EDGE Downlink Throughput Performance

In a Forest Environment

MALEK SRAJ

Masters Degree Project Stockholm, Sweden 2006

EDGE Downlink Throughput Performance

In a Forest Environment

MALEK SRAJ

Masters Degree Project Stockholm, Sweden 2006

COS/RCS 2006-2 c Malek Sraj, Februari 2006 Tryck: Tryckeriet Ladan AB

KTH, Communication Systems SE-164 40 Kista SWEDEN

Master Thesis EDGE Downlink Throughput Performance in a Forest Environment The Royal Institute of Technology Radio Communication Systems Lab
Author: Advisor: Examiner: Malek Sraj Mats Nilson Jens Zander

February 10, 2006

Abstract

Mobile Telephony has witnessed considerable growth over the past few years. Since the dawn of the rst analogue systems, the volume of subscribers was constantly increasing. In recent years GSM networks have witnessed an unparalleled growth and today they are available in almost all countries and regions around the globe. Although EDGE technology has been available since some time, it has not witnessed considerable spread among operators. However, as a step towards complying with regulators, operators need to cover rural areas with 3G services. From hence, EDGE was the technology of choice since it provides coverage and high data rates in a scenario where the population is scarce and high throughput is wanted. This thesis investigates the throughput coverage performance of recently deployed EDGE networks in rural forest areas. Thereby providing an insight as to what bit rates to expect on the downlink in a scenario which is to be carried out in the 3GSM rollout plan for several operators. A case study is carried out in the forest areas around Jonkoping where EDGE capabilities are being deployed. A selection of typical forest environments and dierent sites have been chosen so as to provide a sample of forest areas across Sweden. Measurements in those test areas have been carried out and later extracted and analyzed. The results reveal that the throughput in those areas was below expectations and that the main reason lied in the high block error rate experienced even when the signal to interference-noise ratio is high. The MCS selection was also not the same as anticipated by simulations, due to the high Block Error Rate which forced the base station to choose lower Modulation Coding Schemes than the ones perferred at a specic signal level. In the end a rough expectation of the throughput coverage is concluded from the results acquired by this thesis and those provided by a thesis carried in parallel, which involved a parallel study of the propagation model in the same areas.

Acknowledgements

A teacher of mine once told me that whoever you meet and whatever you do becomes part of who you are and you become part of them. In these words I can summarize my experience in Sweden and the love and appreciation I have for my friends. I would also like to extend my deepest appreciation and my sincerest love to my family, who were always there..for better and for worse. It would not have been possible if it were not for my fathers struggle to educate me, my sister, and my brothers... It would not have been possible if it were not for my mothers patience and support throughout the years, while my father was working abroad. This thesis would not have been accomplished if it were not for the support of many people. I would like from hence, to extend my special gratitude to my advisor, Mats Nilson, for his discussions and guidance during the course of the thesis. I would also like to thank my sponsors at Skogforsk, represented by Bertil Liden, for accepting me to carry out this thesis and lending me their help. Also appreciation to Magnus Sommer and Jan Loven from Telia for their help in testing their network. Also I would like to thank Prof. Jens Zander for agreeing to be my examiner, ne tuning my thesis, and providing a fruitful atmosphere at Wireless@KTH. Finally special thanks to Prof. Johan Montelius for providing the tools necessary to carry out the thesis.

Contents

Table of Contents List of Figures 1 Introduction 1.1 A Brief History of Mobile Telephony 1.2 Positioning EDGE in the 3G Rollout 1.3 Wireless and The Forest Industry . . 1.4 A Practical Case Study . . . . . . . 1.5 Problem Denition . . . . . . . . . . 1.6 Previous Work . . . . . . . . . . . .

iv v 1 1 2 3 4 4 6 9 9 10 10 11 13 14 15 16 16 19 20 22 23 23 25 25 26 27

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2 Technical Background 2.1 General Packet Radio Services Components . 2.2 Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution . . 2.2.1 Physical Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.2 RLC/MAC Layers . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 TCP/IP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.1 Slow Start and Congestion Avoidance 2.3.2 Fast Retransmit and Fast Recovery . 3 Data Collection and Analysis 3.1 Forest Environment Overview 3.2 EDGE Cells Overview . . . . 3.3 Signal Quality . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Measurement Procedure . . . 3.5 Equipment . . . . . . . . . . 3.5.1 TEMS . . . . . . . . . 3.5.2 TCP Settings . . . . . 3.6 Data Analysis . . . . . . . . . 3.6.1 Logged Data Specics 3.6.2 Data Processing . . .

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4 Results 4.1 Throughput and Distance . . . . . 4.2 Throughput, SINR, and RXLEV . 4.3 BLER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 MCS Utilization . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Sample-Cell Coverage Anticipation 5 Conclusion 6 Future Work Bibliography

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List of Figures

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7

Architecture top view of EDGE/GPRS. . . . . . 8-PSK constellation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Segmentation procedure of an LLC frame. . . . . Payload relationship for MCS belonging to family

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10 10 12 13 17 18 18 20 21 26 31 33 34 36 37 39 41

Tree Type Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Trunk Width Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tree Age Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Antenna pattern Type-1 used at Sites 1,2, and 3. . . . . . Antenna pattern Type-2 used at Site 4, vertical polarization. Data Analysis Relationships. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Throughput vs. Distance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Throughput measured against the perceived SINR and RXLEV at each site. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mean throughput of all sites measured against the perceived SINR and RXLEV. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BLER of all sites measured against the perceived SINR and RXLEV. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mean BLER of all sites measured against the perceived SINR and RXLEV. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Modulation Coding Scheme (MCS) distribution over SINR and RXLEV. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . RXLEV coverage in a cell with radius of 5 Km. . . . . . .

Acronyms

3G Third Generation 3GPP Third Generation Partnership Project 3GSM Third Generation Global System for Mobile ACK Acknowledgment AMPS American Mobile Phone System ARQ Automatic Repeat Request BLE Block Error BLER Block Error Rate BSS Base Station Subsystem BSSGP Base Station System GPRS Protocol BTS Base Transceiver Station CIR Carrier to Interference Ratio CW Congestion Window EDGE Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution ETSI European Telecommunication Standards Institute FTP File Transfer Protocol GERAN GSM EDGE Radio Access Network GGSN Gateway GPRS Support Node GMSK Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying GPRS General Packet Radio Service GSM Global System for Mobile

HTTP Hyper Text Transfer Protocol IP Internet Protocol IR Incremental Redundancy LA Link Adaptation LLC Logical Link Control LQC Link Quality Control MAC Medium Access Control MCS Modulation Coding Scheme MS Mobile Station MSC Mobile Switching Center MSS Maximum Segment Size NMT Nordic Mobile Telephony PDC Personal Digital Cellular PDCH Packet Data Channel PDU Packet Data Unit PSK Phase Shift Keying RLC Radio Link Control RTT Round Trip Time SGSN Serving GPRS Support Node SINR Signal to Interference and Noise Ratio SNR Signal to Noise Ratio SST Slow Start Threshold TACS Total Access Cellular System TBF Temporary Block Flow TCP Transmission Control Protocol TDMA Time Division Multiple Access TS Time Slots UDP Universal Datagram Protocol

VLR Visitor Location Register WCDMA Wideband Code Division Multiple Access

Chapter

Introduction
According to the statistics [1], there are 620 live GSM networks spanning 210 countries and serving more than 1.5 billion subscribers. The increased demand for packet data services has pushed the wireless industry to seek new technologies that would satisfy this growing demand. A fruit of this search was GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), which oers IP service for GSM networks. GPRS can provide a throughput of 115 Kbps, almost the same eective access speed of a modem, it was the second milestone along the evolution path towards UMTS. The next natural step of this technology was EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution), today it is an ocial 3G technology, which is a powerful enhancement to the GSM/GPRS networks. EDGE is merely a software enhancement over GPRS and from hence it is also referred to as EGPRS (Enhanced GPRS), allowing high spectral eciency and a peak data rate of 473.6 Kbps. Today almost 130 GSM operators are using EDGE technology, 51 of which are oering commercial services. Nokia expects the number of subscribers to rise up to 200 million by the end of 2005 and reach above 700 million by 2010 [1]. To have better understanding of the answer sought by this thesis, some background information and a brief history of mobile telephony is necessary. This chapter aims at presenting the problem to be investigated as well as providing related background information.

1.1

A Brief History of Mobile Telephony

The rst generation of cellular systems to come to existence oered wide area coverage for voice services based on analogue modulation. Such systems are the American Mobile Phone System (AMPS), the Total Access Cellular System (TACS), and the Nordic Mobile Telephony system (NMT). The capacity of these systems was not designed to cope

1.2 Positioning EDGE in the 3G Rollout Plan

with the increasing popularity of the technology. The main problem that limited the capacity in such systems was due to the sensitivity of the analogue signal to interference. The reuse of the radio resources was limited and the frequency channels could not be repeated very often, thus each base station would be limited to a few channels and thus low capacity. With the introduction of digital modulation it was possible to have interference robust signals, which enhanced the capacity of the cellular system. Such second generation systems are the Global System for Mobile (GSM) and the Personal Digital Cellular (PDC) system. As the mobile technology was evolving, the usage of Internet services was booming, as a result the idea of merging these technologies seemed extremely attractive. However the transmission pattern of the Internet services rendered a need for packet switched bearer services instead of the circuit switched ones in the second generation systems. As a result GPRS was developed to serve the purpose of packet based transmissions. However, capacity and service level were still limited, a result of which current third generation systems are currently being researched. In order to comply with the mentioned demands, diversity techniques and adaptive resource management schemes were introduced. Upgrades have been made to second generation systems such as EDGE, which is to provide third generation capacity and service capabilities.

