Ericsson GSM OSS Toolbox

General Information
g station features a powerful data-analysis platform for evaluating data coming from various interfaces of cellular networks. The Ericsson GSM OSS toolbox contains a comprehensive suite of utilities for processing Ericsson OSS generated files. The OSS files supported by g station are: Mobile Report Results (MRR) contain a summary of the measurements performed by all the mobiles in the system. The MRR files provide the network engineer with various metrics of the networks performance as they were measured by GSM phones carried by the users. Neighbor Cell Stats (NCS) contains various counters associated with network performance that are logged by each individual cell on the GSM network. In particular, many counters associated with the uplink and downlink performance and handovers are recorded in the NCS files. System data provides an image of the network configuration. The system data is used by network engineers to verify the settings of the network and to validate suggested optimization changes. Using the OSS files, g station provides the following set of analyzes: 1. GMRR_Coverage MRR based analysis for GSM cells with coverage related problems. 2. GMRR_Quality MRR based analysis for identifying GSM cells with quality related problems.

Info Sheet
3. GMRR_FER MRR based analysis for identifying GSM cells having high FER. 4. GMRR_TimingAdvance MRR based analysis used for identifying the actual cell service area based on the reported TA values. 5. GNCS_OvershootingCells NCS based analysis determining cells with a strong signal far away from the intended coverage area. 6. GNCS_MissingNeighbor NCS-based analysis to identify cells with significant missing neighbors. 7. GNCS_NeighborRemoval NCS-based analysis to identify cells with neighbors that could be removed. 8. GNCS_Handovers - NCS-based analysis to identify cells with high handover failures and/or unused neighbors. 9. GNCS_OutOfServiceCells NCS-based analysis that identifies GSM cells with zero reports over the collection period. 10. GNCS_SystemMatch NCS-based utility that calculates the distances between cells based on a GSM system in g station. Together, the OSS and drive test data provide a complete and statistically valid set of network performance indicators. Fig. 1 shows a process that is commonly followed in the network optimization. Using the OSS and drive test data toolboxes, the implementation of the process within g station is fully automatic. As a result, the ability of engineers to find, diagnose and troubleshoot network RF problems is greatly enhanced.

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Gathering of the system information Gathering of the OSS data MRR, NCS, GPEH, Cell site information

Performance targets met

Exit optimization

no
OSS data analysis and problem identification

Drive testing data collection TEMS automatic, investigator + UETR

Figure 2. Screen capture of g station Missing Neighbor analysis The analysis uses g station worksheet reports to summarize most problematic neighbor relationships, and the map display locates the most problematic missing neighbors geographically. Recommended computing platform: Microsoft Windows Vista, Server 2003, XP or 2000. Intel Dual Core, 2.0GHz processor or equivalent. 2GB of RAM, 500MB free disk space (for g station files) 10GB or more of free disk space (for data files).

Network reconfiguration

Figure 1. Network optimization and problem troubleshooting workflow