SCU Live event.

5G KPI Optimization with focus on

Accessibility & Retainability KPIs
BMAS SA NDO SCU Knowledge Sharing Event

Muhammad Ali Khalid BMAS SA NDO SCU 2020-06-16

5G KPI Optimization
RACH KPI Analysis
 5G Accessibility KPI
➢A basic call flow for 5G Accessibility can be seen on the right
➢After B1 MR, the eNB initiates SgNB Addition Process over
X2 with the gNB and this is considered as ENDC Setup RRC B1 MR
Attempt. SgNB Add Request EN-DC
Setup Att
➢Afterwards, the gNB responds to eNB with SgNB Addition
Acknowledge which carries all the required radio parameters SgNB Add ACK
for the NR leg. RRC Reconfig
➢The eNB sends these parameters to the UE over RRC SN Status Transfer

Reconfiguration and once the UE responds with UE LTE RA LTE 5G

Reconfiguration Complete, the eNB sends SgNB RRC Reconfig Cmp
SgNB Reconfig Cmp
Reconfiguration Complete to the gNB which pegs the ENDC EN-DC
Setup Succ
Setup Success
NR RACH Preamble (MSG-1)
➢The accessibility KPI uses these two counters (ENDC Setup
Attempt & Success) but as seen in the signaling flow, this RACH Response (MSG-2)
process basically happens over the LTE air interface and NR
air interface does not come into play.
RACH Complete (MSG-3)
➢So, ideally, this KPI is supposed to be very good and most of RACH
the failures over here are related to capability issues of the Success

UE.
➢Another important thing to see is that in NR NSA mode, the
RACH happens after the NR Leg Setup Process
 5G RACH KPI
➢ The RACH process in 5G starts after ENDC setup completion
➢ The basic call flow can be seen below. The UE sends a preamble (aka MSG-1) and the gNB responds with a
Random Access Response (RAR or MSG-2). Lastly, the UE decodes RAR and responds with a Mac Control
Element on PUSCH which is considered as RACH Success. There is MSG-4 and MSG-5 but usually MSG-3 is
considered the success for RACH process.
➢ 5G RACH KPI is defined as
➢ pmRadioRaCbSuccMsg3 / pmRadioRaCbAttMsg2
pmRadioRaCbAttMsg2

pmRadioRaCbPreambles RAR
(Msg-2)
Preamble
(Msg-1)

PUSCH MCE
(Msg-3)

pmRadioRaCbSuccMsg3
 5G RACH KPI - Planning
➢ The default RACH preamble format used in Ericsson is B4 and default cell range is 1600 m
➢ Based on the table below, it means that NCS (cyclic shift size) is 46 for 1600 m and the number of root
sequences required per cell is 6 – Total Preambles per Cell are 16
➢ This means that the root sequences need to be planned for NR Cells. This is done by assigning different
values for rachRootSequence parameter under NRCellDU.
➢ So, for the default configuration, the RACH Plan can be like 0, 6, 12, 18 . . . . But it has to stay below 138 as
that is the upper limit for B4
zeroCorrelationZoneConfig Number of preambles Number of root sequences Root Sequence Length = 139
NCS Cell range [m]
Npreamble * Nrootsequences *
0 0 4940 1 16
1 2 20 69 1
2 4 90 34 1
3 6 160 23 1 NCS = 46 NCS = 46 NCS = 46
4 8 230 17 1
5 10 300 13 2
6
7
12
13
380 11 2 A B C
410 10 2
8 15 480 9 2
9
10
17
19
560
630
8
7
2
3
C A B
11 23 770 6 3
12
13
27
34
920
1170
5
4
4
4
B C A
14 46 1600 3 6
15 69 2430 2 8
 5G RACH KPI – Planning (Issue#1)
➢ So, what will happen if the planning is not correct for RACH?
➢ Consider, two NBR gNBs (even two NBR Cells within one gNB) having same Root Sequence
➢ When any UE tries to send a RACH preamble to gNB-A, the gNB-B will also consider it as a valid preamble
attempt because it is also listening for preambles over the same Root Sequences.
➢ Both of them will peg Preamble counters but only gNB-A will be able to complete the RACH process as the
UE will only connect to this gNB.
➢ The gNB-B will peg a RACH failure as there will be no MSG-3 to the gNB-B