1.2

Positioning EDGE in the 3G Rollout Plan

EDGE technology has been available since some time; however, only over the past two years has it become a matter of strategic thinking to the operators. Today EDGE is being placed complementary to 3GSM, deploying 3GSM (which is 3G based on UMTS) in dense urban areas and EDGE in rural and less populated areas. Such a method of deployment provides a cost eective solution to deliver high speed services. The fact that 3GSM would be deployed in the 1900 M Hz band tends to make it a less attractive solution for high speed data in rural areas due to the need for more sites as higher frequencies tend to attenuate faster. EDGE, unlike 3GSM, can be deployed in the 900 M Hz band and still provide high speed data. Also there is no need to deploy 3GSM which will have higher capacity in areas with low population density. The most signicant factors that would make an operator opt for such a rollout strategy will mainly depend on the demand for high data rate services and the regulatory pressure faced. Another perspective on this case can be summarized in what Marta Munoz Mendez-Villamil, an analyst with Ovum said as an explanation for the increased interest in EDGE.

1.3 Wireless and The Forest Industry

EDGE has been neglected in the past. The general view of the industry was that GPRS was going to be a huge success and then immediately afterwards it was going to start moving on to 3GSM and all the operators would be oering these high data rates. However, the success of GPRS somehow has not turned out to be as good as we expected and suddenly the operators and vendors have realized that it will be some time before 3GSM starts to get into the market to the point where it is delivering proper services. So, in the meantime, I think a number of operators have turned their eyes at EDGE and they are beginning to look at EDGE as an intermediate technology to oer higher data rates to their customers until 3GSM comes along. [2]. In [3] the author points out that EDGE is not just about speed. The GERAN network is standardized to be compatible with WCDMA architecture. Thus EDGE is not simply a GPRS enhancement but it is also a complement to future WCDMA deployment where EDGE and 3GSM are designed to coexist. Also, the typical combination scenario of EDGE and 3GSM results in 50 % reduction in CAPEX compared to a nationwide deployment of a 3GSM network.

1.3

Wireless and The Forest Industry

The wireless boom has opened many opportunities for an increasing prot through Wireless E-Business applications. These types of applications have been introduced to the forest industry in Finland and Sweden. The real time information available for large planning and optimization process for cutting down and collecting wood improved the overall eciency of wood procurement. An increased margin of prot as well as a reduction in man power costs has been considerable [4]. The functions of these applications are mainly the just-in-time delivery of raw material to production sites and the initial planning of routes that harvesters and gatherers would take. After having optimized routes, this routing information is sent to the harvester in advance and it can be accessed during the harvest. Measurements of wood quality and quantity are communicated back to the main oce by the harvester. The harvesting information is sent wirelessly to forwarders that transport the wood to roadside stocks. The main oce is thus able to keep track of the amount of wood available at each roadside stock as well as their location. Another route optimization is performed for transport from the roadside stocks to the reception sites. The current applications typically running on GSM/GPRS where possible or nationwide on MobiTex, which is a wireless packet switching

1.4 A Practical Case Study

technology that operates in the 80 M Hz band. The wireless component has handed a remarkable eciency enhancement via the real time planning, execution and optimization of the overall wood procurement operation.

1.4

A Practical Case Study

NMT450 has a signicantly larger coverage than GSM in Sweden. Telia is in the progress of increasing GSM coverage to meet the coverage demand when NMT450 will be closed down in 2 years. In addition to the promised GSM coverage increase, GSM/EDGE for higher data rates will also be implemented. Telia is also carrying out its 3G rollout plan in a similar fashion as described earlier. EDGE is to be deployed even in scarcely populated and rural areas while 3G services are to comprise urban and densely populated areas. The wood procurement process in Swedish forestry operates more than 100, 000 dierent harvesting sites each year. Access to Internet and e-mail are essential services for the future in the working-places, in harvesters, forwarders and trucks. Reports on production from the harvesters and forwarders sent at least every day in order to update the stocks of round wood at roadside are crucial for the ecient managing of the transports by trucks and railroad. As a consequence the demand for packet switched services with acceptable bit rates is present and is represented by the wood procurement companies in Sweden. Thus, Telia has found the demand it was looking for and found the opportunity to gracefully comply with the regulatory conditions associated with the licenses. In co-operation with other KTH exam thesis projects the GSM/EDGE data rate and coverage performance for users in vehicles used by the forest industry shall be investigated and optimized. The types of vehicles involved are harvesters, forwarders, trucks and ordinary cars. In order to judge expected performance, a desk top analysis of the colleted data and the path loss model from Part 1 shall be used to have a moderate expectation of the coverage. The main part of the project will consist of eld trials to verify the EDGE service in a relevant environment for the forest industry. A proper formulation of the thesis objective is discussed in the next section.

1.5

Problem Denition

EDGE research has mainly been done by simulating the protocol stack and by using a propagation model recommended by ETSI. They were meant to provide an expectation of the possible performance under

1.5 Problem Denition

dierent conditions. Dierent means of simulation may provide dierent results or may even assume a simplied model at other layers than the one studied. Currently EDGE networks are being deployed in rural areas as stated before and little is known about the actual performance of these networks in terms of throughput. Simulations try to describe the operation as close as possible to a real life scenario, they are also time ecient when it comes to large scale assessment of a certain model. Although real-time measurements are more indicative of the real operation they tend to be rigorous and a huge amount of data will have to be gathered to have as clear a picture. Thus the latter option would require more time and resources. The results obtained from both methods should enable having more reliable results than when using only one of the methods. Previous simulations have been carried out in the literature for internet access and throughput performance at the system level and at the physical layers. Also the results of the simulations were used as input to other simulations, such as the expected throughput or block error probability mapped to the signal to interference ratio. This thesis has the objective of providing a view of what throughput performance to expect out of EDGE by carrying out measurements on live networks. There has been claims that EDGE can provide upto 200 Kbps over most of the cell area. This throughput may not be possible in a forest with slow mobile users. Operators do not possess much information on what would be the performance in such environments since mainly drive tests are carried out on roads with emphasis on population coverage. Dierent reasons may inuence the throughput, such as channel conditions, errors in channel estimation, and delays due to the packet handling protocols. These can be studied at lower levels in the light of the results obtained. It also does not attempt to explain the specic reasons behind the obtained results, however based on previous research it will attempt to explain the possible reasons. Thus it serves as a framework for a more detailed research at either the network protocols or radio interfaces. The tests will verify the bit rate capabilities, excluding thorough capacity issues, in recently deployed networks which have EDGE enabled. The test sites will be those deployed in rural areas, since the demand lies within the forest industry, they will be tested within a forest environment. Thereafter, the question that this thesis attempts to answer is: What downlink bit rates and coverage can be expected of EDGE in a forest dense environment?. The answer will be provided by conducting a case study on the deployed EDGE network in Sweden. Some sites shall be selected to carry out a set of measurements such that these sites reect most of Swedens forests and EDGE networks in those areas. The

1.6 Previous Work

throughput shall not only be considered in respect to distance but also in respect to measured SINR and RXLEV values. These values would help in anticipating the throughput coverage when the distribution for each is known in a cell. The results will be analyzed later to provide information that would allow answering the above question. Also BLER and MCS performance shall be recorded in order to have a clearer idea of the operation of EDGE in the light of the throughput measured. Uplink throughput is not going to be tested, despite its relevance to the question on coverage, due to the resource and time limitations on an exam thesis. Since the cellular design in rural areas involves a large cell radius with no frequency hopping, the users moving at slow speeds are expected to experience performance below optimum. The expected performance is to be below the forecasted throughput for EDGE, due to the fact that with a large cell radius and slow mobility in forests, the user maybe located at unfavorable conditions for a long time. This would cause a degradation in signal quality and thus throughput, where the maximum throughput possible with EDGE may not be feasible at all times. The next section shall discuss what previous work has been done and compare it to the work done in this thesis.

1.6

Previous Work

This thesis attempts, as explained above, to try to examine the throughput of EDGE after deployment in the GSM networks. Its results will be of interest to other operators in the process of deploying EDGE in similar areas. Previous work has mainly been focused on studying EDGE performance by the use of simulations and a combination of measurement based on simulation results. Although it has been explained that the system level performance is not a problem to be studied herein. It should be mentioned that previous simulations carried out in the literature tended to examine the impact of increased load on performance perceived by the users. The main problem of increased loads is the increased RTT (Round Trip Time) experienced by users as a result of queuing as well as the increased interference on the uplink. Such examination can be found for GPRS and EDGE in [5], [6], [7], [8], [9]. In [10] the authors have simulated EDGE in attempt to compare it against the throughput performance of other technologies. These simulations have been done for dierent environments and the results have shown the eect of each type on the throughput of EDGE as distance increases. Although the results of throughput against distance has not been provided in the article for other than urban cases, the mean throughput for a rural environment at 3Km/Hr was found to be

1.6 Previous Work

around 46.3 Kbps per time slot. However, the rural model provided by ETSI is not specic to a forest dense environment. It is possible that throughput within such an environment may dier signicantly. Also mind that the simulation took into account overall network performance which would include cell reselection and other users sharing resources. During the early development phases of EDGE, Nokia has conducted intensive simulations for the purpose of investigating the throughput that EDGE would provide given the enhancements introduced to GPRS. As such, some throughput and BLER graphs in function of CIR or SNR have been generated as in [11]. Using the results of the simulations, Nokia conducted a measurement campaign [12] that aimed at collecting signal level measurements in an urban city followed by calculating the interference; thereafter, mapping it to the corresponding throughput from the simulated results. This showed that users can achieve rates close to the theoretical values; however, it was considered that LA/IR was perfect and that the throughput is inuenced only by the CIR, which has a predened BLER distribution. Nokia did not have the option at the time to test for deployed EDGE networks and the drive tests they did were in an urban environment. There has not been previous studies of EDGE throughput performance after deployment, the study was conducted by carrying out simulations away from a real planned network. Today EDGE is being deployed in rural forests using the existing GSM planned network. There exists no knowledge of how would EDGE perform in such a scenario. As such this work shall carry out measurements that would allow interested parties in evaluating EDGE services in those areas. The throughput against signal quality would help operators in forecasting the coverage when they have knowledge of the distribution of the signal quality in a cell. By including BLER and MCS selection, the measurements can also help in supplying an estimate of the possible maximum rates attainable under the current network status. Dierences from previous work include the following: 1- The deployment of EDGE would allow the testing of the technology in rural forest dense areas, where it is likely to be deployed. The throughput as such would be measured in terms of data received over time and not based on CIR graphs. 2-Also any particular eect of the environment would be reected in the throughput, recorded eective BLERs, and MCS selection process. 3- The work is not concerned with capacity related problems and does not examine the overall network performance, i.e. it is a coverage study of EDGE. 4- The use of available measurement tools to measure deployed EDGE networks in relevant areas as discussed and not based on previous

1.6 Previous Work

simulation results and CIR measurements only. Together with simulations that have been performed it would supply a feedback and a better expectation of this technologys performance.

