Paging (PCH) Success in GSM

1 Define
1.1 Paging Process

• Paging Success by far is the most complex KPI to deal with as the process of paging
touches almost all the nodes in GSM system and is influenced by performance of each of
them. That’s the reason why this write up on paging looks too interwoven and cross refers
to too many things. But the good news with paging is by the time paging success rate in a
network gets improved; almost all the other KPIs too stand improved.
• In response to an incoming call, the MSC initiates the paging process by broadcasting a
“paging request” message on the paging sub channel (IMSI or TMSI of the MS and its
Paging Group) and starts timer T3113 1.
• A “paging message” consists of the mobile identity (IMSI or TMSI) of the MS being paged
and its “paging group number”.
• A Paging Request Message may include more than one MS identification. The maximum
number of paged MS per message is 4 when using “TMSI” for identification of the MS
(maximum number of paged MS per message is 2 when using IMSI).
• The BSC receives this page and processes the paging request and schedules it for
transmission on the PCH at appropriate time.
• The MS on its part will analyse the paging messages (and immediate assignment
messages) sent on the paging sub channel corresponding to its paging group.
• Upon receipt of a “paging request” message, MS will initiate within 0.7s an immediate
assignment procedure.
• Upon receipt of a page at the MS, the MS responds by transmitting a channel request on
the RACH.
• BSS in response to the received “channel request”, will process it and immediately assign
the MS a SDCCH (immediate assignment / assignment reject; done over AGCH).
• MS Paging response- After receiving the immediate assignment command, MS switches to
the assigned “SDCCH” and transmits a “Paging Response”.
• The establishment of the main signalling link is then initiated (E1) with information field
containing the “PAGING RESPONSE” message and the “paging response” is sent to the
MSC.
• Upon receipt of the “Paging Response” MSC stops the timer T3113.
• If the timer T3113 expires and a “Paging Response” message has not been received, the
MSC may repeat the “Paging Request” message and start T3113 all over again. The
number of successive paging attempt is a network dependent choice.

1 GSM Timer T3113 at the Ericsson MSC is PAGING_timer (guard time for paging initiated from the MSC)
 1.2 Paging Capacity and Paging Group at the RBS

• One control channel Multi Frame is made of 51 TDMA frames2 with a time duration of 235
ms.
• Each 51 TDMA frame Multi Frame will have 9 Common Control Channel (CCCH) blocks.
• Each of these 9 CCCH block is made of 43 TDMA timeslots
• Each CCCH block can carry Paging Messages for 2 MS if IMSI based paging is used or 4 MS
if TMSI4 based paging is used.
• Thus the paging capacity for one 51 TDMA frame Multi Frame5 will be 9(number of CCCH
blocks available per Multi Frame) * 4 (when TMSI based paging is used) = 36 mobiles per
235 ms or 9*2 = 16 mobiles per 235 ms when IMSI based paging is used.
• Thus the paging capacity of a cell is 153 mobiles per second when TMSI based paging are
used and 68 mobiles per second when IMSI based paging are used.
• This means we can improve the “paging bandwidth” for a cell (if there are too many
“paging discards at the cell level”) by using TMSI based paging rather than IMSI based (at
the expense of increased processor load at the BSC and MSC).
• When the rate of “paging load” at the RBS becomes higher than what the RBS is able to
handle (paging capacity of RBS), RBS will start discarding pages (check for high “page
discard” stats at the cell level).
• If the “page discard” at the cell is very high then increase the paging bandwidth at the cell
level by setting AGBLK=0 (all the 9 CCCH blocks in the 51 frame multi frame available for
PCH with preference for AGCH6 ) and use TMSI based paging instead of IMSI based paging.
• If the “PAGE MODE ELEMENT” is set to “extended paging” , the MS will not only listen to
its own paging group but also to its “next but one page group” (example , say an MS is
assigned 23 as its paging group , with extended paging MS will also listen to the page
group 25). Configuration parameters for extended paging are hard coded in the BSC and it
is not usually modified during optimization.
• The cell parameter MFRMS and AGBLK together defines the “number” of paging groups
available at the cell level.
• Number of Paging Groups at cell = MFRMS*(9-AGBLK) for a “non combine BCCH”7
• MFRMS decides the repeat interval of paging messages for MSs that belongs to the same
paging group across multiple 51 frame multi frames (for an example if an MS belongs to
paging group 23 and if MFRMS is set to 4, then pages for all the MSs falling under the
paging group 23 will be broadcasted after every 4th 51 frame multi frame).
• Once an MS deciphers its paging group, in an idle mode, it will tune in and check for an
incoming page only during broadcast time for its paging group (so further the paging
groups are places across multiple 51 frame multi frames (say MFRMS=9), less frequently it
will tune in to check for an incoming page and longer will be its battery life. But the
problem in this case for a cell with high paging load is higher paging discards. For cells with
high paging load it’s recommended to keep MFRMS between 4 to 6.

