TRANSMISSION AND SWITCHING

TRANSMISSION AND SWITCHING DEFINED

• The IEEE defines transmission as the propagation of a signal, message, or

other form of intelligence by any means such as optical fiber, wire, or
visual means. Our definition is not so broad.
• Transmission provides the transport of a signal from an end-user source
to the destination such that the signal quality at the destination meets
certain performance criteria.
• Switching selects the route to the desired destination that the transmitted
signal travels by the closing of switches in either the space domain or the
time domain or some combination(s) of the two.
• transmission and switching were separate disciplines in
telecommunication with a firm dividing line between the two. Switching
engineers knew little about transmission, and transmission engineers
knew little about switching.
 TRAFFIC INTENSITY DEFINES THE SIZE OF SWITCHES AND THE CAPACITY OF
TRANSMISSION LINKS

• As we have already mentioned, telephone exchanges (switches) are

connected by trunks or junctions.1 The number of trunks connecting
exchange X with exchange Y is the number of voice pairs or their
equivalent used in the connection.
• One of the most important steps in telecommunication system design is
to determine the number of trunks required on a route or connection
between exchanges.
• We could say we are dimensioning the route. To dimension the route
correctly we must have some idea of its usage—that is, how many people
will wish to talk at once over the route.
• The usage of a transmission route or switch brings us into the realm of
traffic engineering; and usage may be defined by two parameters: (1)
calling rate, or the number of times a route or traffic path is used per unit
time period; or more properly defined, “the call intensity per traffic path
during the busy hour (BH)”; and (2) holding time, or “the average duration
of occupancy of one or more paths by calls.”
• A traffic path is a “channel, time slot, frequency band, line, trunk switch,
or circuit over which individual communications pass in sequence.”
Carried traffic is the volume of traffic actually carried by a switch, and
offered traffic is the volume of traffic offered to a switch. Offered traffic
minus carried traffic equals lost calls. A lost call is one that does not make
it through a switch. A call is “lost” usually because it meets congestion or
blockage at that switch.
• To dimension a traffic path or size a telephone exchange, we must know
the traffic intensity representative of the normal busy season. There are
weekly and daily variations in traffic within the busy season. Traffic is
random in nature. However, there is a certain consistency we can look for.
For one thing, there is usually more traffic on Mondays and Fridays, and
there is a lower volume on Wednesdays.
• Figure 4.1 shows a typical hour-to-hour traffic variation for a serving
switch in the United States. It can be seen that the busiest period, the
busy hour (BH), is between 10 A.M. and 11 A.M. (The busy hour from the
viewpoint of grade of service was introduced in Section 1.3.4).
• From one workday to the next, originating BH calls can vary as much as
25%. To these fairly “regular” variations, there are also unpredictable
peaks caused by stock market or money market activity, weather, natural
disaster, international events, sporting events, and so on. Normal traffic
growth must also be taken into account.
• Nevertheless, suitable forecasts of BH traffic can be made. However,
before proceeding further in this discussion, consider the following
definitions of the busy hour.
1. Busy Hour. The busy hour refers to the traffic volume or number of call
attempts, and is that continuous one-hour period being wholly in the time
interval concerned for which this quantity (i.e., traffic volume or call
attempts) is greatest.
2. The Average Busy Season Busy Hour (ABSBH). This is used for trunk groups
and always has a grade of service2 criterion applied. For example, for the
ABSBH load, a call requiring a circuit in a trunk group should encounter all
trunks busy (ATB) no more than 1% of the time.
• Other definitions of the busy hour may be found in Ref. 1.
• When dimensioning telephone exchanges and transmission routes, we
shall be working with BH traffic levels and care must be used in the
definition of the busy hour.
• Peak traffic loads are of greater concern than average loads for the system
planner when dimensioning switching equipment. Another concern in
modern digital switching systems is call attempts.
• We could say that call attempts is synonymous with offered traffic. Even
though a call is not carried and is turned away, the switch’s processor or
computer is still exercised. In many instances a switch’s capability to route
traffic is limited by the peak number of call attempts its processor can
handle.
 Measurement of Telephone Traffic

