Telecommunications Traffic

Tcom 142 Lecture No. 6

1st Sem SY 2009-2010

Introduction

Trunk is any entity that will carry one call

Maybe an international circuit with a length of thousands of

kilometers or a few meters of wire between switches in the
same telephone exchange

Trunking is the arrangement of trunks and switches

within a telephone exchange
Number of trunks to be provided depends
on the traffic to be carried; sufficient for
busiest time/peak traffic load

Busy Hour

Number and duration of phone calls varies in a random manner

(depending on subscriber categories and time of day when the calls
are made).
Result of this will be a varying load on the equipment.
A continuous one-hour period during which traffic in a part of the
network is at its most intensive is called busy hour . This hour may
occur at different times of day (or night) depending on which
category of subscribers is dominant.

Dimensioning

Dimensioning the route is to determine the

number of trunks required on a route or
connection between exchanges
Dimensioning problem, the basic problem of
determining the size of a telecommunications
system, is: given the offered traffic, A, and
the specified grade of service, B, find the
number of trunks, N, that is required
Traffic to be handled (i.e. usage) determines
number of trunks to be provided, particularly
during the busiest time of day

Holding Time

Capacity of an exchange cannot be expressed

just as the number of possible simultaneous
calls. T
Control equipment used in the call set-up
procedure is engaged to a greater or less extent
during a twenty-four-hour period.
This is due to variations in the mean holding
time (call set-up time + conversation time +
disconnection time)

Traffic Intensity

The unit of traffic flow in any particular part

of a network is named erlang (E) in honour
of the Danish mathematician Agner Krarup
Erlang (1878-1929), who developed basic
theories of the relationships between the
three teletraffic factors
Traffic intensity can be defined as the
average number of calls in progress

Traffic Intensity

Traffic carried by a group of trunks is the product

of the average number of call arrivals per unit of
time T and the average call holding time:
A = Ch/T
where: A = traffic in erlangs
C = average number of call arrivals during time T
h = average call holding time

Example: In a local exchange, the total number of

calls during one hour was 1800. The mean holding
time was 3 minutes. We obtain a traffic intensity
of: A = 1800 3/60 = 90 erlangs

Traffic Path Usage

Usage is defined by two (2) parameters:

calling rate - number of times a route or traffic

path is used per unit period (call intensity per
traffic path during the busy hour)
holding time duration of occupancy of a traffic
path by a call

Traffic path is a channel, time slot, frequency

band, line, trunk, switch, or circuit over which
individual communications pass in sequence

Traffic Concepts

In addition to the term traffic intensity

there are three different traffic
concepts:

traffic carried (Ac) (equivalent to the traffic

intensity);
traffic offered (Ao); and
traffic lost (Al)

Grade of Service

In a telephone exchange, theoretically possible for

every subscriber to make simultaneous calls, cost of
meeting this demand is prohibitive, probability of it
happening is negligible
Congestion is situation wherein all trunks in a group
of trunks are busy, no further calls can be accepted
In messageswitched system, calls that arrive during
congestion wait in a queue until an outgoing trunk
becomes free; delayed but not lost. Such systems are
called queuing systems or delay systems
In circuit-switched system, all attempts to make calls
over a congested group of trunks are unsuccessful;
called lost-call systems

Lost-Call System

In lost-call systems the actual traffic carried is less

than the traffic offered to the system
Traffic carried = traffic offered traffic lost
Proportion of calls lost or delayed due to congestion
is a measure of the service provided, called grade of
service, B
B=

Also,

Number of calls lost

Number of calls offered

B=

Traffic lost
Traffic offered
= proportion of the time for which congestion exists
= probability of congestion
= probability that a call will be lost due to congestion

Example 1
During the busy hour, 1200 calls were offered to a
group of trunks and six calls were lost. The
average call duration was 3 minutes. Find:
2.
The traffic offered
3.
The traffic carried
4.
The traffic lost
5.
The grade of service
6.
The total duration of the periods of congestion

Example 2

Grade of Service

If traffic A erlangs is offered to a group of trunks having

a grade of service B, the traffic lost is AB and the
traffic carried is A (1-B) erlangs
GOS is normally specified for traffic at the busy hour;
larger GOS, the worse is the service given
Too large GOS users make many unsuccessful calls and
are dissatisfied; too small GOS unnecessary
expenditure incurred on equipment rarely used
In practice, busy-hour GOS can vary from 1 in 1000 for
cheap trunks inside an exchange to 1 in 100 for interexchange connections and 1 in 10 for expensive
international routes

Grade of Service

The Reference Data for Radio Engineers

states that the GOS provided by a
particular group of trunks or circuits of
specified size and carrying a specified
traffic intensity, is the probability that a
call offered to the group will find
available trunks already occupied on
first attempt.

Factors affecting Grade of

Service

This probability depends on a number of

factors, the most important of which are:

the distribution in time and duration of offered

traffic e.g. random or periodic arrival and constant
or exponentially distributed holding time)
the number of traffic sources limited or high
(infinite)
the availability of trunks in group to traffic sources
full or restricted availability, and
the manner in which lost calls are handled

Traffic Sources

For infinite traffic sources cases:

the probability of call arrival is constant and does

not depend on the state of occupancy of the
system
also implies an infinite number of call arrivals,
each with infinitely small holding time

Finite traffic sources:

Number of sources is comparatively small in

comparison to the number of circuits

Availability

Switches are devices with lines and trunks;

better terms for describing a switch are
inlets and outlets
Full availability is when each inlet has access
to any outlet
Limited availability is when not all the free
outlets can be reached by inlets
Full availability is more desirable but more
expensive for larger switches

Limited Availability

Switch with Limited Availability

Full Availability

Switch with Full Availability

Handling of Lost Calls

In conventional telephone traffic theory, three methods are

considered for handling or dispensing of lost calls:
1.

lost calls held (LCH)

2.

lost calls cleared (LCC)

3.

assumes that the telephone user will immediately reattempt his call on
receipt of congestion signal and will continue to redial
assumed that lost calls are held or waiting at the users telephone
further assumes that such lost calls extend the average holding time
theoretically (average holding time is zero, and all the time is waiting
time)
assumes that user will hang up and wait some time interval before
reattempting
such calls is assumed to disappear from the system; reattempt (after
the delay) is considered a new call
Erlang formula is based on this criterion

lost calls delayed (LCD)

assumes that the user is automatically put in queue