2 One TDMA frame = 8 Radio timeslots of duration 4.615 ms

3 Signaling Requirement in GSM : One complete “Signaling Message” in GSM system requires 464 bits (or 4*116 bits or 58
bytes) , one TDMA burst on one timeslot can code 58+58=116 bits ; hence it requires 4 TDMA frames to complete one
message (E.g. One MR or Measurement Report or One Paging Message).
4 At the expense of increased processing load at the MSC and BSC
5 with the cell parameter AGBLK = 0 (here all the 9 CCCH blocks will be available for PCH with preference for AGCH)
6 AGCH has to have high priority over PCH as AGCH deals with immediate assignment for either a successfully paged MS or
for an MS that has made a successful Random Access.
7 In a “combined” BCCH cell, 4 SDCCH sub channels shares the same timeslot with BCCH, this drastically reduces the
SDCCH capacity and proportionately reduces the cells paging response capacity. For cells with high paging load always use
the non-combined mode of BCCH/SDCCH, in other words use SDCCH/8 mode (i.e. at least one dedicated time slot for SDCCH
and one dedicated SDCCH timeslots gives 8 SDCCH sub channels) than SDCCH/4 mode as in a combined BCCH case.
 • If MFRMS<= 3, then the IMSI/TMSI is discarded if it has not been retransmitted within two
scheduling of its paging group. If MFRMS>3, then the IMSI/TMSI is discarded if it has not
been retransmitted within one scheduling of its paging group. That’s the reason why for a
site with ABIS over VSAT it is recommended that MFRMS be set to 2 (to compensate for the
delay on satellite system).
• One “Paging Queue” per “Paging Group” is available at the cell level (that means when we
decrease the number of paging groups for the cell by reducing MFRMS to lower numbers,
we actually reduce the number of available paging queue).
• Paging Queue Length = 14 – (Number of Paging Groups/10); which means higher the
number of paging groups in a cell (that is higher the MFRMS settings), lower will be the
Paging Queue length, this will compensate for lower number of Paging Queue available at
lower MFRMS.
• MFRMS does not affect the processor load of BSC and MSC too much (though very low
settings of MFRMS are seen to increase the BSC and MSC load slightly).
• Also call setup time is seen to be shorter for the cell when MFRMS is set low as compared
to high value of MFRMS.
• MFRMS also influences downlink signalling failure rate in idle mode leading cell
reselection. High values of MFRMS can lead to high (unnecessary) cell reselection. (When
an MS camps on a cell , the counter DSC gets initiated to 90/MFRMS , and each time the
MS successfully decodes a page DSC gets incremented by 1 till DSC=90/MFRMS and if MS
fails to decode a page , DSC is decremented by 4. If DSC gets decremented to 0 a downlink
signalling failure gets flagged and the MS will do cell reselection).