Chapter

Technical Background
This chapter gives an overview of the GSM/EDGE Radio Access Network. Some basic architecture and service features will be rst presented followed by some details on the key-elements for enhancing data rates compared to standard GPRS.

2.1

General Packet Radio Services Components

To support EGPRS/GPRS, some functional network element enhancements to the GSM networks need to be introduced. These two elements are the serving GPRS support node (SGSN) and the gateway GPRS support node (GGSN). The SGSN controls the users access to the GPRS network by authenticating the mobile stations (MS) and keeping track of their location. It is in this sense similar to the mobile switching center (MSC) and the visitor location register (VLR) for GSM. It is an essential component in the GPRS system as it provides the connection between the radio sub-system and the backbone network. The GGSN is the interface to external private or public networks. Both the SGSN and GGSN are connected to an IP-based GPRS backbone network. This is achieved through the base station system GPRS protocol (BSSGP). The BSSGP handles connectionless transfer of LLC frames between the base station subsystem (BSS) and the SGSN, which allows for signaling and user data transfer between the radio RLC/MAC interface and the SGSN. The GPRS network subsystem as such oers independence from the radio subsystem. This would allow the use of dierent radio interface technologies such as GSM 900/1800/1900, EDGE, and WCDMA. Figure 2.1 shows how the GPRS network is separated from the radio interface where EDGE is implemented. Further architecture description of

2.2 Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution

10

GERAN is available from 3GPP [13].

GGSN Internet Packet Control Base Station SGSN

EDGE/GPRS MS

EDGE Transceiver

Figure 2.1: Architecture top view of EDGE/GPRS.

2.2

Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution

In what follows enhancements introduced to GPRS to create EDGE will be highlighted. Focus will be on the EGPRS air interface in terms of physical layer and RLC/MAC layer improvements.

2.2.1

Physical Layer

One of the main improvements in EDGE is the introduction of nine modulation and coding schemes (MCS 1-9) whereas GPRS used only four coding schemes (CS 1-4). The dierence is that in EDGE a new modulation method 8-PSK (Phase Shift Keying) is used, whereas GPRS simply used GMSK (Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying). The former would allow the transmission of 3 bits over one symbol unlike GMSK which is limited to one bit per symbol. The use of 8-PSK would result in an eight point constellation diagram as show in Figure 2.2.
Q (0, 1, 0) (0, 0, 0) (0, 1, 1)

(0, 0, 1)

(1, 1, 1) I

(1, 0, 1) (1, 0, 0)

(1, 1, 0)

Figure 2.2: 8-PSK constellation. Despite the increase in bit rate by three folds the higher the number of transition states in the constellation diagram would also result in an increase in the symbol error rate and thus the block error rate (BLER). Thereafter higher protection is required for 8-PSK, which would result in a data rate that is less than three folds. Table 2.1 shows the dierent MCS used in EDGE. More about the physical layer in EDGE can be found in [14] and [15].

2.2 Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution

11

Scheme M CS 9 M CS 8 M CS 7 M CS 6 M CS 5 M CS 4 M CS 3 M CS 2 M CS 1

M odulation 8 P SK

GM SK

M aximumRate(Kbps) 59.2 54.4 44.8 29.6 22.4 17.6 14.8 11.2 8.8

CodeRate 1.00 0.92 0.76 0.49 0.37 1.00 0.85 0.66 0.53

F amily A A B A B C A B C

Table 2.1: EDGE Modulation Coding Schemes (MCS).

2.2.2

RLC/MAC Layers

The main purpose of these layers is the transfer of the LLC PDUs across the air interface to and from the user. RLC includes the segmentation and reassembly of LLC PDUs, LQC (Link Quality Control) and ARQ (Automatic Repeat Request). While the MAC controls channel access, resource allocation and management, thus enabling xed or multiplexed use of multiple time slots (TS). Figure 2.3 represents a high level overview of the method by which an LLC packet data unit (PDU) is mapped onto GSM TDMA bursts. The LLC PDU is divided into 20ms RLC data blocks so as to match the TDMA burst structure as in GSM. The amount of bits that are to ll the RLC data block depend on the coding scheme selected. The modulation scheme is selected by a link adaptation (LA) algorithm to cope with varying channel conditions. RLC/MAC headers contain information that is necessary for the code soft combining process of the incremental redundancy (IR), method which allows a reduction in the amount of retransmissions. Check sequences for the user data and the header are added to the RLC block before being passed to the physical layer, where the user data and the header data are coded separately and mapped to 2 or 4 TDMA bursts, as the coding scheme dictates. In the RLC/MAC block structure described earlier, the header is encoded separately and usually has a higher channel protection than the user data. The reason behind this is that information incorporated in the header is necessary for the proper functioning of the IR mechanism. The LA and IR mechanisms (Hybrid Type II/III ARQ) are the main components of the LQC necessary for a multicode packet data system. For GPRS the LQC is achieved by selecting the code rate that best copes with the prevailing radio channel condition.

2.2 Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution

12

LLC Layer Segment RLC/MAC Layer

LLC Frame Segment Segment RLC Block

Header Data

RLC Data

Tail Data

Physical Layer Burst

Encoded Data (MCS, Code Rate, Puncturing, and Interleaving)

Burst

Burst

Burst

Figure 2.3: Segmentation procedure of an LLC frame.

IR in EDGE was added so that if a data block is not decoded successfully more redundant information is sent in retransmissions. The erroneous blocks are saved and combined with each retransmission until successful decoding of the block is achieved. In a practical system, the independent usage of LA or IR will result in a less spectrally ecient system than the one where both are combined. This hybrid mode of operation allows a given coding scheme to operate over a larger portion of a cell, since IR tends to reduce the eective BLER. For further insight on the eect of IR refer to [11]. Upon establishing a connection, before any transfer of data a MCS needs to be selected and this is done after estimating the channel state. The better the channel is, the less coding needed and thus the higher the MCS. During the connection period the code selection is re-evaluated taking into consideration changes in the channel conditions. The switching point within the LA algorithm may inuence the utilization of the codes. However, it has been shown in [6] that the LA switching point may not have a great impact on throughput performance even when IR is not used. Also other enhancements in EDGE help not degrade the overall performance, such as better quality channel metrics, block resegmentation, IR and a larger number of coding schemes would improve the granularity of the LA algorithm. Quality messages which are estimates of the channel conditions are usually reported by the users upon request from the network. However, it must be noted that some errors in the LA/IR code selection procedure may result due to the transfer dynamics in packet switched communication and inaccurate estimation at the receiver. This would result in the selection of a suboptimal MCS, leading to a loss in throughput. Re-segmentation is used in EDGE and is achieved by grouping the

2.3 TCP/IP

13

MCS into families as shown in Figure 2.4. Such grouping allows the retransmission of a block with more or less protection by moving up or down within the same family group. Dierent MCS are grouped into families depending on payload size. The reason for introducing this concept was due to a problem that was present in GPRS, where if an error occurs it is not possible to retransmit with a dierent CS which would imply a possibility of another error occurring. Frequent retransmissions may cause an increased RTT or force the connection to stall. The same or a more robust MCS belonging to the same MCS family may be used in the retransmissions and the IR can still combine these received blocks despite the fact that they have dierent MCSs.
MCS-7
28 Octets 28 Octets 28 Octets 28 Octets

MCS-2

MCS-5

Family B

Figure 2.4: Payload relationship for MCS belonging to family B. During a connection the RLC/MAC blocks are transmitted sequentially unless retransmission needs arise due to negatively acknowledged blocks by the use of selective ARQ. The negatively acknowledged blocks are transmitted with higher priority than new blocks. Additional description of LQC mechanisms is available in the standards related to the RLC/MAC [16] and channel coding [14]. The MAC layer assigns temporary block ows (TBFs) for data and signaling transfer between the MS and the network. The TBF is used by each entity to communicate LLC PDUs on the packet data physical channels (PDCH) between the RLC entities on each side of the communication link. Two accessing modes are oered: 1- Dynamic allocation, where by users can be multiplexed onto a single TS. 2- Fixed allocation, where a user is reserved resources upon establishing a connection. In general the MAC functionality is similar to that of GPRS. More information can be found in the specications [16].

2.3

TCP/IP

Although the thesis is not concerned in studying the way the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) protocol interacts within EDGE. Yet it is imperative that the reader get to know its dynamics in order to understand later the throughput results which are generated by a TCP connection via EDGE.

2.3 TCP/IP

14

The TCP is designed to provide a reliable connection between two communicating devices. TCP has the purpose of guaranteeing the delivery of packets across the network next to reordering the packets that arrive at the host. ARQ is implemented in TCP, when packets are correctly received at the destination an acknowledgment is sent back to the receiver. If the acknowledgement is not received within a give retransmit time value the packet is retransmitted. Apart from the guarantees above, TCP also handles data ow and congestion control. Data ow control is used to avoid overow at the receiver due to a fast transmitter. The receiver tends to advertise a maximum amount of data that can be sent by some sender. This amount of data is set by the advertised window size; by setting it to zero the receiver can stop the sender from sending any more data. Another issue that TCP attempts to control is congestion on the network. While transmitting if a packet loss is detected, it is attributed to a congestion point on the network. This is due to the fact that erroneous data is scarce on wired links. Every time a packet is lost, the transmitter tends to slow down its transmission. Mind that such interpretation of a packet loss is not sensible in a wireless network where packet retransmissions are often due to errors introduced by a bad channel condition. To initiate a TCP connection a three way handshake is required to synchronize the receiver and sender as well as determine if the receiver is ready to receive data. Since the major cause for a decrease in throughput when using TCP is due to congestion, it is necessary to understand the congestion avoidance strategies. TCP uses four dierent algorithms to control congestion problems, a closer look into these algorithms can be found in [17]. Two of them are briey explained below.

