID, sector ID, eNodeB name, PCI, TAC,
longitude, latitude, cell active status, and local IP address for SCTP link etc., those
parameters can be listed by different MML commands in M2000.
 LST CELL:;
From this command, we can inquire out cell name, local cell ID, sector ID, cell ID,
eNodeB name, PCI and root sequence index, please refer the figure below(some
useless information is deleted).

 DSP CELL:;
From this command, we can inquire out the current cell instance state (whether the
cell is on air or not) for all cells of this eNodeB, if the state is “Uninstall”, it means the
cell is not on air, if the state is “Normal” which indicate the cell is active, please refer
the figure below. Only at least one cell in the whole eNodeB is active, the eNodeB
can be considered as active for X2 interface configurations.

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 LST SECTOR:;
From this command, we can inquire out the longitude and latitude for all cells of this
eNodeB, please refer to the figure below (some useless information is deleted).

 LST CNOPERATORTA:;
Each eNodeB can contain cells belonging to different tracking areas, whereas each
cell can only belong to one TA, so TAC is cell-level parameter while in our current
eNodeB software version (V100R003C00SPC400), we consider TAC as a eNodeB-
level parameter in order for easy parameters management. From this command, we
can inquire out tracking area code for each operator, while by using MML command
LST CNOPERATOR, we can obtain the MCC and MNC of each operator
corresponding to the CN operator ID.

 LST SCTPLINK: SCTPNO=0;

From this command, we can inquire out first local IP address which is applied for S1
& X2 interface configuration, please refer the figure below.

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2.3 MML message format

Each MML message may contain different information, but they follow the same
format, in each message there is a start indentify (‘+++’) to indicate the start point of
the meesage, and also there is information about the MML creation date, time,
message flag, MML command etc., but what we care about is the message body,
which is emphasized in the following figure using red table.
Take “LST CNOPERATORTA” for inquiring eNodeB’s TAC as an example, each
attribute and its value are filled in table format as shown below, the number of the
entries count from 0 from the top left corner for each row and column respectively.

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2.4 Process flow

The algorithm follows the procedure below：

Start

Obtain LTE NE list 3.1

Connect NE 3.2

Fail
Success

Send MML CMD 3.3

Receive MML RPT 3.4

Process MML RPT 3.5

Save result in excel 3.6

End

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3 Algorithm implementation
3.1 Inquire NE list

HFC library has a function GetNEList() to obtain the name list of all the NEs
managed by the M2000, the NEs refer to both connected and disconnected NEs. But
we can obtain LTE NEs using the function GetNEListByType(NEType), the NEType
should be a string for example “BTS3900L LTE”, it will obtain all the NEs with this
type including connected and disconnected ones.
For selected NEs, the iSStar can also read the NE list stored in prepared txt file, and
construct a list which can be used under HSL language’s rules, the structure of the txt
file and the script to read it are given in appendix.

3.2 Connect to NE

HFC library has a function ConnectNE(NEName) to connect the NE with iSStar, only
after this command, the iSStar can send MML command to the NE to excute MML
message. But NE can be connected or disconnected, for disconnected ones, the
MML command cannot be sent to them, so HFC library provides a function
GetNEStatus(NEName) to obtain the status of the specified NE. If the NE is
connected, 1 is returned. Otherwise, 0 is returned.

3.3 Send MML command

When iSStar connects the specified NE successfully, then the HFC function
SenMML(“MML CMD”) can be used to send MML command to the connected LTE
NE. Four MML commands are required for this algorithm, all of them are listed below:
SendMML("LST CELL:;")
SendMML("LST SECTOR:;")
SendMML("LST CNOPERATORTA:;")
SendMML("DSP CELL:;")
SendMML("LST SCTPLNK:SCTPNO=0;")

3.4 Receive MML message

HFC library has a function GetMMLReport(Idx) to receive MML messages stored in

the buffer, Idx here states for the index of the delivering time of MML message and
counts from 0. The messages in a buffer are identified by the location index, which
starts from 0 and increases in sequence. So we use Idx = 0 to get the latest MML
report after we send the MML command.

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HFC library provides a function ParseMMLRpt(Report) to convert the MML message

into a format that can be recognized by other MML message parsing functions. The
return value of the function is the parsing object of the MML message. The parsing
object of the MML message is necessary for other message parsing functions.
Therefore, we need to call this function before calling other message parsing
functions.