Root Sequence = X Root Sequence = X

pmRadioRaCbPreambles = 1 pmRadioRaCbPreambles = 1

pmRadioRaCbSuccMsg3 = 1
pmRadioRaCbSuccMsg3 = 0

gNB-B gNB-A
 5G RACH KPI – B1 Threshold (Issue#2)
➢ The second common issue is the selection of B1 threshold
➢ The B1 threshold is the DL RSRP threshold required to add NR leg. What happens if the B1 threshold is
too low?
➢ It is possible that the UE is able to have downlink coverage but fail to achieve uplink connection
➢ So, if the B1 is too low, there is a possibility that after the NR leg addition, the UE will fail to do RACH on
NR successfully – it also increases probability of RLF as well.
➢ The figure below shows output of a trial to gauge a suitable threshold for B1. It shows that below RSRP of
-116 dBm, the number of failed NR sessions start increasing

20

18

16

14

12

10

0
-110 -111 -112 -113 -114 -115 -116 -117 -118 -119 -120 -121 -122 -123

No. of Successful Sessions No. of Failed Sessions

NR RSRP
 5G RACH KPI – B1 Threshold (Issue#2)
➢ How to analyze for your network and find the
optimum B1 threshold?
➢ One way would be to perform a drive test with a
very low B1 threshold and check percentage of
failed connections per RSRP
➢ Another way (if there are UEs present in the
network) is to take a CTR on a cluster and analyze
the B1 MR RSRP value and compare to SgNB
Release Request. This can be done using LTNG
➢ In the end, we should get RSRP value in the B1 MR
along with the cause code of SgNB Release
message per UeRef
➢ So, a plot for each B1 MR RSRP and corresponding
cause code will show what is the optimal value for
B1 threshold
➢ It will be seen that as B1 RSRP goes lower, the
SgNB Release messages will show increase in
abnormal release causes.
➢ SCG Failure Information event can also be used to
filter only RACH issues – will be explained in later
slides
 5G RACH KPI – Ghost RACH (Issue#3)
➢Lets fall back to the NR Leg Addition call flow
➢Usually, the ENDC Successes should be nearly equal to
RACH Preamble Attempts RRC B1 MR
EN-DC SgNB Add Request
➢However, in our case, mostly the RACH attempts are Setup Att
much higher compared to ENDC Successes – infact, even
SgNB Add ACK
when there are no ENDC attempts on the cell, we can
still see RACH attempts. RRC Reconfig

➢Most of these RACHs would actually be False or Ghost UE LTE SN Status Transfer 5G
LTE RA
RACHs and they are related to lower preamble detection EN-DC
threshold settings or alternatively to higher sensitivity of RRC Reconfig Cmp
SgNB Reconfig Cmp Setup Succ
the receiver
➢A quick confirmation can be done by seeing the delta NR RACH Preamble (MSG-1) RACH
between RACH Success (MSG-3) and ENDC Success Attempt
counters. RACH Response (MSG-2)

➢If these two counters are nearly equal but the RACH
Success Rate is bad, then it means that all the UEs are RACH Complete (MSG-3)
actually able to access the cell and the RACH failures are RACH
Success
basically Ghost RACHs.

Note : If Inter/Intra gNB PSCell Change is active then false preambles will be equal to delta between Preamble Attempts and Sum of ENDC Success &
PSCell Change Success. There can still be a delta as RACH can also be used for other purposes so above analysis is an approximation.
 5G RACH KPI – Ghost RACH (Issue#3)
➢Lets have a look from the BB trace
perspective PHY/MAC Trace Output
➢Usually preamble power for a real
preamble is between 1400 to 2000 but
the current gNB threshold is set around
419. This means that any preamble
above the power of 419 is considered as
a RACH Attempt and gNB initiates the
RACH procedure.