2.3.1

Slow Start and Congestion Avoidance

Each sender in TCP uses an indicator, the congestion window (CW), to determine how many bytes can be in ight and unacknowledged. The initial value is usually set to twice less than maximum sender segment size (MSS) and is increased for each successful transmission by doubling the previous CW value. Once the maximum CW size reaches the slow start threshold (SST) the CW is increased linearly. In case of a congestion occurring during the slow start or congestion avoidance phases, the

2.3 TCP/IP

15

CW is reset and a new SST is calculated (usually to half the current CW).

2.3.2

Fast Retransmit and Fast Recovery

When a TCP segment is lost in transmission, all the following TCP segments cannot be delivered to higher layers until the lost segment is retransmitted. When the retransmission timer expires the sender would retransmit the lost segment. This would introduce delay since the receiver would have to wait. Acknowledgements usually contain the sequence number expected next. Thus it is possible for the sender to know that segments that followed the lost one have been received. It is also possible to send duplicate ACKs to the sender in case of a reordering of the segments within the network. Once three duplicate ACKs are received the sender would assume that the segment was lost and would retransmit it before the retransmission timer expires. Also upon such loss of segments slow start is not used to recover and the CW is set to be the SST. This is known as fast recovery whereby duplicate ACKs indicate that congestion has been noted only for the given segment and not all those that followed.

Chapter

Data Collection and Analysis

Since this thesis is considered to be a case study, it is imperative to produce the details of the test environment and network settings. These details are necessary for any conclusions to be drawn by operators who may be in the process of deployment as well as any party who is interested in utilizing EDGE services. This chapter provides a description of the test areas, which includes the type of forest and terrain, as well as the site settings. The equipment used with their settings and the methods of analysis is also supplemented.

3.1

Forest Environment Overview

In order for the reader to assess the relevance of the information, it is necessary to have an adequate description of the types of forests that exist and the type of terrain. The information that will be presented here mainly concerns the Swedish forests. Based on this, the selection of the test areas was carried out. The majority of forest types in Europe are coniferous forests and are mainly located in northernmost Europe (north-western Russia, Finland and Sweden). Sweden has a forest cover of about 60% of its total area, these forests are divided into dierent categories. The two major categories comprise the boreal and the boreo-nemoral forests. Boreal forests cover northern Sweden, mainly from the north of Stockholm and towards the northern mountains and arctic regions. They consist of Spruce and Pine which are evergreen needle leaf trees. The areas surrounding Stockholm and onwards south are categorized as boreo-nemoral forests. These forests are a combination of trees that are found in the north and to the extreme south were broad leaved trees may be found. In addition, other features of these two forest landscapes are the presence of marshes, lakes and watercourses. Figure 3.2(b) shows the distribution of tree types in Sweden, 81% of the total amount is needleaf (Spruce and Pine) while only 16% are trees with

3.1 Forest Environment Overview

17

broad leaves. The terrain type in most of Sweden can be described as hilly, with mountains only in the north.

Dead/Windthrown 2.5%
Dead/Windthrown Other 1.8% 6.2% Birch 8.9%

Other 5.8% Birch 11.3%

Spruce 53.5% Pine 29.7%

Spruce 41.7%

Pine 38.7%

(a) Jonkoping

(b) Sweden

Figure 3.1: Tree Type Distribution

As such, the test sites have been selected to reect the above mentioned details so as to have a valid sample of the Swedish forest. The test areas were chosen to be located in the southern part of Sweden, (Vaggeryd and Aneby in Smaland), where we have a mix of broad and needle leaf trees. According to the data available in [18], the tree distribution in Jonkoping 1 is depicted in Figure 3.2(a). The tree distribution is almost the same in Jonkoping as it is for the whole count over Sweden; thereafter, the forest in those areas seems to be a proper sample of Swedish forests. The terrain variation is also similar to the case in most of Sweden. At the test sites, elevation above sea level varied between 200 m and 300 m, noted using GPS. Concerning the relevance of the test area, Bertil Liden a researcher at Skogforsk asserted: The forests of the test area consist mainly of Spruce and Pine which is relevant for the main part of the forests in Sweden. The test area is also representative for most of the Swedish forests concerning the type of hilly terrain. It needs to be stated that the results of the thesis are mainly for needle leaf trees and not broad leaf trees. The leaf size may inuence the propagation properties of radio waves and may cause scattering. Besides the eect of leaves, tree height and trunk diameter may also have a similar eect and may inuence the amount of attenuation observed by the transmitted wave as it passess through the foliage. It is needed to remind the reader that the purpose of the thesis is not to investigate tree eects on radio waves2 ; however, these eects may
1 2

Vaggeryd and Aneby are located within the district of Jonkoping This task is to be carried out by another thesis, which is being carried out at the

3.1 Forest Environment Overview

18

10-14 10%

450-9 5.64% 4% 35-44 16.7%

0-9 8.56% 10-14 13%

453.47%

35-44 11.43%

15-19 14.4% 30-34 14.1%

30-34 11.7%

15-19 17.63% 25-29 15.84%

20-24 17.45%

25-29 17.6%

20-24 18.35%

(a) Jonkoping

(b) Sweden

Figure 3.2: Trunk Width Distribution

0-2 3.56% 3-10 10.68%

71-80 9.82%

0-2 3.79% 3-10 8.8%

61-70 8.53%

71-80 6.04% 61-70 5.64%

11-20 9.25% 51-60 6.97%

51-60 5.87% 11-20 11.6% 41-50 7.47%

41-50 7.25% 31-40 10.81%

21-30 9.96%

21-30 10.42%

31-40 9.33%

(a) Jonkoping

(b) Sweden

Figure 3.3: Tree Age Distribution

degrade performance and as such decrease the theoretically achievable throughput. Figures 3.2 and 3.3 depict these tree properties, they are provided for the test areas as well as over Sweden. The gures show that the test areas again share the same forest properties. It maybe the case that this data does not indeed exactly describe the areas were the tests were carried out. Thereafter, there lies a doubt as to whether the test sites are a sample of the Swedish Forest. However, an exact match of the Swedish Forest can not be precisely described by a few locations. Nevertheless, it is not possible to test for a large area and over the course of the thesis, so the sites were selected based on the above described data and time and resource constraints.
same time, for Skogforsk and Telia.

3.2 EDGE Cells Overview

19

3.2

EDGE Cells Overview

In what follows is a description of the test sites serving base stations. The details pertaining to these sites will provide the reader with an idea of how the base stations are planned in Swedens rural areas. Thus, this will also help as mentioned in Section 3.1 in assessing the relevance of these sites. Networks planned in rural areas mainly focus on providing coverage to major roads and residential areas, where the majority of the subscribers are located. The fact that the subscribers speeds are high on roads and their density is low in towns, allows for a higher cell reuse distance. A higher cell reuse distance means that a single cell can cover a large area since capacity is not a major problem. Thus to cover this large area, antennas heights and the transmitted power can be large; typical antenna heights in rural areas are higher than 30 m. The test sites that are studied herein comprise of a mix of dierent antenna heights, output power, and antenna patterns. From hence, the results will not be for a specic site setting, but they will include the results for dierent combinations, which would provide a better sample of the deployed cell sites. Table 3.1 provides the details of these dierent sites. Location Site Height V aggeryd 1 53 55.5 m Aneby 2 59.4 62.4 m V aggeryd 3 42.2 44.8 m Aneby 4 59.2 62.4 m Elevation P ower 197 m 41 dBm 310 m 230 m 283 m 46 dBm 41 dBm 44 dBm Antenna T ype 1 T ype 1 T ype 1 T ype 2 Channels 2 1 2 2

Table 3.1: EDGE Cell Information. The sites, designed for GSM coverage, have EDGE installed with LA/IR enabled and utilize the full MCS range. However, frequency hopping is not enabled mainly due to the unavailability of the equipment necessary. According to Telia there is no sites in similar forest environment and conguration that supports frequency hopping; thereafter, the absence of frequency hopping is not a specic of the sites studied herein. From the data provided by Telia concerning the service area and interference eects, it is expected that the test areas shall mainly be noise limited with a coverage of 4 6 Km. A further argument that supports the generality of the tested sites is a statement from Telia stat-

XPol A-Panel 806960 88 17dBi

Type No. Frequency range 806 894 MHz

739 650
806960 880 960 MHz +45, 45 2 x 16.5 dBi

3.3 Signal Quality Polarization

Gain

20 +45, 45
2 x 16.7 dBi

Half-power tested are Horizontal: 85 Horizontal: 88 ing that the sitesbeam width typical sites regarding the conguration, the Copolar +45/ 45 Vertical: 8.5 Vertical: equipment used, and positioning for rural forest environments in Sweden.8 Sidelobe suppression for 18 dB first Figures above horizon it is clear that for the case of the trisidelobe 3.4 and 3.5, From sectored sites, which have directional antennas the powerdB concentrated Front-to-back ratio, copolar > 25 is

in the Isolation horizontal plane with no signicant side lobes. 30 dB > Sidelobes may affect the analysis of the gathered results, since it is dicult to distinguish Impedance 50 between having low signal levels, and thus throughput, due to the efVSWR < being located at fects of the forest on the signals propagation or to 1.5 an antennas null. Also it should be noted that the vertical pattern Intermodulation IM3 < 150 dBc (2 x 43 narrow, this is extremely dBm carrier) will inuence the area covered by the main beam,Max. power per input ground surface, (at 50 C ambient temperature) which may not reach 600 W depending on the antennas height, until more than 500 m away from the BSS. For the case of the omni-directional antennas, the horizontal pattern is uniform and this would allow conducting the experiment over a wider range. However, the vertical pattern is also narrow, which would imposes performing the measurements at a distance that would be within the main beam, again in the order of more than 500 m.

880 960 MHz: +45/ 45 Polarization

88 165

10

10 3 0

806 96 45
dB

dB

3 0

7-16

Horizontal Pattern
Subject to alteration.

