3G

1) Explain what is CQI ? What are the general values for CQI ?

CQI (Channel Quality Indicator) is the feedback which the system

receives from the UE and it mainly indicates the radio condition of the
UE. Depending on the CQI values, NodeB scheduler allocates resources
to the UE. Higher the CQI, better the network. An average CQI
value of about 22 and above, indicates a reasonably good network. CQI
values less than 17, indicates a low quality network and optimization is
required.

2) What modulations are used in HSDPA ?

a. QPSK
b. 16 QAM
c. 64 QAM

3) What is TTI ?
a. Transmission time interval 2ms : The TTI is related to the size of
the data blocks passed from the higher network layers to the radio
link layer. To combat errors due to fading and interference on
the radio link data is divided at the transmitter into blocks and then
the bits within a block are encoded and interleaved. The length of
time required to transmit one such block determines the TTI. At the
receiver all bits from a given block must be received before they can
be deinterleaved and decoded. Having decoded the bits the receiver
can estimate the bit error rate (BER). And because the shortest
decodable transmission is one TTI the shortest period over which
BER can be estimated is also one TTI

4) What is HSDPA code Multiplexing?

HSDPA code multiplexing is a complimentary method to time

multiplexing that gives the possibility to share the HS-DSCH resource
among users in both code and time domain, thereby improving the
overall performance in terms of system throughput and number of
users served at a given delay HS-SCCH power control reduces the RBS
output power needed for the HS-SCCHs and thereby increases the
system capacity

5) What are Ec/Io levels and what does it represent?

Ec/No signifies the level difference between received pilot signal and
the overall noise floor. No is the noise floor, which signifies all the
signals (useful and interfering) present at the receiver side.
 It represents the quality of the 3G network
For example: A value of Ec/No= -8dB tells us that the spread signal is 8
dB below the noise floor
Higher the Ec/No value, the better it is.

Ec/No = RSCP/RSSI

6) Name various 3G and HSDPA KPIs

a. RRC Success rate

b. RAB Success rate ( Packet switched , High speed , Voice , Video)
c. RAB Drop rate ( Packet switched , High Speed , Voice , Video)
d. HS Throughput
e. HS Number of users
f. Data Payload

7) What are the types of handover in 3G ?

a. Soft Handover ( Intra-RNC , Inter- RNC )

b. Softer Handover ( HO between different sectors of same site)
c. Inter- RAT Handover ( UMTS - > GSM)

8) Explain Pilot channel Ec/Io and Pilot SIR.

According to 3GPP Def- Ec/Io = RSCP/RSSI (Ratio of the Received

signaling code power to the power spectral density in the band and
measurement shall be performed on CPICH) while SIR = RSCP/ISCP
(Ratio of the Received signaling code power to Interference signaling
code power) ISCP is the non-orthogonal part of RSSI Pilot SIR considers
orthogonality and Pilot power is not included as Interference power, So
we have to take Orthogonality factor @ into account.@ = 0.4 (Macro
cell) and @ = 0.06 (Micro cell)

9) Difference between Layer 3 and Layer 2 messages.

a. Layer-3 is messaging is responsible to translate messages related to

Logical channels (mapped on transport channels) with respect to
signaling, control and user information in a simple transparent
directional way (UL/DL), However Layer 2 messaging is addressing
all information related to internal transport channels and most of
them are non transparent to users, that why first we consider Layer
3 for our analysis

10) What is pilot pollution and what are its effects?

a. Too many Pilots of similar strength in one location causes the best
server to swap rapidly and Active set keeps updating during this
 fluctuation. UE cannot sustain the call because of poor Ec/Io ,also UE
cannot hand over and it affects to the hand over algorithm,

11) Name few features available in P7 SW for Ericsson

a. CS traffic over IP ( IUB over IP)

b. Support for 64 QAM
c. Enhanced Layer 2
d. Multiple HS PS interactive RAB Combination
e. Number of HS Users per cell

12) What is flexible scheduler and where is it used?

a. Scheduling decides which terminals, the shared transmission should

be directed to any given moment ( TTI). Ericsson offers three
different scheduling mechanisms: Round Robin, Proportional Fair and
Flexible. Flexible scheduler enables different levels of fairness vs
throughput
b. Scheduling strategy is of fundamental importance when using a
shared channel in HSDPA. The HSDPA Flexible Scheduler allows for
operator specific trade of system capacity and fairness among users
on cell level.

13) What is dynamic code resource allocation?

a. The operator can configure the number of HS-PDSCH codes (SF=16)

that should be reserved for a HSDPA capable cell by setting
numHsPdschCodes. The maximum number of HS-PDSCH codes is
dependent on license level and parameter maxNumHsPdschCodes;
up to 15 codes may be allocated. With a high number of HS-PDSCH
codes allocated, the risk for code blocking will however increase and
allocating 15 HS-PDSCH codes from the RNC is not advised. The
number of HS-PDSCH codes in use for HS-DSCH transmission may
also be dynamically adapted by the HSDPA Dynamic Code Allocation
feature. With this feature it is possible to borrow codes from the DCH
domain when those codes are not used for DCH traffic.