1.3 Paging Capacity at the BSC

• The key bottleneck in paging performance is the Location Area dimensioning (as the first
page usually gets done to Location Area) and BSC capacity.
• Number of cells in a Location Area ranges from as low as 10 to more than 100. Once a
page reaches the BSC from MSC, BSC sends it across to “all the cells within the BSC”8.
Hence an incoming page to a BSC gives rise to a considerably large number of outgoing
paging commands from the BSC (point to multipoint). This is the reason why the BSC is
more likely to be the unit “limiting” paging rate than the MSC.
• All the RBSs within this BSC will now broadcast this page at least once , this means the
RBS sets the limit on overall paging capacity (158 mobiles per second if TMSI based
paging is used or 68 mobiles per second if IMSI based paging is used).
• Paging Bottleneck at the BSC usually is the number of RP signals that can be sent from the
CP to the RPDs in the TRHs 9.
• Calculations for number of pages per second:

RPSIG
NO_ PAGE = (1)
NO_ TRH  RPp

( )
TRXpTRH

RPp = 1 − 1 − NO _ CELLS (2)

NO _ TRX  NO _ LA

Where:
RPSIG10 Maximum number of RP signals per second

8 Unfortunately unlike UMTS there is no localised (page to registered cell) paging in case of GSM.
9 CP is the central processor of the BSC, the CP controls numerous Regional Processors (RP); each of these RPs can control
up to 16 EMs (Equipment Modules, which are the hardware software function responsible for a particular task / tasks). “RP
signals” refers to the number of messages that CP can pass onto RPs for control as well as messaging purpose)
10 “Maximum number of RP signals per second” is a BSS release version (R#) dependent, please refer to revision release
notes.
 TRXpTRH11 Average number of TRXs per TRH
NO_LA Number of Location Areas
NO_TRH Number of TRHs belonging to the BSC
NO_TRX Number of TRXs belonging to the BSC
NO_CELLS Number of cells
RPp Probability that an RP signal is sent to an TRH
NO_PAGE Number of pages per second
• With “more” TRHs the paging capacity for the BSC decreases.
• With “more” LACs within a BSC the paging capacity for the BSC increases.
• In the BSC there also exists a “paging queue” with 32 slots (i.e. 32 TIMSI or IMSI can be
queued at the BSC , this means the supervision timer for “page response” of the first page
PAGTIMEFRST1LA should not be set too short (shorter than 6 seconds)

3.1.4 Paging Strategies and MSC paging timers

First page Second page 1 Loc Area

(TMSI/IMSI)
1
PAGREP- PAGETIME
1 Loc Area 1LA 2 REP1LA
1 Loc Area
yes (IMSI)
PAGTIME-
FRST1LA 3
LAI info
in VLR? 0
PAGTIME-
FRSTGLOB
Global
no 1 PAGTIME
REPGLOB
PAGREP-
No second page
Global
GLOB 0

9702634 Figure 1: Paging Strategies and MSC paging timers

• It’s more efficient to have the Location Area based first page. At the MSC, the chance of
having the correct location area where the mobile is based at any moment is always very
high12. Hence having the first page based on Location Area will reduce the amount of paging
load at the BSC and MSC; caused by first page being global (the MS being paged across all
the LACs falling under the MSC).
• Second page can be Local or Global, but if the paging success rate of second page is seen to
be low then trying out global second paging can be a good option.
• Usually it’s seen to be a good strategy to have the first page to be TMSI based (due to higher
paging bandwidth through and through) and the second page to be IMSI or TMSI based. This
becomes a good option if the paging load / paging discard at the cell level are high and MSC/
BSC processor load is not a major concern.

11 again release version dependent ; for R11 with RPG3 , one TRH can handle up to 32 TRXs
12 When a mobile is switched ON, it does a location updating, this process is called as IMSI attach. When in Idle mode, the MS
also does what is called as “periodic location updating” in an interval defined by the timer T3212, also the MS does a Locati on
Updating every time it crosses to a new Location Area. If the parameter ATT=1(recommended) , then each time the MS is
switched off or goes out of coverage it does an IMSI detach to inform the MSC about lack of its availability.