GSM Network SDCCH

Congestion & Solutions

Objectives

 To know the signaling flow of SD seizure

 To the causes of SD congestion
 To know the flow of checking SD congestion
Contents

 SD Seizure Signaling & Relevant Counters

 Causes of SDCCH Signaling Channel
Congestion
 Procedure of Checking SD Congestion
 Introduction of Features related to SDCCH
 Typical Cases
 What is SD congestion ？

 During LOC and the early stage of MOC and MTC process, MS
usually seizes SDCCH to exchange signaling.

 When BSC receives SD request from MS, it checks SD resource. If

all SDCCHs are occupied at the moment, congestion happens
once.

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 Definition of SDCCH congestion indicator

KPI name SDCCH blocking rate

Definition Number of signaling channel blocking times*100%/ Number of
signaling channel call attempts

BSC BTS Ms When there is no

SDCCH available,
Channel Request
network sends an
Channel Required IMMEDIATE
A
ASSIGNMENT
REJECT message,
which contains
initial value of
Immediate Assignment Reject T3122. MS is not
Immediate Assignment Reject allowed to restart
SD request until
Ms starts T3122
T3122 expires,.

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 SD seizure and release flow

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Contents

 SD Seizure Signaling & Relevant Counters

 Causes of SDCCH Signaling Channel
Congestion
 Procedure of Checking SD Congestion
 Introduction of Features related to SDCCH
 Typical Cases
 Classification of SDCCH congestion causes

System capacity not big

Too many short messages
or weather forecast
messages.
Strategy: do not centralize
transmission; configure
more SDCCH
enough, small number of
SDCCH.
Strategy: expansion
Unreasonable setting of
system parameters and RACH
parameters, etc.
Strategy: increase RACH access
SDCCH congestion causes: threshold appropriately (to
•Large traffic volume exceeding
cope with interference); reduce
network capacity; MaxRetrans appropriately,
•Signaling flow doesn’t end in increase number of
time. transmission timeslot.

Too many SDCCH LOC at LAC

boundaries.
Strategy: adjust LAC selection,
adjust CRH (cell reselection
histeresis), adjust parameter
setting of periodic LOC.
Single board （ TRX/FPU
） fault, transmission
fault.

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Contents

 SD Seizure Signaling & Relevant Counters

 Causes of SDCCH Signaling Channel
Congestion
 Procedure of Checking SD Congestion
 Introduction of Features related to SDCCH
 Typical Cases
 Procedure of Checking SD Congestion

Check
transmission
equipment
and alarms

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 Analysis of SD access causes

 Generally, the number of LOC attempts takes 35% of the total SD access
times (the percentage may increases to 70%, if the site is located at LAC
boundary); the number of SD access caused by MOC and that caused by
MTC are almost equal; other causes rarely happen.
 If there are a big number of attempts due to other reasons, and all end in failure, the
cause can be confirmed that is interference.
 If the number of MOC attempts is large and the rate of the number to the total of
attempts is high, there may be MS malicious pager operating in the network.
 If number of LOC increases abnormally, there may be changes on LAC planning or
amendments of HLR and VLR.
 If SD congestion is accompanied with large number of assignment failures, it’s very
possible that the cell traffic volume is high or co-channel interference exists.

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Contents

 SD Seizure Signaling & Relevant Counters

 Causes of SDCCH Signaling Channel
Congestion
 Procedure of Checking SD Congestion
 Introduction of Features related to SDCCH
 Typical Cases
 Dynamic configuration of SDCCH Feature

 Dynamic SDCCH configuration is a policy adopted by the network to

allocate channel resources. If there are no sufficient SDCCH resources
available in the current serving cell, this feature can make full use of the
idle TCH resources by converting one idle TCH to eight SDCCHs to
relieve SDCCH congestion.
 With dynamic SDCCH configuration enabled, the network
periodically checks the number of idle SDCCHs in the cell based
on the SDCCH scanning period set by the module parameters. If
the number of idle SDCCHs is less than the dynamic SDCCH
conversion threshold set by the network, and both the total number of
idle TCHs in the cell and the number of idle TCHs in the first sub-
cell are more than four, or the total number of idle TCHs is more
than the number of carriers in the cell, the network selects randomly one
idle TCH and converts it to eight SDCCHs.
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 SDCCH Congestion Control Feature
 After applying this feature, the BSS monitors the occupancy of the SDCCH channel in real time. If the
occupancy of the SDCCH channel reaches the threshold (overflow), the BSS filters some RACH messages
according to the predefined strategy (state B). In this way, SDCCH channel congestion can be avoided.

Transition Flow of
the BTS from State
Transition Flow of
A to State B
the BTS from State
A to State B

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Contents

 SD Seizure Signaling & Relevant Counters

 Causes of SDCCH Signaling Channel
Congestion
 Procedure of Checking SD Congestion
 Introduction of Features related to SDCCH
 Typical Cases
 Typical case of SD congestion-I

 SD congestion due to LAPD delay caused by transmission fault.

 The performance report showed that during SD congestion

(SDCCH occupancy failure counter), the number of SDCCH
allocation failures was high.

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 Typical case of SD congestion-I

The signaling flow shows that BTS didn’t

respond to the Channel Activation sent by BSC.

 There was transmission warning during SD congestion;

 After BTS was reset, the problem disappeared;
 After transmission was adjusted, the problem was completely
solved.

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 Typical case of SD congestion-II

 SD congestion due to large quantity of LOC (caused by cross-

LAC coverage)
 From analysis of radio access measurement, it’s discovered that
the SD congestion was caused by large quantity of LOC.

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 Typical case of SD congestion-II

Through signaling
tracing, we could
see the large
quantity of LOC
under the cell was
from LAC09533 to
LAC09523.

 The site was located between two location areas (LAC), the cell belonged to one
LAC. A road, 1.5km from the site, was under the coverage of another LAC.
 In on-site DT, the cell was found stretched its coverage to the road, and resulted
in frequent LOC on the road.
 After adjustment of antenna to control the cell’s coverage, SD congestion
obviously reduced.

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 Typical case of SD congestion-III

 SD congestion due to short message pager

Serious SD congestion suddenly occurred in 900/1800M

cells under a site, but no transmission problem was found.
Radio performance data showed that the cause of all radio
access was MS sending short messages.

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 Typical case of SD congestion-III

 SD congestion due to short message pager

 By observing other daily data of the BTS, engineers found the traffic volume
was not high.
 It’s concluded that the problem was caused by heavy transmission load.
Mass-sending device of short message caused heavy transmission load, which
led to LAPD delay, and then led to SD allocation overtime, wasted SD
resource, and finally resulted in SD congestion.
 Through signaling tracing, found the source of short messages. After the
source was blocked, the problem disappeared.

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