CS FALLBACK

ISSUES
 CSFB SIGNALLING FLOW - SIMPLIFIED
MME RNC MSC
UE eNodeB

1
RRC: Paging (cn-Domain CS) S1AP: Paging SGsAP: Paging Req
3 3 MT Only
SGsAP: Service Reject
RRC: RRC Connection Request 2
4
RRC: RRC Connection Setup
RRC: RRC Connection Setup Complete /
NAS: EXTENDED SERVICE REQUEST

S1AP: Initial UE Message/

NAS: EXTENDED SERVICE REQUEST
SGsAP: Service Request
MT Only
S1AP: Initial Context Setup (w CS Fallback Indicator)
5 S1AP: Initial Context Setup Response

RRC: RRC Connection Release (Redirection Info)

S1AP: UE Context Release Request (cause Radio Network – cs-fallback triggered)

S1AP: UE Context Release Command (cause Radio Network – cs-fallback triggered)

S1AP: UE Context Release Complete

6 Acquire 3G cell & read SIBs

7 3G RRC Connection Establishment

NAS: CM SERVICE REQUEST or PAGING RESONSE

8 RAB and Call Setup

 CSFB FAILURE POINTS
1. MSC has to correctly identify the subscriber is SGs associated and Page the MME.
• We have seen cases where this association is not always correct which may prevent the page ibeing correctly sent to the MME n
the first place

2. MME may reject the page

• MME stats show probably about 1% of SGs pages for CSFB are rejected by MME. Tek probes can be used to try narrow these
rejections down to root cause.

3. MME may page UE incorrectly due to MME Duplicate IMSI fault. T2 have a workaround cleaning script running – how
effectively is this mitigating the fault?
4. UE may fail to respond to the LTE page for many reasons
• For example, UE is busy doing TAC updates, moving from LTE to 3G or vica-versa, LTE RRC congestion or poor RF especially in
uplink at cell edge, paging congestion etc…)
• Early NTI testing saw cases where the MME sends a PS-Domain page instead of a CS-Domain page so UE does not respond with
correct message (responds with Service Request instead of Extended Service Request, which means CSFB is not triggered) –
unlikely to still happen
• Early NTI cases also saw cases where UE was busy transitioning from Idle to Connected Mode right when the MME was paging the
UE. UE did not read the page (an RRC Connected UE is looking for CS Service Notification message, not paging for CSFB) and
MME didn’t appear to be smart enough to recognise this state transition and send CS Service Notification). This would be
reasonably rare but I captured at least two examples during my testing so it does happen.

5. MME or eNB fail to correctly action the CSFB request (i.e. fail to initiate Redirection)
6. UE falls off LTE but fails to find a suitable 3G cell to make the call
7. UE falls back to 3G successfully, fails to respond to page (e.g. 3G RRC Congestion)
8. UE falls back successfully to 3G, responds to page but then actual Voice call fails to setup for all the normal reasons
of voice congestion.
 CSFB TESTING

• Independent test house Anstel showed Optus CSFB call setup failure rate In Sydney CSB and
metro is higher than Telstra
• Optus: 34 call setup failures
• Telstra: 15 call setup failures

• Initial E2E drive test of CSFB with Samsung Galaxy 3 shows the following main categories for
the voice call failures when the UE is already on LTE:
Failure Category LTE MT LTE MO
CSFB request not responded to by network 5 1 (4%)

UE doesn’t receive the page 1 3 9 (36%)

UE doesn’t respond to the page 4 1 (4%)

Modify EPS Bearer Reject 9 (36%) 5 (20%)

Note: Percentages are the percentage of failures that are due to this cause, not the actual failure rate of the CSFB

• In addition, over half of the MT call failures while the UE was ‘classified’ as being on
3G were in fact caused by the UE reselecting to LTE at the time the call was being
made
 MAIN ISSUES

• Over 50% of observed MT failures in Swissqual testing were seen to be caused by the MT call
(page) coming into the LTE UE when the UE was not in a reachable state, because it had
rejected the Modify EPS Bearer Request procedure
1. UE has returned from 3G to 4G and successfully
performed a Combined Tracking Area Update
2. MME initiates a Modify EPS Bearer Context
Request message to update the QOS
parameters from 3G to 4G (e.g. max bit rates)
3. UE rejects the request  still unknown why
4. MME seems to wait 10s before reacting, and
then Detaches UE asking for it to re-attach – why
take so long?
5. UE takes 10s to initiate new Attach – again, why
so long?

UE is unreachable for paging during this

whole 20s period!!!!

Interesting Note

Telstra don’t have this issue as they

don’t even perform this procedure –
question is with Architect team to
figure out why we need to do it

• Table below lists some of the initiatives we can undertake to improve various aspects of CSFB performance
Config / Initiative
Separate redirection targets from
CSFB and coverage based data
redirections
Measurement Based redirection
(with multiple configured target layers)
CSFB via PS HO
Deferred SIB Reading on 3G
Fast Return back to LTE
Redirection with RIM
CSFB INITIATIVES
NSN Huawei Comments
No • Allows CSFB to U9 in poor U21 areas and when U9 is not
Yes
(eRAN3.0) congested – manual area engineer optimisation
• Can improve CSFB target layer selection, if algorithms are
RL40 Yes intelligent enough (unknown)
• Increases delay in call setup
• Reduces CSFB delay, improves reliability of call setup by
RL40 Yes reserving call resources in 3G
• Requires CN support, most likely not fully available
• Speeds redirection based CSFB by allowing UE to access
Yes RAN14 3G cell without reading all SIBs (e.g. skip SIB11)
• Telstra are doing this today
• Allows RNC to redirect LTE capable UE straight back to
LTE when releasing the voice call (redirection)
RU40 RAN14 • Risky with Ericsson and Huawei implementation as no
prior check on LTE suitability is performed
• Telstra are doing this today
• Allows eNB to acquire 3G SIB info for target cells and
deliver to UE in RRC Release Redirection message – speeds
? Yes up cell access on 3G
• Huawei support today on both 3G and LTE, but NSN MME
does not yet support