Preamble Power
Actual UE – RACH Success
➢However, the trace analysis shows that
all the preambles between values of False UE – RACH Failure
400 to 600 are not real preambles but
just noise. These Ghost Preambles are
the main cause of low RACH Success
Rate.
➢In short, the blue preambles have no
ENDC signaling before the preamble is
received and thus their power is
extremely low as well and they are
actually Ghost RACHs
Preamble ID
5G RACH KPI – Ghost RACH (Issue#3)
Failure Low Power
& Negative
Negative SINR Value
ACK
DTX
For the False RACH, the preamble
power is low and the system considers
it a MSG-3 DTX as there is nothing
received on the slot. This can be seen
in the PUSCH ACK & DTX traces.
The SINR is extremely low as well
indicating that nothing was received

Success High Power

& Good SINR
Positive ACK value

For the successful RACH, the preamble

power is high (above 1500) which
results in a successful decoding of
MSG-3 as can be seen in the PUSCH
ACK & DTX traces.
The SINR is much higher as well
indicating correct decoding
 5G RACH KPI – Ghost RACH (Issue#3)
➢This can also be approximated using counters
➢As explained before, the first indicator is that there
are no ENDC Attempts and Successes pegged by
the gNB. And there are no MSG-3 Successes as DTX Scenario
well.
➢But there are a significant number of RACH RAR
Attempts seen in the counters (Msg-2)

➢The second thing is to verify that the failure on Preamble

(Msg-1)
MSG-3 is pegged under DTX counter
(pmRadioRaCbFailMsg3Dtx)
➢The MSG3 DTX counter shows the number of
times, the gNB was expecting a response from the 4 DTXs for
UE but did not get any message. MSG-3
➢For each RACH there can be 4 MSG-3
transmissions so if we look at the DTX Counter – it
can be seen that it is nearly 4 times the RACH
preamble attempts.
➢This also indicates that the RACH attempt was a
false alarm and there was no UE present there
 5G RACH KPI – Network Example
➢ In this network, in week-18 a new RACH plan was implemented removing all RACH Root Sequence
Conflicts
➢ In the next week, the RACH Preamble Detection Threshold was increased from 419 to 838
➢ The results show significant improvement in the overall KPI (This does not change user experience)
➢ The RACH SR was around 1% and after the changes, the RACH SR improved to an average of around 85%.
➢ It is important to verify the MSG-3 to EndcSuccess Ratio after changing the thresholds. If there is a decrease
in this ratio, then it might indicate that the threshold is too high and actual users are being impacted

5G RACH Success Rate

100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
5G KPI Optimization
Drop Rate KPI Analysis
5G Drop Rate KPI – Overview
➢ The 5G Drops have two major categories
➢ MeNB Drops : These are the drops where the UE tells the eNB that it has experienced a RLF and the eNB initiates
abnormal release procedure towards the gNB. This usually is related to uplink issues.
➢ These drops are given by the counter - pmEndcRelUeAbnormalMenb
➢ SgNB Drops : These are the drops where the gNB finds out itself that there is a RLF and it initiates abnormal release
procedure towards the eNB. This is usually related to downlink issues
➢ These drops are given by the counter - pmEndcRelUeAbnormalSgnb
➢ Under default configuration, usually MeNB drops are much higher compared to SgNB drops. In most of the networks,
70 to 80% of the drops are MeNB initiated.

MeNB Drops SgNB Drops

LTE

5G NR
 5G Drop Rate KPI – Trace Analysis
➢From the counters, we can see whether the drops
are related to MeNB initiated or SgNB initiated
but further analysis might need a CTR
➢In CTR, we can see the cause code of the RLF and
that can provide an indication of a possible work-
around
➢Event ID 55 is RRC_SCG_FAILURE_INFORMATION_NR
which carries the cause code describing the cause
of the abnormal release.
➢Right after this message, the eNB sends a SgNB
Release Request which initiates the NR leg
abnormal release procedure.
➢So, basically we can just filter event ID 55 and we
can get an idea what the major cause of RLF
indications are – some of them will be explained
in the next slides.
 5G Drop Rate KPI – Max Retx (Issue#1)
➢ This is the scenario, where the UE has reached maximum number of uplink RLC retransmissions so it initiates a RLF indication towards the eNB
➢ The cause code for this issue is “rlc-MaxNumRetx”. This typically shows that the uplink coverage is limited.
➢ The default value of maximum uplink retransmission (ulMaxRetxThreshold) is 32 which is already the maximum possible value so further tuning
on this parameter is difficult
➢ Uplink Leg Switching can be used to reduce such issues – the uplink leg can be moved to LTE using the endcUlNrLowQualThresh parameter

