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Telecoms Network Design: T-110.300 Timo Kiravuo, Partially From Slides by Olli Knuuttila & Hannu H. Kari

Telecom networks require careful planning and dimensioning to ensure sufficient capacity and resources while minimizing costs. Dimensions that must be considered include user needs, traffic patterns, equipment requirements, and regulatory constraints. The goal is to design a network that can support predicted traffic loads with an acceptable level of blocking during peak usage periods to maximize income and customer satisfaction.

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50 views

Telecoms Network Design: T-110.300 Timo Kiravuo, Partially From Slides by Olli Knuuttila & Hannu H. Kari

Telecom networks require careful planning and dimensioning to ensure sufficient capacity and resources while minimizing costs. Dimensions that must be considered include user needs, traffic patterns, equipment requirements, and regulatory constraints. The goal is to design a network that can support predicted traffic loads with an acceptable level of blocking during peak usage periods to maximize income and customer satisfaction.

Uploaded by

itemboleh
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Telecoms Network Design

T-110.300
Timo Kiravuo, partially from slides by
Olli Knuuttila & Hannu H. Kari
Design Issues

• Telecoms networks are expensive


– Installation in physically locations
– Sometimes access rights and physical access is difficult
– High availability hardware
– Time to market is an important factor
– Heavy investment prior to returns
– Long payback time
• Income is based on usage
– If the available resources can not fulfill a demand, income is
lost
– Lacking customer satisfaction increases churn (loss of
customers)
• Wrong investments eat profit margins and can destroy the
company
Planning and Dimensioning
• Inputs
– User needs
– Current statistics
– Future estimates
– Competition
– Technology, standards, products
– Visioning
• Internals
– Capacity needs
– Network element requirements
– Modeling network / user behavior
• Outputs
– Strategic planning, company policy
– Installation/purchase schedule
– Configuration setting
– Prioritizing, pricing rules
Dimensioning Examples (GSM)

• Capacity
– Number of users supported in the network
– Number of lines between BSC and MSC
– Number of carriers per cell
– Number of modem lines for GSM data
– Disk space and CPU capacity for voice mail
• Location
– Where to install new equipment
– Central or distributed service topology
– Location of the base stations
– Location of the modem pool
Load Control

• In the circuit switched world service is black & white


– Call is established or blocked
– Packet networking is different
• How to reduce load in the network
– Blocking -> unhappy customers
– Pricing -> happy customers
• In mobile networks increasing load decreases quality
– In TDMA other mobiles are monitoring same frequency and
time slot
– In CDMA other mobiles are monitoring all other mobiles in the
same cell
– Fixed line telephone networks are more simple
Increasing Capacity (GSM)

• Radio capacity
– More base stations, smaller cell radius
– Costly, usually possible
– More frequencies / channels
– Depends on regulation or base station hardware
– Better radio frequency utilization through different coding
– Depends usually on handset hardware and standards
• More efficient utilization of resources
– Circuit vs. packet switched services
– Dedicated vs. multiplexed channels
• Parallel servers (pizza boxes)
– GGSN, SGSN, MSC, HLR
– requires algorithms that parallelize
Busy Hour

• The sliding 60 minute period, during which occurs the


maximum total traffic load in a given 24 h period
• Examples:
– Morning: 9-11
– Afternoon 13-17
– Evening: 19-21
• Operator network design usually focuses on the Busy Hour
– The load of off-peak hours is not significant for network design
• If traffic can somehow be moved from peak hours to off-
peak hours, operators can save on network costs
– Pricing
Traffic Measurements

• Traffic is measured in Erlangs


– Strict definition is related to one voice path
• In network design Erlang is usually used to
measure traffic volume in one hour
– If a set of subscribers makes 30 calls in one hour and
the average call is 5 minutes, that is 2.5 Erlangs
• Named after A. K. Erlang, who did the basic
research on this in the early 1900's
• Applies to services as well as trunk lines
Customer Profiling