Vertical Pattern

Mechanical specificatio

Figure 3.4: Antenna MHz: +45/ 45 Polarization and 3. 806 894 pattern Type-1 used at Sites 1,2,
85 160 Signal Quality

Input Connector position* Weight Wind load

3.3
936.2360/a

8.5 The operation of GSM/EDGE relies on reports about the signal level and signal quality between the MS and the BSS. The received signal is 10 measured in this case at the MS, where it is assumed that the MS used 10 in the experiment statises the 3GPP recommendations concerning 3 3 signal level and quality measurements.
dB
dB

F L R

Max. wind velocity Packing size Height/width/depth * Inverted mounting: Connector position top:

The signal level measured is the R.M.S Verticaland is measured at value Pattern Horizontal Pattern

Internet: http://www.kathrein.de KATHREIN-Werke KG . Anton-Kathrein-Strae 1 3 . PO Box 10 04 44 . D-83004 Rosenheim . Germany . Telephone +49

3.3 Signal Quality

21

0 15 30 6.25 60 2.5 11.25 90 90

90

0 15

30

30 6.25

30

60

60

2.5 11.25

60

90

120

120

120

120

150 180

150

150 180

150

(a) Horizontal Pattern

(b) Vertical Pattern

Figure 3.5: Antenna pattern Type-2 used at Site 4, vertical polarization.

the receivers end by either the MS or the BSS over the range specied between 110 dBm and 38 dBm. The 3GPP species an accuracy requirement for signal levels in the lower range and for those above 48 dBm. As such an absolute accuracy of 4 dB is tolerated for values between 110 dBm to 70 dBm under normal conditions and 9 dB for values between 48 dBm and 38 dBm. The measurements are calculated over all the active time slots and are averaged over a reporting period of 480 ms (104 TDMA frames). The received signal, denoted as RXLEV, is averaged over a single reporting period while measurements over other periods are discarded. In GSM, signal level and signal quality are used as inputs to various decisions that invlove power control and handover processes. The signal quality is also used in EDGE as a way to adapt the MCS to suite the channel quality at hand. The signal quality measurements rely mainly on calculating the expected BER, based on that, judgments are made on how to adapt to achieve the maximum possible performance. The main quality measures that are used by EDGE, when selecting the MCS, are the mean bit error probability (Mean BEP) and the coecient of variation of the bit error probability (CV BEP). These two values are calculated such that an average is calculated from the BEP of each burst, as in Equation 3.1, to get the BEP over each block; following that, these values are averaged for each TS, shown in Equation 3.2, and nally over the reporting period, as in Equation 3.3. The averaging does not include values calculated in previous reporting periods. For the case of the coecient of variation a similar method is carried out with Equation 3.1 being replaced by Equation 3.4. Concerning the accuracy of these measurements, more information can be found in [19], where a detailed table is provided for 8-PSK and GMSK signals. The averaging calculations are shown below.

3.4 Measurement Procedure

22

1 M ean BEPblock = . 4 M ean BEP T Nn = (1e.

BEPburst
i=1

(3.1)

xn xn ).M ean BEP T Nn1 +e. .M ean BEPblock,n Rn Rn (3.2)

n e Rn xn

Iteration index per block A forgetting factor Denotes the reliability of the ltered quality parameters Quality parameter M ean BEPn =
j j Rn .M ean BEP T N jn j j Rn

(3.3)

n Iteration index at reporting time j Channel (TS) number CV BEPblock =

1 3. 4 4 1 2 k=1 (BEPburst k 4 . i=1 BEPburst i ) 4 1 i=1 BEPburst i 4.

(3.4)

3.4

Measurement Procedure

The main task of this work is to collect data from live network reports in the test areas. These live network reports are indicators of the current network status related to resource management, performance, and signaling. The main focus will be on the overall performance of EDGE indicated by the data rate. The test areas are scarcely inhabited and the load on the network is expected to be low, this would provide a good case study as to what would be the data rates when there is not a strong competition over the resources. From hence, the results can be analyzed without having to attribute them to resource management issues. The only reasons might either be at the radio layer or higher layers. To gather these reports and extract relevant information from them, TEMS Investigation 5.1.2, a test tool from Ericsson, will be used. The main issue, concerning the collected data, is that TEMS is not designed to display all the needed information and does not accurately correlate dierent data sets. It is necessary to write some scripts which would allow proper extraction of the data of interest from the logged text les. Once this data is extracted it is possible to correlate them in dierent ways and extract relevant information, this is discussed in more detail in Section 3.6. TEMS has the option of downloading or uploading an FTP le, accessing HTTP services, or even sending and receiving E-mails. These

3.5 Equipment

23

services are mainly TCP based, it is expected that the throughput will be below the optimal value which can be achieved with UDP. Nevertheless, testing for UDP would seem irrelevant since the main use of EDGE in those areas will be for data transfer which needs to be reliable. To mitigate the eects of slow start in TCP, bulk download of les will be executed, this would allow to study the performance when throughput is, to some extent, stable, this is shown in [20]. FTP will be used for this transfer in order to have comparable results with the simulations that tested for Internet access via FTP trac models in previous work on EDGE. The measurements will be carried out over four dierent cells at dierent times and locations so as to have time and location independence. The cells were chosen so as to have a forest outstretch with minimum residential and open spaces. The measurements are to be conducted by combining two methods. The rst is by walking within the forest for distances in the range of 300 500 m inside the forest These measurements would be collected at regular distance intervals from the serving base station, the mobile speed would be around 3 Km/Hr. The other method is by driving at 10 Km/Hr on black roads [21]. The black roads are narrow and the trees are high enough to give the impression of doing the measurements within the forest. These speeds are the expected speeds of the majority of the users (forest mobile machinery) to be in those areas. It is also necessary to remain as much as possible within the half beam width so that the results may not be dependent on the antenna gain signicantly. The network is currently being deployed and thus it is not possible to inspect the impact of cell reselection, which may incur delays, since not all base stations have EDGE capability. The base stations may not have EDGE but they do have GPRS; as a result, when doing the measurements, in order not to switch to GPRS a channel lock is forced. Locking onto a channel may not be a proper method to avoid this problem in urban areas where the frequency reuse is high; however, in rural areas were the reuse is relatively low this is not an issue. This would allow the testing to be carried out to the full extent of the cell border.

3.5
3.5.1

Equipment
TEMS

TEMS is a tool, provided by Ericsson that allows the mobile phone to communicate with the base station and process a lot of the information. The information is acquired by analyzing the received information in

3.5 Equipment

24

packet headers as well as those received by ordinary network reports while the TEMS generated reports are logged for later analysis. The data that has been gathered was calculated by TEMS in the fashion to be described below in addition to what was mentioned before. However, the methods described have not been obtained from TEMS manuals since they do not provide this information. A detailed observation of the saved data showed how they were being calculated and the intervals over which they were averaged. TEMS tends to calculate throughput at all levels (application, link layer, radio link) by counting the number of bytes received within the last throughput reporting period, which is about one second. The reported throughput is averaged over the current and last throughput reporting periods. This is the throughput that is used as input to the results obtained in the next chapter; however TEMS also reports a throughput that has been averaged over all the past reporting periods. The latter throughput is not of interest since it is not possible to correlate the throughput to other collected data, such as the RXLEV (Received Power Level). There have been no BLEs (Block Errors) reported at the LLC, yet some existed at the radio link level. The BLER was calculated by counting out the number of blocks received in error to the total number of sent blocks and reporting the result every second. The received power level was also recorded in a similar fashion to that described in Section 3.3, they were collected every 480 ms. The CIR that is reported by TEMS is actually the received carrier signal to the totally perceived interference and noise. The latter data was averaged and reported approximately every 2 seconds, therefore, dips due to fast fading would not be visible due to the large averaging period. In Chapter 2, it was shown that the type of MCS is incorporated in the header of the RLC blocks, thus it is possible for TEMS to extract the information on MCS from the RLC blocks received. TEMS records what the MCS was since it last changed as a result of a command from the base station that is based on the quality parameters discussed in Section 3.3. Concerning the accuracy of the reported CIR, the TEMS manual [22] states that the measurement range extends from 5 dB to +25 dB, where it is unlikely to experience a CIR lower than 5 dB. The larger the number of frequencies used (in frequency hopping) the less accurate is the CIR measures, in the experiment only one frequency is used. To give an example of the range of error possible, if the measured values were between 015 dB and four frequencies were utilized the error would be no more than 1 dB.

3.6 Data Analysis

25

3.5.2

TCP Settings

It is of importance to provide the reader with the TCP settings that have been used in the experiment since these settings may have a direct inuence on the throughput perceived by the user. The settings that were used in the collection of data were the default settings congured for the Windows XP OS. The default settings were found to be below optimal as will be seen in Chapter 4, this is due to the fact that the TCP Advertised Window (AWND) was set to 16 KB. This value would not allow the sender on the other side of the network to have more than 16 KB of data in transit, thus limiting the maximum throughput to 128 Kbps. Thereafter, it is necessary to increase the AWND size to a preferred value of 32 KB, which would allow, if possible, to reach the maximum throughput available with EDGE. Concerning other measurements that were collected, such as BLER or MCS selection, and the method of analysis, the AWND does not have any inuence on them. The only eect is that the recorded throughput during the session will be below optimal.

3.6

Data Analysis

Recalling that the goal is to provide a case study of the expected throughputs in a forest environment in Sweden. The measurement campaigns results shall be used to have experimental data that can give a picture of what to expect out of EDGE if used in a rural but forest-dense environment. In order to study the throughput, an FTP le download was initiated in order to record the throughput level using TEMS, along with the throughput other data have been recorded such as BLER, MCS, RXLEV, and CIR. The information collected would make it possible to compare the recorded throughputs to the possibly attainable throughputs. It would also allow to check how much does the BLER inuence the perceived throughput and how are the MCSs utilized. The CIR is needed so as to observe its eect on the throughput, since lower CIR would cause a higher BER which may cause an increased BLER. The CIR (or RXLEV) would also provide an input to predict the coverage of EDGE in the cell depending on the CIR (or RXLEV)distribution in similar environments. It is also possible, when plotted against RXLEV, to see how the throughput may be inuenced by increasing transmission power. This section shall pass over how the gathered data was extracted, analyzed, and normalized to extract relevant information in attempt to have the results sought.