3.5 Process MML message

The HFC library gives several functions to obtain the specified attribute value from a
parsed MML message, using these functions, we can obtain the attribute value by
attribute’s name or its index, or we can even acquire the whole column attribute’s
values by its name or its index. Here below are the functions to get required
information from the parsed MML message.
Fuction GetAttrValueByName(pMMLRpt, ObjIndex, PropName, RecordIdx) enables
us to obtain the specified attribute value from a parsed MML message according to
the entry number (the number of MML message, count from 0), attribute name, and
record number (the number of record, count from 0, this is the row number refer to
the section 2.3).
Function GetAttrValueByIdx(pMMLRpt, ObjIndex, PropIndex, RecordIdx) enables us
to obtain the specified attribute value from a parse MML message according to the
entry number(the number of MML message, count from 0), attribute number (the
number of attribute, count from 0, this is the column number refer to the section 2.3),
and record number (the number of record, count from 0, this is the row number refer
to the section 2.3).
Function GetColumnByName(mParser, ObjIndex, ColumnName) enables us to
obtain the data of a column in the specified entry according to the column name.
Function GetColumnByIndex(mParser, ObjIndex, ColumnIndex) enables you to
obtain the data of the specified column according to the column number (count from
0, this is the column number refer the the section 2.3).
Here we recommand to use the function GetColumnByName(mParser, ObjIndex,
ColumnName) to acquire large number of information due to its simplicity.

3.6 Save result in Excel

The HFC library provides a function NewReport() to create a new report, and we can
use funtions AddNewSheet(“SheetName”) and AddNewTable(SheetHandle, Row,
Column, “TableName”) to create new sheet and new table. Then we can save the
collected information use the function SetTableValue(TableHandle, ValueList). Finally,
the report can be saved use the funtion SaveReportAs("Path").

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And also we can use some functions to make the report looks more formal, for
example we can make the tile in turquoise color, and mark the unistalled cells in red
color. To achieve the first demand, we select the title’s region by using function
AddRange(TableHandle, RowFrom, ColFrom, RowTo, ColTo), then color this area by
using the function SetRangeBGColor(RangeHandler, Color). For the second
demand, we can first generate a style by using ReportStyle(Red), then select those
areas which need to be colored by Selector('$$ == "Uninstall"',StyleHandler), finally
use SetTableValueEx(TableHandle,ValueList, ConditionExps) to save the collected
information with the condition defined above.

4 Conclusion and future work

From this report, we first briefly discuss and summarize the application of iSStar in
LTE radio network planning and optimization, using this method, we can export any
information which can be obtained through M2000 using MML command. But most
importantly, we can inqure out all the most critical engineering parameters used in
LTE RNO, this report presents some directions for work in this area. From our
algorithm, the output is given in the following figure.

There are also some cases in support.huawei.com that introduce the method to use
iSStar to do LTE radio network optimization, like exporting intra-frequency neighbors
[2], but due to the introduction of CME, we can easily export all kinds of neighbor
relationships for all cells through CME.
But for other information like cell active status, longitude, latitude and IP address etc.,
from current CME, we cannot export those information. For example, using iSStar to
send MML command to M2000 is the most reliable way to check the current cell
active status as the cell may be bloked after activation, while in CME the state is still
active.
This algorithm is not dedicated for LTE RNO use, all the information required using
MML command can also be obtained through iSStar, and more important, iSStar is
easy for batch process. It’s this algorithm’s implementation can save a lot of time for

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our daily work, gives additional opportunities in this area, and pertain to the RNO
exploration of underlying processes.

5 Bibliography
[1], iSStar User Guide, M2000 V200R009, Huawei Technologies Co., LTD. Shenzhen,
2009-06-30
[2], 基于 ISSTAR 编写的 MML 邻区批量导出脚本, c00136721, 2010-08-20

6 Appendix
I. Scripts

Script for Operator Tele2: Tele2_cell_parameters .hs l

Script for Operator Telenor: Telenor_cell_parameters .hs l

Script for selected NE list: LTE_cell_parameters _s elected_lis t.hs l

sitelist.txt
Site list in txt file:

II. Running result

Tele2_LTE_Cell_Pa
rameters.xls

III. MML response report

MML Response
Report.rar

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