Slow Frequency Hopping and Dynamic Channel Assignment in GSM networks

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Providing high capacity in existing networks at low cost is the actual challenge of telecommunication
operators due to traffic growth. A classical network design with the combination of tight frequency reuse,
sectorisation, power control and frequency hopping does not allow to reach ultimate GSM performances. So,
techniques such as micro/macro cells and efficient radio resources management have to be employed.

In this paper, we propose and investigate dynamic channel allocation strategies which are very promising
techniques for improving system performances. Various DCA have already been proposed in the literature
([5], [6]). Most of these papers deal with the call blocking rate minimization or the carrier to interference
ratio (C/I). Very few methods deal with radio GSM metrics RXLEV and RXQUAL [9]. Moreover, we
present a DCA technique which can be combined with a frequency hopping scheme.

This paper is organized as follows: section 2 gives a complete description of classical GSM performances.
In section 3, a DCA strategy is investigated. Results are evaluated in terms of FER. This algorithm uses SFH
and allocation criteria are based on the GSM metrics RXLEV and RXQUAL. The conclusion can be found
in section 4.

All simulation results presented in this paper were obtained with the following (default) network
configuration:
• Traffic CHannel (TCH) frequency reuse pattern 3,
• 144 omni-sectorial sites with 4 transmitter-receiver (TRX) TCH per cell,
• 70% load. The network load is defined as the number of busy channels,
• no Power control, shadowing standard deviation 8dB, Rayleigh fading [1],
• Only cumulative distribution function (cdf) performances on TCH TRX is considered,
• Mobile arrivals follow a Poisson process and calls duration are random exponential variables with
parameter 1/120 sec,
• Only co-channel interference levels are considered.

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In GSM, it is usually considered that when interference level is 9dB below the useful signal level, the source
and channel coding make the speech quality good enough. So, it is considered that system performance is
acceptable if only 10% of worst values in the C/I cdf are below 9dB. There is an equivalent definition in

1
Bouygues Telecom - Research Department - 51, avenue de l’Europe - 78444 Vélizy Cedex France.
terms of Frame Error Rate: if the FER is below 1% during a communication, system performance is
acceptable. In this section, we present simulation results on the GSM system performances. More precisely,
we study the impact of the frequency reuse pattern, the power control and the Slow Frequency Hopping.

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Frequencies are limited resources. To increase the capacity, engineers have introduced the notion of
frequency reuse pattern [2]: it is defined as the smallest set of adjacent sectors in which we use all the
available frequencies only once. The smaller the frequency reuse, the greater the capacity of the network.
However, the smaller the frequency reuse, the greater the interference levels. In practice, operators generally
use two frequency reuse patterns. Indeed, due to continuous transmission on the BCCH (Broadcast Control
CHannel) carrier, traffic channel (TCH) frequency reuse is usually smaller than BCCH reuse. In a typical
network configuration, a reuse factor of 12 is used for BCCH channels and a reuse factor of 3 is used for
TCH channels. C/I cumulative distribution function (cdf) performances of three frequency reuse scenarios
are presented in figure 1: reuse 3, 4 and 12. Traffic channels are assigned uniformly at random. At 10%
worst cases in the cdf, C/I value is 5dB for reuse 3, 7dB for reuse 4 and 16.5dB with frequency reuse pattern
12.

Frequency reuse 3 - 4 - 12 no fast fading

1
0,9
0,8 10%
0,7
0,6 reuse 3
CDF

0,5 reuse 4
0,4
reuse 12
0,3
0,2
0,1
0
-15,0 -9,4 -3,8 1,8 7,4 13,1 18,7 24,3 29,9 35,5
C/I (dB)

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Including fast fading in the simulation, we observe (see figure 2) at 10% worst cases in the C/I cdf a
degradation of more than 4dB. The corresponding Frame Error Rate is about 12% (more details about FER
can be found in [7]).
 Reuse 3 - Rayleigh fading

1
0,9 10%
0,8 no fast fading
0,7 fast fading
0,6
CDF

0,5
0,4
0,3
0,2
0,1
0
-15,0 -9,4 -3,8 1,8 7,4 13,1 18,7 24,3 29,9 35,5
C/I (dB)