➢ The same issue can happen for SgNB induced drops in downlink where the maximum RLC DL retransmssion can exceed the threshold.
➢ In that case, check the value of dlMaxRetxThreshold. The default is 16 while the maximum value is 32.
➢ Also, DL Leg Switching thresholds can be modified to reduce this issue as well. The endcDlNrLowQualThresh can be used to set the threshold for
DL Leg Switching to LTE.

Max RLC UL Max RLC DL

LTE

5G NR
 5G Drop Rate KPI – T310 Expiry (Issue#2)
➢This is another cause code that pegs when the UE experiences RLF in DL. This is based on SSB/CSI-RS link
monitoring and if the UE fails to decode these channels for the duration specified by N310, it assumes that the
radio link is faulty. Once N310 is triggered, the T310 timer starts and if the link is still not functional when the
T310 expires, the UE sends out a RLF indication to the eNB with cause code of t310expiry.
➢Since, the N310 is a UE based procedure so the gNB might not be aware of it that a certain UE in the cell has
undergone N310 but the UE is the one constantly monitoring SSB/CSI-RS so the UE always knows. And thus this
trigger even though it is based on DL channels initiate a MeNB based abnormal release.
➢As this is based on DL Link Monitoring (LM) and the default values of N310/T310 are pretty high already, so
such issues usually are related to downlink coverage/quality.

MeNB Drop – T310

LTE

5G NR
 5G Drop Rate KPI – Random Access (Issue#3)
➢In the current networks, the most common cause
RRC B1 MR
of MeNB drops is usually related to cause code EN-DC SgNB Add Request
“Randomaccessproblem” Setup Att

➢Usually, Random Access should happen in the SgNB Add ACK

accessibility portion but since the 5G is working in RRC Reconfig

NSA mode, so the Random Access happens after SN Status Transfer

UE LTE RA LTE 5G
the NR Leg Setup.
➢As per the signaling flow, the ENDC Setup RRC Reconfig Cmp
SgNB Reconfig Cmp
EN-DC
Success is already pegged at SgNB Setup Succ

Reconfiguration Complete while the NR RACH is NR RACH Preamble (MSG-1)

triggered after this so if the RACH fails at this

RACH Response (MSG-2)
point, then the UE will send a RLF indication to
eNB with cause code RandomAccessProblem
RACH Complete (MSG-3)
and thus we will have a MeNB initiated abnormal RACH
release. Success
 5G Drop Rate KPI – Random Access (Issue#3)
➢This issue can be checked from the counters and it might not be required to collect a CTR to verify it.
➢There are two ways to do this
➢On the 5G side, we know that the ENDC Setup Success is pegged by pmEndcSetupUeSucc and RACH Success
is pegged by pmRadioRaCbSuccMsg3. So, if the UE is failing at RACH then the delta between MSG-3 and
ENDC Success will be high and this delta will give the indication of MeNB Drops due to RACH
➢RACH Drops (approximation) = pmEndcSetupUeSucc - pmRadioRaCbSuccMsg3

➢On the 4G side, there is a counter pmEndcSetupFailNrRa which pegs drops when an ENDC UE experiences a
RACH failure and sends a SCG Failure Information to the eNB with the relevant cause code.
20

➢One of the known reasons that can cause such 18

16
drops is lower B1 threshold as explained 14
already under the RACH KPI. A low B1 12

threshold can cause RACH induced drops since 10

8
B1 is measured on DL RSRP while RACH can 6

fail in uplink due to difference in DL & UL 4

2
coverage. 0
-110 -111 -112 -113 -114 -115 -116 -117 -118 -119 -120 -121 -122 -123