14) Benefits of HSUPA

a. EUL Enhanced Uplink or HSUPA provides speed upto 1.4Mbits/s

b. Higher Capacity 50 100 %
c. Reduced Latency 50 75 ms

15) What are the different optimization tools available in Ericsson

OSS ?
 a. MRR , NCS , FAS , FOX ( Frequency Optimization Expert) , NCS
( Neighbor Cell Support) , TET

16) Describe briefly GPEH , UETR, CTR, RNO .

a. GPEH General Performance Event Handling
b. UETR - enables the operator to record important events and
measurements for a selected UE, traveling through a network
c. CTR - collects data for a number of UE connections within a certain
recording area. The recording area is defined as a specific cell in
which the UEs are going to be followed. CTR can record up to a
maximum of 16 simultaneous connections.
d. RNO Radio Network Optimization.

17) Describe the requirement of Second Carrier

a. If Accessibility , Retain ability and integrity of cell KPIs are affected
b. Monitoring the Downlink Transmitted carrier power and relating it to
Capacity Management thresholds
c. Traffic Volume in total is high per cell
d. HS Throughput performance is poor cell-wise and number of users
are high
e. Monitoring the Downlink channelization codes and relating it to
Capacity Management thresholds

18) What is the strategy followed in deploying second carrier?

a. Single cell or hot-spot

b. Cluster wise where the second carrier clusters cover only a part of
the area covered by the first carrier. Field experiences have proven
that both scenarios can be safely and effectively implemented in live
loaded network without degrading performance.

19) How is traffic steered in second carrier?

a. With the help of qoffset2n parameter traffic can be pushed from f1

to f2 and vice versa
b. IF LS Inter frequency Load sharing

2G
20) What is C/I and C/A
 a. C/I Carrier to Interference Ratio is the ratio between co-
channels reused
b. C/A Carrier to Adjacent Ratio is the ratio between adjacent
channels reused.

21) What is Frequency Hopping and What are the types

Frequency hopping is not timeslot hopping

A connection is not transmitted using only one frequency in a cell, but bursts
of consecutive TDMA frames of that connection are transmitted using certain
frequencies of a specified frequency set which is defined by the MA (Mobile
Allocation) list. Without using frequency hopping, the speech quality of a
connection may either be good or bad. There are calls in a cell which will
suffer under bad speech quality; other connections will have a quite good
speech quality.

The reason is that:

Rayleigh fading (short term fading) is different for different frequencies; the
interference level is different on different frequencies.

Frequency hopping will average the quality for all connections:

For a certain connection, the link quality may now change from burst to burst.
Nevertheless, due to interleaving, not only 1 but 8 consecutive bursts as a
whole must be successfully decoded. Therefore, even if there are some bad
quality bursts in these 8 consecutive bursts a speech frame may be still
successfully decoded.

Frequency hopping is most effective in case of slow moving or static mobile

stations.

Different types of hopping :

Baseband hopping
In Baseband hopping the call is hopped between TRX and each
TRX is having fixed frequency. For freq planning the number of
frequencies required has to be equal to the TRX planned.
Combiner limitation is not there as such any combiner can be
used for this hopping system

Synthesizer hopping
In Synthesizer hopping the call remains on the same TRX but the
 TRX changes frequencies in each frame based on allocated freq
list. For freq planning the number of frequencies required is
more than the TRX per cell. Fractional loading is considered for
the freq planning. Combiner limitation is there as such this
hopping cannot be used with filter combiners. Need hybrid or
special combiners.

22) What is CBCCH and its advantages

CBCCH (Common BCCH)

Each band has its own BCCH, this feature enables possibility to
combine multi- frequency bands into one cell having one BCCH
( Broadcast common control Channel). Normally lower frequency bands
are chosen for more coverage area.

Advantages:

Combining signaling channels

Combine Traffic channels and thereby increasing Trunking gain

Tighter re-use of Non-BCCH frequency band

Quality improvement due to decreased number of handovers

23) What are the ways to steer traffic between different bands
within GSM

One way to steer traffic between different bands in Ericsson network

would be by changing the threshold values for path loss (LOL) and
Hysteresis (LOLHYST) and TAOL (Timing advance Threshold) and
Hysteresis (TAOLHYST). This way traffic can be steered between Under
laid (UL 900 Band) and Overlaid (1800 Band) and vice versa

24) What are the KPIs for GPRS/Edge

Few of the GPRS/Edge KPIs are

Total Data Volume ( Downlink and Uplink)
GPRS/Edge IP/LLC Throughput ( Downlink and Uplink)
Accessibility
Total established TBF
Retainability TBF Drop rate
 PDCH Failure rate
Packet Channel Allocation Attempts
PDCH Utilization

25) What is TBF ?