• If we define telephone traffic as the aggregate of telephone calls over a

group of circuits or trunks with regard to the duration of calls as well as
their number, we can say that traffic flow (A) is expressed as
A= C ×T,

• where C designates the number of calls originated during the period of

one hour, and T is the average holding time, usually given in hours. A is a
dimensionless unit because we are multiplying calls/hour by hour/call.
• Suppose that the average holding time is 2.5 minutes and the calling rate
in the BH for a particular day is 237. The traffic flow (A) would then be
237×2.5, or 592.5 call-minutes (Cm) or 593.5/60, or about 9.87 call-hours
(Ch).
• The preferred unit of traffic intensity is the Erlang, named after the Danish
mathematician A.K. E rlang (Copenhagen Telephone Company, 1928). The
Erlang is a dimensionless unit.
• One Erlang represents a circuit occupied for one hour. Considering a group
of circuits, traffic intensity in Erlangs is the number of call-seconds per
second or the number of call-hours per hour. If we knew that a group of
10 circuits had a call intensity of 5 Erlangs, we would expect half of the
circuits to be busy at the time of measurement.
• In the United States the term unit call (UC), or its synonymous term,
hundred callsecond, abbreviated ccs,3 generally is used. These terms
express the sum of the number of busy circuits, provided that the busy
trunks were observed once every 100 seconds (36 observations in 1 hour)
(Ref. 2). The following simple relationship should be kept in mind: 1
erlang=36 ccs, assuming a 1-hour time-unit interval.
 Blockage, Lost Calls, and Grade of Service

• Let’s assume that an isolated telephone exchange serves 5000 subscribers

and that no more than 10% of the subscribers wish service
simultaneously. Therefore, the exchange is dimensioned with sufficient
equipment to complete 500 simultaneous connections.
• Each connection would be, of course, between any two of the 5000
subscribers. Now let subscriber 501 attempt to originate a call. She/he
cannot complete the call because all the connecting equipment is busy,
even though the line she/he wishes to reach may be idle.
• This call from subscriber 501 is termed a lost call or blocked call. She/he
has met blockage. The probability of encountering blockage is an
important parameter in traffic engineering of telecommunication systems.
If congestion conditions are to be met in a telephone system, we can
expect that those conditions will usually be encountered during the BH.
• A switch is dimensioned (sized) to handle the BH load.
• Grade of service expresses the probability of meeting blockage during the
BH and is commonly expressed by the letter p. A typical grade of service is
p =0.01. This means that an average of one call in 100 will be blocked or
“lost” during the BH. Grade of service, a term in the Erlang formula, is
more accurately defined as the probability of blockage.
• It is important to remember that lost calls (blocked calls) refer to calls that
fail at first trial. We discuss attempts (at dialing) later—that is, the way
blocked calls are handled.
• We exemplify grade of service by the following problem. If we know that
there are 345 seizures (i.e., lines connected for service) and 6 blocked calls
(i.e., lost calls) during the BH, what is the grade of service?
• Grade of service=Number of lost calls/Number of offered calls =6/(345+6)
=6/351 p ≈0.017.
• Availability. Switches were previously discussed as devices with lines and
trunks, but better terms for describing a switch are inlets and outlets.
• When a switch has full availability, each inlet has access to any outlet.
When not all the free outlets in a switching system can be reached by
inlets, the switching system is referred to as one with limited availability.
• Examples of switches with limited and full availability are shown in
Figures 4.2a and 4.2b Of course, full availability switching is more
desirable than limited availability, but is more expensive for larger
switches. Thus full availability switching is generally found only in small
switching configurations and in many new digital switches
 Waiting Systems (Queueing)

• The North American PSTN became entirely digital by the year 2000. Nearly
all digital switches operate under some form of queueing discipline, which
many call waiting systems because an incoming call is placed in queue and
waits its turn for service. These systems are based on our third
assumption, namely, lost calls delayed (LCD).
• The method by which a waiting call is selected to be served from the pool
of waiting calls is called queue discipline. The most common discipline is
the first-come, first-served discipline, where the call waiting longest in the
queue is served first.
• Thanks………………..