No. of Successful Sessions No. of Failed Sessions

 5G Drop Rate KPI – Cell Range(Issue#4)
➢Another common cause of the issue is the Cell Range. Most of the networks where the 5G Drop Rate is high (for
instance above 20%) are usually related to Drops due to Cell Range.
➢A UE that is beyond the NR Cell Range will keep trying to access the cell and a single UE can add thousands of
drops degrading the overall Drop Rate.
➢Our default Cell Range value for NR is 1.6km while LTE has a Cell Range of 15km. So, in NSA, the UE first
connects to LTE and then tries to connect to NR after a B1 event. This means a UE can connect to LTE from any
distance from 0 to 15km – e.g. if the UE is at 2km from the site and it connects to LTE and B1 is met, the LTE
node will initiate NR leg addition. As NR leg addition only includes RRC messaging over LTE & X2 messaging
between eNB & gNB so this will be successful. But, when the UE tries to connect to NR, it will fail at RACH as it is
beyond configured Cell Range of 1.6km.
LTE
NR Cell Range
5G NR

1.6km

2km
 5G Drop Rate KPI – Cell Range(Issue#4)
➢In NR, we have a counter that is supposed to peg RACH attempts beyond the configured cell range and the
counter is pmRadioRaCbFailMsg1Ooc.
➢However, under default cell range configuration of 1.6km, it does not peg any values even when there are UEs
beyond the cell range.
➢This is basically caused due to the fact that 1.6km is roughly equal to the Ncs limit as well – as shown below
(left).
➢I will try to explain this using a simplistic example below (right)
Ncs Limit

Preamble #1 A B C D
zeroCorrelationZoneConfig NCS Cell range [m]

13 34 1170 Preamble #2 D A B C
Actual TA
14 46 1600
A B C D UE sends Preamble-1

15 69 2430
D A B C gNB decodes as Preamble-2

Decoded TA
 5G Drop Rate KPI – Cell Range(Issue#4)
➢Lets look at an example to understand it more clearly. A cell range of 1.6km might not peg any OOC as it is nearly equal to NCS-
46 limit. However, if the cell range is moved above or below 1.6km, we should see OOC pegging provided there are users in that
region.

Cell Range

OOC Counter=0

0.6km 1.6km

Ncs=46 Limit (1.6km)

Cell Range

OOC Counter++

0.3km 1.3km

Ncs=46 Limit (1.6km)

 5G Drop Rate KPI – Cell Range(Issue#4)
➢ A quick approximation for Cell Range Induced Drops can be done using the counters
➢ Check ENDC Success - MSG3 Success (pmEndcSetupUeSucc - pmRadioRaCbSuccMsg3 )
➢ If it is high (more than 1000 on daily level or MSG3/EndcSuccess is less than 10%)
o pmRadioRaCbSuccMsg3 *100 / pmEndcSetupUeSucc < 10%
➢ Preamble Counter (MSG1) = 10 times ENDC Success
o pmRadioRaCbPreambles = 10 * pmEndcSetupUeSucc
➢ DTX MSG3 Count = 40 times ENDC Success
o pmRadioRaCbFailMsg3Dtx = 4 * pmRadioRaCbPreambles
o pmRadioRaCbFailMsg3Dtx = 40 * pmEndcSetupUeSucc

➢ For each ENDC success, the UE will attempt RACH preamble 10 times (default value is 10 transmissions) and since all these will fail on MSG-2 so the gNB
should have 4 DTX on MSG-3. The counters below are from an actual case where cell range was 1.6 km and the UE was beyond the cell range.

Counter Values Comment

pmEndcSetupUeAtt 1605
pmEndcSetupUeSucc 1605 All ENDC attempts are successful as this is being done over the LTE RRC & eNB-gNB X2
We can see 16177 preambles which is roughly equal to 10 times of pmEndcSetupUeSucc
pmRadioRaCbPreambles 16177 (1605*10=16050)
pmRadioRaCbAttMsg2 16177 All RACH attempts were responded by the gNB : MSG2 = MSG1
pmRadioRaCbFailMsg1Ooc 0 Out Of Cell Range count is 0 as the TA is not correctly decoded
pmRadioRaCbFailMsg3Crc 1072
pmRadioRaCbFailMsg3Dtx 63636 Number of DTX failures on MSG-3 are nearly 40 times the pmEndcSetupUeSucc (1605*40=64200)
pmRadioRaCbSuccMsg3 0 RACH Success is 0 i.e. no MSG-3 was successful
pmEndcRelUeAbnormalMenb 1603 All the drops are pegged under MeNB
pmEndcRelUeNormal 0
5G Drop Rate KPI – Network Example
➢ The cell range was increased in this network
➢ The results showed significant improvement in drop rate as seen below
➢ This indicates that the top issue for Drop Rate might be related to the low cell range
➢ The users beyond the cell range keep trying to access the cell but keep dropping at RACH phase

