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T. Baumgartner
mobilkom austria public
Handling Capacity of 3G Networks

Thomas Baumgartner
Optimisation & Statistics
mobilkom austria AG & Co KG
t.baumgartner@mobilkom.at
 Content

• mobilkom austria Overview

• Typical UMTS Traffic
• Bottlenecks in UMTS
• Countermeasures
• Conclusion

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T. Baumgartner
mobilkom austria public
 mobilkom austria - Operating Figures

• Customers: 3.3 Mio.

• Employees: 2,295

• Markt Share: 41.0%

• Market Penetration: 98.0%

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T. Baumgartner
mobilkom austria public
 Technologies

• First full-coverage GPRS-network

worldwide (2000)

• First network operator with WAP-

Push technology worldwide (2001)

• First national UMTS-network in

Europe (2002)

• First national network operator with

PUSH-to-Talk technology (2004)

• First national EDGE-network (2005)

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T. Baumgartner
mobilkom austria public
 Which Traffic Makes Capacity Problems?
• Voice
• little resources per call
• blocking only with lot of users
• Video
• not relevant
• Packet
• PS384 demands huge ressources
• few users can block site

Main capacity problems caused by packet traffic

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T. Baumgartner
mobilkom austria public
 Distribution of Packet Traffic

HTTP and HTTPS
2/3 of packet traffic volume!

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T. Baumgartner
mobilkom austria public
 Throughput during Internet Session
looking up train Total Length: 49min
connection reading online newspaper
(very interactive) Traffic Volume:
Downlink: 4,4MB
Uplink: 1,4MB

Activity Factor
Interactive:36%
Reading: 20%

Activity Factor wo
Spurious Emissions
Interactive:25%
Reading: 12%

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T. Baumgartner
mobilkom austria public
 Throughput during Teleworking
Total Length: 76min
Traffic Volume:
Downlink: 18,8MB
Uplink: 5,5MB

Activity Factor: 61%

Activity Factor wo
spurious Emissions: 52%

Applications:
• Outlook
• Excel
• Statistictool
• Use of network drives

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T. Baumgartner
mobilkom austria public
 Consequences
Typically packet traffic handled via DCH

Worst case: PS384 assigned all time
• Code occupied
Currently main
• Baseband capacity occupied
capacity problem
• Transmission capacity occupied

• Very few parallel PS384 calls possible per site

Tuning of holding time

More efficient: Shared channels (HSDPA) for I&B packet traffic

DCH Dedicated Channel I&B Interactive & Background

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T. Baumgartner
mobilkom austria public
 Content

• mobilkom austria Overview

• Typical UMTS Traffic
• Bottlenecks in UMTS
• Countermeasures
• Conclusion

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T. Baumgartner
mobilkom austria public
 Bottlenecks in UMTS

• Iub link
Limits of initial rollout
• Baseband processing power
• Transmit power

• Uplink interference Physical limits

• Codes

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T. Baumgartner
mobilkom austria public
 General Measures for Improving Capacity
• Reduce soft handover overhead
• Antenna tilts
• Antenna orientation
• Leg addition threshold
• Leg drop threshold
• Tune holding time of dedicated channels
• Fast RAB switching
• Common channels (DSCH, HSDPA, HSUPA) for interactive &
background traffic

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T. Baumgartner
mobilkom austria public
 Trade Off for Holding Time
Long holding time:
- waste of resources
+ excellent user experience

Minimal holding time:

- frequent switches FACH<>DCH or between RABs
 delays
- worse user experience
- some applications might not work at all
+ most efficient resource usage

Goal: Maintain user experience while ensuring optimum use of resources

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T. Baumgartner
mobilkom austria public
 Solutions for Bottlenecks of Inital Rollout
• Iub link
• Tune VCC configurations
• Overbooking
• Scheduler for packet traffic
• Extend link capacity
• Baseband processing power
• Extend capacity
• Transmit Power
• Transmit diversity
• Amplifier with higher power
It is not possible to exceed the pole capacity!
• Additional frequency

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T. Baumgartner
mobilkom austria public
 Solutions for Physical Bottlenecks
• Uplink interference
• Receive diversity (typically already used)
• Additional frequency

• Codes
• Additional frequency
• Secondary scrambling codes no sense without smart antennas

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T. Baumgartner
mobilkom austria public
 Long Term Measures for Capacity
Increase
• Micro cells for hot spots
• Shared channels (HSDPA, HSUPA) for I&B traffic
• resource occupation only during transmission
(minimum occupation time 2ms)
• good user experiencey (fast switching, low latency)
• efficient resource usage
• Smart antennas
• increases air interface capacity
• availability?
• costs?

I&B Interactive & Background

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T. Baumgartner
mobilkom austria public
 Conclusion
Main problem
• Web surfing is main packet application
bursty
• Packet traffic typically handled with DCH
• Holding time tuning necessary

Long term solution:

• HSDPA, HSUPA for I&B traffic

DCH Dedicated Channel I&B Interactive & Background

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T. Baumgartner
mobilkom austria public