• E.g. if an average residential customer creates 25 mErl


during the busy hour, 50 000 subscribes would generate
1250 calls (Erlangs) on the average
• Profiles depend on culture and area, change with time, are
affected by mobility etc.
• Traffic patterns can be studied from the logs of carried traffic
– Notice that blocked calls are not shown
• Sometimes traffic is difficult to predict
– Major accidents
– TV-competitions
– National holidays
Blocking

• Blocking means how many uncompleted calls do


we accept
– Usually during the Busy Hour
• Measured usually as a percentage
– 1% blocking during the Busy Hour is often acceptable
– ITU-T E.543
– Means that 1 out of 100 calls can not be completed,
because the network is full and no free path can be
found
– 1% is the design target, most of the time
performance is much more better
• Blocking can be caused by lack of trunk lines,
congestion in signaling, unavailable services etc.
The Erlang B Formula

• The Erlang B Formula calculates the probability of a call


being blocked, based on the number of links (trunks) or
other available services and offered load
• The call arrivals are assumed to be random (Poisson
distribution)
c
a / c!
Pb ? B (c, a) ? c

• c = trunks, operators etc.


? k? 0
k
( a / k! )
• a = offered load
• Pb = Probability of call being blocked
The Erlang B Formula in Practice

• Increasing the amount of trunks decreases


the blocking probability in non-linear fashion

– This table shows the Erlang-value 0.5% 1% 2%


as a function of trunk lines and the 1 0.005 0.010 0.020
blocking factor
2 0.105 0.153 0.223
– To carry 1 Erl at 1% blocking,
3 0.349 0.455 0.602
requires 5 lines
4 0.701 0.869 1.092
– 8 lines can carry 3 Erls
5 1.132 1.361 1.657
– Accepting greater blocking
likelihood allows some more traffic 6 1.622 1.909 2.276
– Note that the amount of users is 7 2.157 2.501 2.935
not important, traffic generated is 8 2.730 3.128 3.627
Practical Network Dimensioning

• Amount of traffic can be estimated from


– Past experience
– Known demographics
– City planning
– etc.
• In fixed line networks the number of trunks is one major
issue
– These come usually in PDH multiplexes or SDH containers
– 30 trunks can carry 20 Erl at 1% blocking
– 120 trunks can carry 103 Erl at 1% blocking
• There is also the switching equipment and services
Network Throughput

• The issue of interest to users is the quality of the total


service
– The end to end traffic
– Calls cross the telephone network over many trunks and
switches, any of which may be blocked
• Some network patterns are easy to analyze
– A link, series of links, a tree
• The actual mesh network is hard to analyze
• One method is to analyze all the major paths
– E.g. all trunks have a blocking factor of 1%, if a call crosses
three trunks, the total factor is 1-(1-0.01)3 = 3%
– ITU-T has standardized both the reference network and QoS
requirements
More Network Design Issues

• Signaling network capacity should also be


calculated
• And switching capabilities
System capabilities

Traffic volume Quality of Service


Erlangs B < 1%
Network Topology
• Fixed line networks are usually meshes built of
rings
– Redundancy and alternative routes
– Alternatives can also carry excess traffic
– Land rights and equipment center permissions are
important
• Cellular networks provide a completely different
challenge
– Urban areas
– Dense population, buildings
– Rural areas
– Mobility
– Dense lines across rural areas
– Unpredictable traffic
Cellular Network Topology

• Cellular network design is focused on the


– Transceiver antenna locations and directions
– Radio frequencies and channels
– Transmission power
• Trunks from the base station to backbone are also
an issue, but more manageable one
– Dual band GSM requires roughly 2-4 Mbps
– Microwave links
• Cells can be macro, micro or indoor cells
– Smaller cells enable better re-use of frequencies but
cost more
Regulation

• Government assistance requirements


• Emergency services
• Consumer protection
– QoS requirements
– Monopoly regulation
– Mandatory service provisioning
– Customers
– Competition
• Resources
– Frequencies
– Right of way
• No control over terminal equipment or service usage

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