3.6 Data Analysis

26

3.6.1

Logged Data Specics

As mentioned in Section 3.5.1 the data was logged into TEMS les periodically according to the arrival or generation of the report by either TEMS software or the MS. Unfortunately the data that is reported and logged in the les are not synchronized with respect to time, this is due to the fact that the information that is extracted from the measurements by the software and those arriving from the MS may have dierent periods. Yet it is possible to average the small reports in a larger report interval, that would allow us to correlate between the values measured. Another issue that is not evident in TEMS is that some recorded measurements are measured at time t seconds but reported for the following t seconds. Although the eect of this may not be drastic, it was opted to shift the values for each collected sample up by one reporting period. These modications would allow for a better correlation between the dierent data sets. Figure 3.6 shows how the dierent data sets collected are related in terms of reporting periods and how they were shifted by one period.
Averaging Period

SINR (CIR) R1 R2 R3

Throughput

BLER

RXLEV

MCS

Figure 3.6: Data Analysis Relationships. Another problem may arise due to the fact that dierent data sets do not have synchronized starting points, i.e. if the CIR reporting period is 2 seconds it may happen that we do not have 2 full reporting periods for throughput which has a period of about 1 second. Therefore it was opted to average the values with a smaller reporting period within the larger period of the data set to be compared with. Although a value for a particular measurement is reported once by TEMS it is logged as is for any other reports of other measurements. This poses another issue

3.6 Data Analysis

27

to be considered, that is counting the reports generated by TEMS and basing on them the relationships between dierent data sets will provide an inaccurate relationship. The reason is that for a particular data set, the value x may be reported 5 times over 0.2 seconds while that of y may have been reported once over 0.8 seconds, thus counting reports is not necessarily indicative of the results. Thereafter, the averaged values are based on the interval of time that a measurement value did not change within the larger reporting period over the total time of the latter. Figure 3.6 also shows, for the case between CIR and throughput measurements, how the reported throughputs were averaged over the reporting period of the CIR based on time ratio. Concerning BLER measurements it was found that, although both depended on the same information when calculated, there was a time descrepancy between the throughput reports and the BLER reports. The BLER was reported fractions of seconds after the throughput report was logged, thereafter there was a need to shift the BLER values so as to properly associate them with the corresponding throughput value. Figure 3.6 again shows how the BLER measures were linked to their corresponding throughput report.

3.6.2

Data Processing

After the data has been extracted into les that would allow inspecting the relationships between them, it was interesting to know how close was the throughput measured to the maximum attainable. What is meant by maximum attainable, is the throughput that can be attained given the reported usage of the MCS and the eect of the BLER. Since it was not possible to do another set of measurements for UDP, the information extracted from the MCS and BLER values would give an idea of what throughput to expect for UDP and compare it to the values recorded for TCP. It would also show the eect of BLER on the throughput, so as to observe how much the BLER experienced degrades the performance. It was chosen to use the maximum MCS throughput, provided in Section 2.2.2, when nding this maximum attainable throughput, for it is not possible to know the exact value for each MCS using TEMS. The MCS was changing constantly and rapidly, this was reected in the number of switches within the reporting period of the measured throughput. The throughput reporting period was chosen to be the period within which the MCS usage should be considered and mapped to an attainble throughput by Equation 3.5. The calculation of the throughput as such does not consider protocol overhead and does not consider any BLE experienced on the radio link. In other words, this throughput would indicate the maximum throughput that could have been attained if eects of protocol overhead were absent and the LA/IR algorithm was adapt-

3.6 Data Analysis

28

ing properly to the changing environment thus reducing the BLE to 0 %. By stating that the LA/IR is adapting properly, it is assumed that it is adapting to the environment properly and supposedly this should reduce BLER. However, it is not meant that the LA/IR algorithm is working perfectly as expected by research, in other words it does not assume that, for instance MCS-9 is being used constantly at high SINR. MCSs other than MCS-9 were being used at the same time at high SINR, but it is assumed, by the calculations, that this was happening in attempt to reduce BLEs by the BSS. Another throughput value was calculated by using the above calculated throughput and incorporating the values of the BLER as in Equation 3.6. The BLER values were mapped to the matching report period as explained previously. Thus the ineciency of the LA/IR in coping with the environment (represented by the BLER) may be visible and comparable with that of a proper adaptation.
9 mcs T hri .ti +T hr N o BLERn1 .tn1 } i=1

T hr N o BLERn =

1 .{ tn + tn1

(3.5) T hr BLERn = 1 .{BLERn . tn + tn1

9 mcs T hri .ti +T hr BLERn1 .tn1 } i=1

(3.6) n Iteration index at reporting time i The MCS number (1-9) t Time

Each of the above calculated throughputs and the measured throughput values were mapped against other measured values such as distance, CIR and RXLEV. Thus it is possible to view how the throughput is aected by each, and would allow an anticipation of the throughput coverage. Equations 3.7 and 3.8 show how the averaging was done for each of the CIR report interval and that of RXLEV.
k

1 T hr CIRn = . tn

Ri .ti
i=1

(3.7)

n CIR iteration index at reporting time k Index of the reported throughput values R Reported throughput value Instead of calculating the throughput under each RXLEV value, the average RXLEV value was calculated for each throughput reporting period as follows:

3.6 Data Analysis

29

RXLEV T hrn =

1 . tn

ri .ti
i=1

(3.8)

n Throughput iteration index at reporting time k Index of the reported RXLEV values r Reported RXLEV value

After the values have been calculated, the mean over each CIR and RXLEV value was obtained in order to have the throughput against dierent CIR and RXLEV values. Also the throughput mentioned in Equations 3.7 and 3.8 involve those calculated in Equations 3.5 and 3.6 and those directly measured and logged by TEMS.

Chapter

Results
This chapter presents the results that have been obtained in the measurement campaign after they have been extracted and analyzed. The chapter starts with the obtained throughput when considered over distance and signal quality, followed by an inspection of the BLER and its signicance. The MCS distribution is also revealed in attempt to obtain a better view of the reason behind the results presented herein. Finally an expectation of the throughput coverage in a cell in the light of the obtained throughput measures is presented.

4.1

Throughput and Distance

Figures 4.1 show how the calculated and measured throughputs decrease as the distance from the serving BSS increases. It is evident that the calculated throughputs, considering the perfect LA case and that with BLER, tend to diverge drastically as the distance increases. When close to the BSS, at about 700 m, the loss in throughput for Figure 4.1(a) is around 9 Kbps yet it rapidly increases to a loss of more than 43 Kbps as soon as the distance becomes almost 2 Km away. The measured throughput seems to be very low compared to the theoretical maximum that is achievable in such a situation, where the loss is around 60 Kbps, yet the further away from the BSS the measured throughput tends to converge to the upper limit. The reason behind the low measured throughput when close to the BSS is that the advertised window size (AWND) by the operating system is below optimal. Thus, the settings do not allow the sender on the other side of the network to utilize the bandwidth properly. Utilizing the bandwidth properly under the used settings should allow a maximum throughput of 128 Kbps, which is still not fully achieved when close to the BSS and that is due to the BLER as will be seen later. It should be noted that there were no BLE at the link layer nor at the application layer, which means that the eects of TCP, concerning congestion

4.1 Throughput and Distance

Throughput vs. Distance
180 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 0.5 Measured LA/IR with BLE Perfect LA/IR Measured Perfect LA/IR LA/IR with BLE

31

Throughput (Kbps)

1.5

2.5 Distance (Km)

3.5

4.5

(a) Site 1
Throughput vs. Distance
180 Measured LA/IR with BLE Perfect LA/IR Measured Perfect LA/IR LA/IR with BLE

160

140

120 Throyghput (Kbps)

100

80

60

40

20

0 0

3 Distance (Km)

(b) Site 2

Figure 4.1: Throughput vs. Distance

mechanisms do not inuence the perceived throughput but the BLE on the radio link may cause delays, this has been shown for GPRS in [23]. The Figures in 4.1 were based on the average throughput at each distance and thus it involves an averaged eect of BLE and SINR (from here on, CIR shall be referred to as SINR). The reason why there are less points in Figure 4.1(b) is due to the fact that the throughput is averaged over a larger distance than that of Figure 4.1(a). Distance was chosen to observe how the throughput may vary as the cell boundaries are approached, yet this will not provide a better insight as to why the throuhgput is low and will not have a sense of generality. Thereafter, the throughput was plotted against the measured SINR and the RXLEV, which would provide more information.

4.2 Throughput, SINR, and RXLEV

32

4.2

Throughput, SINR, and RXLEV

As mentioned earlier, the throughput against distance may not provide much information as to the coverage expected in a cell. The reason is due to the fact that to have a better estimate of the throughput against distance, more measurements need to be done in more than one direction in a cell. Thereafter, throughput if plotted against SINR or RXLEV would provide more information, since the measurements do not depend on the terrain eects but more on the measured signal level. Thus if the signal quality distribution is known, the throughput can be mapped to the corresponding signal value; thus providing an estimate of the coverage. When plotted against SINR and RXLEV, the throughput had the behaviour depicted in Figures 4.2. It can be noted in both Figures that all the throughputs, calculated and measured, for the dierent tested sites are characterized by a similar behaviour and almost equal values. Figures 4.3 show the average throughput when all the results for the different sites are incoporated into one data set and plotted, the bounds for the condence interval of 95% is also shown. Condence and prediction bounds dene the lower and upper values of the associated interval, and dene the width of the interval. The width of the interval indicates how uncertain you are about the tted coecients, the predicted observation, or the predicted t. For example, a very wide interval for the tted coecients can indicate that you should use more data when tting before you can say anything very denite about the coecients. The bounds are the level of certainty that is specied for the given data. The level of certainty in this case is chosen to be 95%, which means that there is a chance of 5% being incorrect about predicting a new observation. Thereafter the 95% interval indicates that there exists a 95% chance that the new observation lies within the prediction bounds displayed in the gures. In order to nd these bounds the commercially available Matlab tool, cftool, was used; the tool allows for the analysis of an adequate t for the data collected. The formulas for calculating the prediction bounds can be found in detail in [24]. For Figure 4.3(a) the calculated throughput with no BLE tends to start with low values at a SINR below 15 dB and increases rapidly in the range of 15 25 dB and then achieves the maximum throughput around 170 Kbps. However, when the BLE eect is incorporated the throughput tends to increase from lower values, slowly at the beginning but faster and in a more linear fashion after 15 dB. The measured throughput increase linearly except for the case of one site, this site also shows some dierence from the general trend of the three others. The reason behind this is