Temporary Block Flow (TBF) is a logical connection between the BSS

and the MS. A TBF is set up when there is data to send at the BSS or
MS side.

26) What are the various reasons for low Throughput?

Simultaneous TBF allocation on a PDCH due to high subscriber usage.

Interference in the cell due to which there is more retransmission.
Subscriber is served at the boundary of the cell and is reselected often.
Reselection reduced the overall data throughput
Due to high Circuit switch traffic on demand PDCH are pre-empted
from the cell as such throughput goes down.
Capacity limit in the PCU. Number of devices available is less due to
dimensioning and high data capacity in the BSC.
Problem in the Gb interface.
Subscriber is in low coverage area.

General Knowledge

27) What is the difference between Electrical and Mechanical Tilt?

Mechanical tilt is achieved by corresponding mounting of the
antennas using special mounting devices.
Electrical tilt is a built in function of an antenna which can be
either fixed or adjustable. Either an antenna has or does not has
this function. The effective tilt is the sum of the both tilts.

28) What is Path-loss and Link Budget

Path loss (or path attenuation) is the reduction in power density
(attenuation) of a wave as it propagates through space. Path loss is a
major component in the analysis and design of the link budget of a
telecommunication system. Path loss normally includes propagation
losses caused by the natural expansion of the radio wave front in free
space, absorption losses (sometimes called penetration losses), when
the signal passes through media not transparent to electromagnetic
waves, diffraction losses when part of the radiowave front is obstructed
by an opaque obstacle, and losses caused by other phenomena.
 Link Budget -
o Link budget analysis will figure out the maximum allowable path
loss or the idea of the variation in signal field strength which
varies mostly due to the distance between Base station and
mobile, and applying maximum path loss value to the prediction
model where we obtain the Cell coverage range for each
services. Eventually we are tailoring the Cell radius thru Link
budget
o Before dimensioning the radio network, the link budget for
different environments (indoor, outdoor, in-car) must be
considered. From the link budget, the maximum allowable path
loss can be derived. The various terms used in Link Budget ( 2g)
calculation are :

MS: Maximum output power9dBm), Feeder loss(dB),

Antenna gain(dB), EiRP(dBi), Receiver sensitivity(dBm)
BTS: Rx-diversity gain(dB), Antenna gain(dB), Head
amplifier gain(dB), Jumper, feeder, connector losses(dB),
Duplexer losses(dB), Receiver sensitivity (dBm), Duplexer
losses(dB), Receiver sensitivity(dBm)
Environment: Body loss(dB), Building (indoor)
penetration loss(dB), Path loss(dB), Fading
margin(lognormal and Rayleigh)(dB), interference
margin(dB), Frequency hopping gain(dB)

o Link Budget (3g) - For 3g/UMTS , we calculate only reverse link

or uplink. In the downlink we wish to find out the maximum cell
range, as with the uplink. In the down link we share the available
power of the base station(let say 20W) amongst all the users,
but really we dont know the amount of available power at the
base station for another user. This available power is {20W-
Summation (Pi) } where Pi is the power consumed at the base
station to maintain a link with user i. But we dont know the
position of UE, we dont know what is Pi This is downlink
problem. In uplink each user has his own power amplifier and
therefore the uplink is not a power limited

29) What is the difference between GSM and UMTS Link Budget
calculations?

Interference Margin is new term in UMTS: Interference level

varies due to loading of the cell. Load factor affects the
coverage. More loading allowed in the system, larger
interference margin and smaller coverage areas where in GSM,
Noise level with MS and Base station remains constant.
 In UMTS we have a variable Processing Gain (Gp),so many
services having different data rates and different processing
Gain where in GSM no real concept of variable processing gain.
Soft Hand over: It gives rise to MACRO diversity gain which
reduces the influences of fading in UMTS where in GSM no real
concept of soft hand over (only HHO possible)
Fast power control system is utilized in UMTS,so fast fading
margin is added as a limitation where GSM uses slow power
control.

30) What is the difference between dB, dBm and dBi ?

dB ( Decibel) is a ratio and is a relative measure of two values ; As a

unit for the strength of a signal, dB expresses the ratio between two
power levels. To be exact, dB = log (P1/P2).

The unit dBm denotes an absolute power level measured in decibels

and referenced to 1 milliwatt (mW). To convert from absolute power "P"
(in watts) to dBm, use the formula dBm = 10*log (P/1 mW). This
equation looks almost the same as that for the dB. However, now the
power level "P" has been referenced to 1 mW. It turns out that in the
practical radio world, 1 mW is a convenient reference point from which
to measure power.

dBi is a ratio, measured in decibels, of the effective gain of an antenna

compared to an isotropic antenna. The greater the dBi value, the
higher the gain and, as such, the more acute the angle of coverage.