5G Drop Rate
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
 Q&A
Question
what is sent in SN Status transfer from LTE to eNB?
we see Random Access in LTE side as well in Ericsson CPI as well as in logs during 5G cell addition In Ericsson, we use an intra-cell handover while reconfiguring the PDCP during NR
but in 3GPP, it is not mentioned. What is that reason?
Do the Preamble retransmissions for the same rach procedure( preambleretransmax) also step the
counter pmracbpreambles? if no, how does the gNB diffrentiate between the first attempts and
retransmissions?
Is there any concept of RSI confusion means a source cell may have 2 neighboring cell with same
RSI??
there is feature automatic rach root sequence allocation in LTE. do we have a same feature in 5G ?
basically to improved RACh SR
In case of a Msg1 failure(UE didnt get Msg2) , it will retransmit preamble. It can be seen that the UE
send different preambles while retransmitting. How can EnodeB understand that the same UE is
retransmitting preambles? Will the pmRadioRaCbPreambles will be pegged for all the
attempts+reattempts?
The effective value of B1 report will be B1+hystersis, meaning if you use B1 @-110 and
hystersisB1=3, the event will be triggered only above -107dbm, is that right?
Can this ghost preambles impact scg failures due to rach problem ??
This we will get in Anchor CTR ??
what is the T310 Timer value
After this rlf indication ..would UE send RRC reestablishment request message to NR cell ?
since SSB periodicity is not 1ms so in that N311 count in terms of time conversion would be equal to Yeah, the SSB periodicity will be used as unit for both in-sync and out-of-sync
N311* SSB periodicity?
what is cell range in 5G? and what TP is considered good in 5G interms of levels?
What NCS stands for?
What will be the recommended value of Cell Range in MB? is 15 KM supported in MB?
Can i say b1 threshold value has inverse relation with cell range ?
which paameter is used to change cell Range
What about the usability of flex-counters to ENDC and differentiate KPIs?
Answer
It contains PDCP SN and HFN values
leg addition which causes a LTE Random Access.
The gNB just pegs the preamble counter for each preamble it receives.
Yeah, In this case, there will be RSI conflicts - details explained on Slide#6
Currently, no we do not have any automatic RSI allocation in 5G
The gNB does not need to know if it is the same UE, it just receives the preamble and
responds with MSG-2. The preamble transmit counter is at the UE side
Yeah, it is B1 + Hyst - however, do remember that the unit of this Hyst is 0.5 dB.
No, SCG Failure message comes from real UEs
The CTR showed in the presentation was from the anchor
The default value is 2000ms.
In NSA mode, there is no RRC link on NR so the UE will send RLF to eNB and there
will be no RRC Reestablishment on NR
indications
Default cell range is 1.6km and preamble format is B4. Criteria for good or bad
TP/TA depends on areas (LOS/NLOS)
NCS indicates the Cyclic Shift size
The default value is 1600m. It can be increased to 5km using Preamble format B4.
If I reduce B1 threshold, I am effectively increasing the cell coverage.
Parameter is cellRange under NRCellDU
Yeah, this can be done and it can show you KPIs for ENDC users on the LTE side
 References
➢ RACH Planning Guide for NR on RAN Method Guidelines
https://ericsson.sharepoint.com/sites/RAN_Methods_Guidelines/NR/SitePages/Home.aspx

➢NR RAN CPI

http://cpistore.internal.ericsson.com/elex?id=28717

➢EQNA
https://eqna.lmera.ericsson.se/

➢MHWeb
https://mhweb.ericsson.se/

➢ 5G Mobility and Traffic Management Guideline