4.2 Throughput, SINR, and RXLEV

33

Throughput vs. CIR

200 Site1 (No BLER) Site2 (No BLER) Site3 (No BLER) Site4 (No BLER) Site1 (With BLER) Site2 (With BLER) Site3 (With BLER) Site4 (With BLER) Site1 (Measured) Site2 (Measured) Site3 (Measured) Site4 (Measured)

180

160

Throughput ( Kbps )

140

120

100

80

60

40

20

10

15

20

25

30

CIR ( dB )

(a) Throughput vs. SINR

Throughput vs. Received Power
200 Site1 (No BLER) Site2 (No BLER) Site3 (No BLER) Site4 (No BLER) Site1 (With BLER) Site2(With BLER) Site3 (With BLER) Site4 (With BLER) Site1 (Measured) Site2 (Measured) Site3 (Measured) Site4 (Measured)

180

160

Throughput ( Kbps )

140

120

100

80

60

40

20 100

95

90

85

80

75

70

65

60

Received Power ( dBm )

(b) Throughput vs. RXLEV

Figure 4.2: Throughput measured against the perceived SINR and RXLEV at each site.

due to the less BLERs it faces when the SINR is higher but the more when the SINR is lower. It can also be seen again, how the measured throughput follows closely the maximum throughput possible with the BLER. The maximum possible throughput attainable by EDGE is taken from the research on EDGE in [11], it assumes a perfect estimation of the channel and perfect adaptation. Compared to this curve, the No BLER curve is far below, the reason is due to the high BLER that is being experienced with some MCS, forcing the BSS to opt for a lower MCS resulting in a lower throughput. For the case of Figure 4.3(b), the throughput seems to follow for each case a linear behaviour and reaches the limit around 75 dBm. It can also be seen that the huge dierence between the measured throughput and the calculated one is large for RXLEV above 80 dBm. It is also interesting to note that under better conditions it is possible to provide a maximum rate above 140 Kbps for a large range of RXLEV, but given the pathloss in the forest it does not include a large cell area. It can also be seen how increasing the received power level can help in increasing the area covered by higher throughput, for instance using high gain receiving antennas.

4.2 Throughput, SINR, and RXLEV

34

200

Throughput (Kbps)

150

100

Avg. over all Sites (No BLER) 95% Prediction Bounds 50 Avg. over all Sites (With BLER) 95% Prediction Bounds Avg. over all Sites (Measured) 95% Prediction Bounds 0 10 15 20 25 Perfect LA/IR Performance 30

SINR (dB)

(a) Throughput vs. SINR

180

160

140

Throughput (Kbps)

120

100

80

60

40

20 100 95 90 85 80 75

Avg. over all Sites (No BLER) 95% Prediction Bounds Avg. over all Sites (With BLER) 95% Prediction Bounds Avg. over all Sites (Measured) 95% Prediction Bounds
70 65 60 55

RXLEV (dBm)

(b) Throughput vs. RXLEV

Figure 4.3: Mean throughput of all sites measured against the perceived SINR and RXLEV.

4.3 BLER

35

4.3

BLER

The eect of BLER has been signicant on the overall performance of the throughput. Thereafter, the BLER reports were matched against the SINR and the RXLEV to try to understand how much is the BLER aecting the perceived throughput. Figure 4.4(a) shows the variation of the BLER as the SINR changes; the BLER, from 10%, steadly increases as the SINR decreases from 30 dB until it reaches a maxima of 45% at around 23 dB. The cause is mainly due to the fact that for the MCSs that were being used in that range mostly have 8-PSK modulation (MCS-5-6-7-8-9). As the conditions get worse the BLER increases rapidly until it reaches a certain threshold beyond which the BSS chooses to switch to lower MCS, most of them are GMSK modulated and thus are more robust. The result of this switch is that the BLER decreases and reaches a minima of 30% at around 15 dB where the lower MCS can no longer decrease the BLER anymore and thus the BLER increases back again to reach around 45 %. The same trend is evident in the plots against the RXLEV in Figure 4.4(b), yet the rst maxima appears at around 83 dBm. The Figures 4.5(b) show the averaged BLER for all the sites along with the condence interval of 95%. The reason behind such a large BLER is due to the scattering property of the forest environment causing the connection to go into long Rayleigh fading dips, due to the slow speed of the MS, with which the MCS used can not cope. The BSS senses a very good channel condition, based on that it selects a suitable MCS that can maximize the throughput. However, the MS experiences a sudden drop in the signal level and the data being transmitted is lost and sent again. The thesis [25] studied the eect of the forest on the signal and showed that the pathloss represneted more of a suburban pathloss model than rural and that the environment causes high scattering of the signal. Thereafter the reason behind the high BLER and thus the low throughput is mainly due to the incapability of the BSS in adjusting properly to the channel conditions. To combat the eect of slow mobility on the perceived channel quality, employing frequency hopping instead may help in reducing the BLER. If the channel conditions are mitigated, the MCSs will be utilized more properly, thus increasing throughput, by decreasing BLE and retransmissions with lower MCS. As a result the curves provided in Sections 4.1 and 4.2 will have higher throughputs and the MS will experience a signicant improvement. The data in Table 4.1, taken from [26], shows a maximum error rate enforced on each MCS used on a packet data channel in EDGE. The maximum error rate specied is not meant to dictate a minimum quality for the packet services, but as a reference for the manufacturers of the mobile equipment. The BLERs witnessed in the study show that

4.3 BLER

36

BLER vs. CIR

50 Site1 Site2 Site3 Site4

45

40

35

BLER ( % )

30

25

20

15

10 10 15 20 25 30

CIR ( dB )

(a) BLER vs. SINR

BLER vs Received Power
60 Site1 Site2 Site3 Site4

50

40

BLER (%)

30

20

10

0 100

95

90

85

80

75

70

65

60

Received Power ( dBm )

(b) BLER vs. RXLEV

Figure 4.4: BLER of all sites measured against the perceived SINR and RXLEV.

4.3 BLER

37

50

40

BLER (%)

30

20

Mean BLER for all data 95% Prediction Bounds

10

0 10 15

SINR (dB)

20

25

30

(a) BLER vs. SINR

50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 100 95 90 85 80 75 70 65 60 55

BLER (%)

Mean BLER for all data 95% Prediction Bounds

RXLEV (dBm)

(b) BLER vs. RXLEV

Figure 4.5: Mean BLER of all sites measured against the perceived SINR and RXLEV.

4.4 MCS Utilization

38

a high BLER is reached once the RXLEV is below 80 dB, yet it is below 30 % when above that value. Service P DT CH M CS1 P DT CH M CS2 P DT CH M CS3 P DT CH M CS4 P DT CH M CS5 P DT CH M CS6 P DT CH M CS7 P DT CH M CS8 P DT CH M CS9 BLER < 10% < 10% < 10% < 10% < 10% < 10% < 10% < 30% < 30% BT S (dBm) 103 101 96.5 91 97 94.5 88.5 84 80 M S (dBm)

94 91.5 84 83 78.5

Table 4.1: Minimum Sensitiviy Requirements.

If compared with the specication, it can be noticed that the BLER values comply with the specs for MCS-9 and MCS-8 which require a BLER less than 30 % for a sensitivity level of around 80 dB. However, the data collected can not be used to state for MCS-9 and MCS-8 that the specs are met. The reason is that MCS-6 and others were being used in combination for a RXLEV above 80 dB. Thereafter, the reason behind the BLER being below 30 % may be due to a combination of lower MCSs being used. It is possible to conclude that for a RXLEV below 80 dB for all combinations of MCSs, the maximum specied BLER of 10 % is crossed. Still it can not be said that the bounds are crossed for each and every MCS, it can only be stated that for the range of RXLEV that encompasses the sensitivity levels of MCS-7 to MCS-1, the maximum BLER is crossed for a combination of these MCSs.

4.4

MCS Utilization

To support the argument discussed in Section 4.3, a look at the MCS usage may help in understanding how the BLER curves behave. In Figures 4.6, the MCS distribution is provided for the SINR and RXLEV respectively. It can be seen that at high SINR the MCS used are mainly the 8-PSK modulated schemes, MCSs 5, 6, and 9 are the major contributors. Although the high SINR values should allow the usage of MCS-9 alone, the IR algorithm, upon errors, tends to re-transmit with either a higher puncturing scheme or with MCS-6, which belongs to family A. Thus the usage of MCS-6, in the light of the BLER measured, may also be due to switching within the same family. It can also be noticed that as the SINR decreases the dierence between the amount of usage of

4.5 Sample-Cell Coverage Anticipation

MCS Distribution over different CIR Intervals
0.5 0.45 MCS1 MCS2 MCS3 MCS4 MCS5 MCS6 MCS7 MCS8 MCS9

39

Percentage of Use per CIR Interval( % )

0.4 0.35 0.3 0.25 0.2 0.15 0.1 0.05 0

12

17

22

27

32

CIR( dB )

(a) MCS vs. SINR

MCS Distribution over different Received Power Intervals
0.5 MCS1 MCS2 MCS3 MCS4 MCS5 MCS6 MCS7 MCS8 MCS9

Percentage of Use per Abcissa Interval ( % )

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

97

92

87

82

77

72

67

62

57

52

Received Power ( dBm )

(b) MCS vs. RXLEV

Figure 4.6: Modulation Coding Scheme (MCS) distribution over SINR and RXLEV.

MCS-9 approaches that of MCS-6 due to the increased errors. The peak that was talked about in Section 4.3 is at the same point when MCS-6 exceeds MCS-9, in other words when most of the data transmitted with MCS-9 is retransmitted with MCS-6. It can also be observed how the lower MCSs come into play, and their role becomes more signicant as the SINR decreases. It is interesting to note that MCSs 7 and 8 are not used often while MCSs 1 and 2 are rarely used. Better adjustments to the channel will allow for a better utilization of MCS-9 at high SINR and that of MCS-4, thus allowing higher throughputs.