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Several algorithms have been introduced in GSM to improve cellular performances: power control, slow
frequency hopping (SFH), discontinuous transmission (DTX), etc. The power control is a GSM procedure
[9] which minimizes the transmitted power of the mobile and BTS (Base Station Transceiver) while
maintaining the C/I. A basic decentralized power control algorithm on RXLEV with partial compensation is
presented in this paper:

Power Control factor = k *(RXLEV - Threshold) with k in [0;1]

Power control is generally used on both radio links. Figure 3 presents uplink C/I cdf (no fast fading) in reuse
3: at 10% worst cases, power control ( with k=0.7) gives 2dB gain. In a fast fading environment, FER is
about 8.5%.

Power Control on RXLEV

1
0,9 10%
0,8 no power control
0,7 power control
0,6
CDF

0,5
0,4
0,3
0,2
0,1
0
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C/I (dB)

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There exists two main classes of site configuration depending on the type and the number of antennas: the
first type is the omni site, the second one corresponds to sectorised site (a common configuration is a 3-
sectorised site). At fixed C/I cdf performances, sectorizing a network composed of omni sites increases
capacity of about 1.5.

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Small TCH frequency reuse pattern (3 or 1) produces high capacity networks but also induces high
interference levels. So, interference managing techniques such as Frequency hopping are required to secure
the radio link quality. Several papers can be found in the literature on SFH ([3],[4]). So, we just recall that
frequency hopping introduces two phenomena: the frequency diversity (i.e. fast fading diversity) and
interference diversity.
The GSM SFH algorithm [8] has been introduced in the simulator with the following configuration:
• Hopping Sequence Numbers (HSN) are assigned uniformly at random to each cell of the network
(HSN=0 is forbidden - no cyclic hopping).
• There is no particular MAIO (Mobile Allocation Index Offset) planning: in each cell, MAIO are
assigned uniformly at random to each TRX.

At fixed load, gains of this technique strongly depend on the number of hopping frequencies and the number
of TRX per cell (see figure 4). SFH with 4 hopping frequencies reduces FER from 12% to 9%. With power
control and the same network configuration, 8 hopping frequencies are necessary to obtain 1% FER target.

Slow frequency Hopping

10

9 Uplink FER
8 Downlink FER
% Frame Error Rate

1
4 6 8 10 12
Nbr of hopping frequencies (4 TRX)

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In this section, we present a dynamic decentralized channel allocation strategy based on uplink radio GSM
metrics.
In GSM systems, the BTS performs every 104 TDMA frame a measurement report composed of:
• Uplink RXLEV and RXQUAL of busy channels (the RXQUAL is derived from the Bit Error Rate),
• The interference level in unallocated channels (the uplink RXLEV of a free channel represents its
 interference level).

From these data, we suggest to allocate a traffic channel as follows:

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1. Free channels of cell c are rearranged in increasing order of uplink RXLEV level,

2. The channel with the lowest uplink RXLEV level is assigned to the mobile m.

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1. Find in cell c the mobile m1 allocated to channel ch1 with the greatest uplink RXQUAL,

2. Select the free channel ch2 in the cell c with the lowest RXLEV,

3. m1 is reassigned to ch2.

This strategy does not depend on the network configuration. Therefore, this strategy can be combined with a
classical SFH scheme. In this case, the results are very interesting (see table 1). We observe a FER gain of
about 25% on uplink and 15% on downlink. The reassignment process causes 2 intra-cell handoffs per
communication.

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Uplink %FER SFH 8.76 4.35 2.47 1.57 1.16
Uplink %FER SFH + DCA 6.96 3.22 1.81 1.05 0.73

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Downlink %FER SFH 9.88 5.04 2.85 1.79 1.16
Downlink %FER SFH + DCA 8.62 4.24 2.45 1.43 1.00
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In this paper, GSM system performances have been presented and DCA strategy based on the GSM metrics
has been investigated. The proposed DCA technique improves FER performances of 25% on uplink and
15% on downlink. Of course, several other strategies have been tested. However, the investigated method
seems to provide best gains in terms of FER in a SFH context.

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