4.5

Sample-Cell Coverage Anticipation

This section shall present an expectation of the throughput coverage in a sample cell setting. The cell parameters are depicted in Table 4.2 and the path loss model to be used herein is provided in Equation 4.1, which has been emperically derived in [25]. The transmitter and receiver antennas are assumed isotropic and the cell radius is assumed to be 5 Km. In the calculations, it is assumed that the mobile has a body loss of 10 dB, which is an average loss found in most GSM 900 MS devices as shown in [27].

4.5 Sample-Cell Coverage Anticipation

40

Lpath = K + n (10 Log10 (r) S) n Power loss factor K Clutter factor S Data centering parameter r Distance from transmitter

(4.1)

Substituting the values given in [25] for a receiver antenna elevation of 1 m into 4.1, we obtain 4.2. Lpath = 119.7557 + 3.8680 (10 Log10 (r) 32.7622) P ower T ransmitted Cable Losses T ransmitter Omni directional Antenna Gain Receiver Antenna Gain Body Loss Cell Radius Table 4.2: Link parameters. It needs to be mentioned that the purpose behind this section is not to provide a denite expectation of the throughput coverage in a cell, since this is dependant on the distribution of the SINR or RXLEV, which is not covered in this study. To have a better expectation the distribution of the signal quality in a similar cell needs to be done by a more intensive measurement campaign that spans the whole area of several cells. Nevertheless, it would still provide some anticipation of the expected throughput coverage in those areas. Assuming that no interference is present, i.e. a noise limited scenario, the RXLEV calculated for dierent cell radii is mapped to the throughput levels observed and depicted in Figure 4.3(b). The throughput curve that was used is the green curve that shows the maximum throughput possibly attainable under the BLER experienced. The measured throughput values are not used due to the AWND size problem and the red curve can not be attained under the conditions at hand. It can be seen from Figure 4.7 that the area covered by a RXLEV above 80 dBm lies below the 2 Km belt which constitute a mere 17 % of the total area. This specic area is where the highest throughputs above 100 Kbps can be attained, reaching a maximum of 160 Kbps at the closest measured point around 600 m from the BSS. If the next cell bound is set at a RXLEV of 90 dBm at a radius of 3.7 Km, where the GMSK MCSs come into play, the throughput is limited between 43 dBm 3 dB 11 dB 0 dBi 10dB 5 Km

(4.2)

4.5 Sample-Cell Coverage Anticipation

41

100 Kbps and 60 Kbps for around 45 % of the total area. The rest of the cell area would experience throughputs below 60 Kbps. Thereafter, high throughputs attainable by EDGE under the current situation can be reached, if the AWND size is set to 32 KB for less than 20% of the total area and a maximum of 160 Kbps. While around 80% of the cell area is conned to throughputs below 100 Kbps. Despite this fact, performance for EDGE can be greatly improved if the BLEs and body loss are mitigated, the farther areas of the cell will then have the performance of the ones closer if not even better. Most previous work results have found that the theoretical throughputs for EDGE can be attained [12] or that an average throughput of 46.3 Kbps per TS can be obtained in a semi-open rural environment. The results presented herein show that these throughputs are optimistic compared to the actual case in a GSM planned network in a rural forest environment.
5000

4000

3.7 Km < R < 5 Km Area is 38 % 40 60 Kbps

90 dBm 2 Km < R < 3.7 Km Area is 45 % 60 100 Kbps

3000

2000

1000

80 dBm R < 2 Km Area is 17% 100 160 Kbps

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000 5000

4000

3000

2000

1000

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

Figure 4.7: RXLEV coverage in a cell with radius of 5 Km.

Chapter

Conclusion
The purpose of this thesis was to conduct a case study on the throughput performance of the newly deployed EDGE capabilities in forest dense areas of Sweden. A selection of cell sites was carried out to provide a sample of the sites deployed and the forest environment that characterizes most of the Swedish forests. A measurement campaign was conducted over these areas and the data was collected and anlayzed to extract information on the performance and coverage of EDGE. It has been shown that the throughput was below expectations due to several reasons. One of the reasons was the usage of the default settings for the data connection on Windows XP OS. However, the extracted data did not comprise solely of the measured throughput, for the data gathered on the usage of MCSs and BLER was able to compensate for this error. Thereafter, the results also showed that even if the settings were changed the throughput would still be signicantly below the maximum. The main reason for the low throughput was the high BLER experienced. The BLERs were above the acceptable levels dictated by the standards, which may have been due to the slow mobility and multipath eects. A possible solution to mitigate this problem would be to deploy frequency hopping. The high BLER has also caused a selection of MCSs not anticipated by previous research, where MCS-6 was being used in a region that should be dominated by MCS-8 and MCS-9. This selection of MCSs has caused a further decrease from the maximum theoretical throughput possible by EDGE. From hence, a rough anticipation of the coverage was concluded based on the results obtained by this thesis and [25]. The coverage study showed that, for a hand-held phone, a rough 20% of the total area of a cell would be covered by throughputs above 100 Kbps, while 80% would experience throughputs below that level. Nevertheless, a reduction in

43

BLER would greatly improve the overall performance of the throughput and allows higher than 100 Kbps for most of the cell area. Thus, the claim that 200 Kbps can be provided in those areas is not feasible under the current circumstances.

Chapter

Future Work
In an experimental study it is always better to have more collected data, as such it would be to an advantage to carry out more measurements in the light of the results obtained so far. Future work may also include a study of the uplink throughput, which has not been covered by this thesis due to the time and weather limitations. The uplink throughput is relevant since data shall also need to be transferred to the central server through the GERAN network. The data has shown that high throughput coverage is limited in a cell, an increase in received power may be implemented by a high gain receiving antenna. However, it has been shown in [25] that the environment is scatterous, a directive high power gain antenna may not greatly improve the performance. Thereafter, a further study of signal propagation in the forest may need to be studied. It has been suggested that the possible reason behind the high BLER may be due to the slow speed of the mobile in such environments. An implementation of frequency hopping may be tested to observe its eect on the reduction of the BLER. If employing frequency hopping may be expensive, it is possible to observe the BLER distribution for each MCS in this environment. This observation would allow for the selection of the more robust scheme, which would reduce BLER and improve to some extent the throughput. The data collected did not test for the case of a fully deployed EDGE network, future work may be to conduct the measurement campaign such that the mobile would be able to switch from a site to another. The handover may induce some delays but may enhance coverage since the mobile will connect to the site that can provide a better quality of service. Also future work may involve characterizing the antenna gain and pattern of the mobile station in use, in this case the Nokia 6230 TEMS phone.

45

Simulations can be carried out as part of the future work, whereby EDGE is simulated given a detailed propagation model of the forest. The simulator would be able to simulate the EDGE network protocol stack and the LA/IR algorithm. This would allow a better comparison with the measured data collected in this thesis.

Bibliography

[1] Nokia. Edge evolution, the revolution in end user experience. White Paper, 2005. [2] GSM World. Operators face the edge conundrum. Wireless Business Review, 2004. [3] GSM World. Edging forward. Wireless Business Review, 2004. [4] P. Laaksonen and J. Edelmann. New business concepts and eciency improvement in paper industry by wireless e-business applications. In Proc. International Technology and Strategy Forum Seminar, 2002. [5] P. Stuckmann and J. Franke. Performance characteristics of the enhanced general packet radio service for the mobile internet access. In Proc. 3G Mobile Communication Technologies, 2001. [6] D. Molkdar and W. Featherstone. System level performance evaluation of egprs in gsm macro-cell environments. In Proc. IEEE VTC, 2000. [7] D. Molkdar and W. Featherstone. System level performance evaluation of gprs for various trac models. In Proc. IEEE VTC, 2000. [8] S. Nikkarinen and M. Moisio. Network level performance evaluation of egprs. In Proc. IEEE VTC, 2002. [9] S. Nikkarinen and M. Moisio. Capacity evaluation of egprs in a frequency hopping network. In Proc. IEEE WPMC, 2002. [10] H. Buddendick, A. Weber, and M. Tangemann. Comparison of data throughput performance in gprs, egprs, and umts. In Proc. World Wireless Congress, 2003. [11] T. Halonen, J. Romero, and J. Melero. GSM, GPRS and EDGE Performance: Evolution Towards 3G/UMTS. Wiley, 2003.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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[12] J. Navarro, J. Martinez, and J. Romero. Throughput estimation for egprs services based on gsm network measurements. In Proc. IEEE VTC, Spring 2002. [13] 3rd Generation Partnership Project. Geran overall description stage 2. 3G TS 43.051 V4.00, 2000. [14] ETSI. Digital cellular telecommunication system (phase 2+): Channel coding. GSM 05.03, version 8.5.0 Release 1999, 2000. [15] ETSI. Digital cellular telecommunication system (phase 2+): Radio transmission and reception. GSM 05.05, version 8.2.0 Release 1999, 2000. [16] ETSI. Digital cellular telecommunication system (phase 2+): Gprs ms-bss interface, rlc/mac protocol. GSM 04.60, version 8.5.0 Release 1999, 2000. [17] IETF. Tcp congestion control. RFC 2581, 1999. [18] National Board of Forestry/Skogvardsstyrelsen. http://www.svo.se/fakta/stat/ssi/engelska/. Last checked on 30/12/2005, 2003. [19] ETSI. Digital cellular telecommunication system (phase 2+): Radio subsystem link control. GSM 05.08, version 8.22.0 Release 1999, 2000. [20] R. Snchez, J. Martinez, J. Romero, and R. Jrvel. Tcp/ip pera a a formance over egprs network. In Proc. IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference, 2002. [21] Swedish National Maps. 1:50000. 2003. [22] Ericsson TEMS AB. Tems investigation 5.1, users manual. pages 287289, 2004. [23] M. Mayer. Tcp performance over gprs. In Proc. IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference., 1999. [24] The Mathworks. Evaluating the goodness of t. http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/toolbox/curvet/ch tt9.html/, Last Checked February 2006. [25] M. Sundstrom. GSM O-Road Part 2. Master Thesis, Royal Institute of Technology, Signals Sensors and Systems, 2006. [26] 3rd Generation Partnership Project. Radio transmission and reception specications. 3G TS 45.005, 2002. [27] C. Beckman. Development trends in antennas for mobile phones. In Proc. Wireless Portables, 2001.