Software Version 5
Analyzer LTE
Analyzer LTE Training
The content of this manual is provided for information only, is subject to change without notice, and
should not be construed as a commitment by Actix. Actix assumes no responsibility or liability for any
errors or inaccuracies that appear in this documentation.
C opyright © Actix. All rights reserved. All trademarks are hereby acknowledged.
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Contents
INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................. 5
SCOPE OF THE COURSE......................................................................................... 5
WHO SHOULD ATTEND THIS TRAINING COURSE? ............................................................ 5
PREREQUISITES ................................................................................................. 5
Hardware requirements ............................................................................... 5
AIM OF THE COURSE............................................................................................ 6
HELP F ILE ....................................................................................................... 6
SPOTLIGHT ....................................................................................................... 9
SOLVING COMMON NETWORK PROBLEMS WITH SPOTLIGHT ................................................. 9
Spotlight features ...................................................................................... 10
What’s in Spotlight? ................................................................................... 10
Navigating around Spotlight ........................................................................ 12
What can you do with Spotlight? .................................................................. 13
GETTING STARTED ............................................................................................ 13
EXPLORING WORKSPACE...................................................................................... 15
Summary Dashboard ................................................................................. 15
LTE Report ............................................................................................... 18
Issues Panel ............................................................................................. 20
CELL COVERAGE ANALYSIS ................................................................................... 21
LTE F AILURE: DROPPED CONNECTION ANALYSIS .......................................................... 23
DATA SERVICE ANALYSIS ..................................................................................... 30
T HROUGHPUT ANALYSES ...................................................................................... 32
Example 1: High Throughput Analysis ........................................................... 33
Example 2: Low Throughput Analysis ............................................................ 35
ANALYZER ...................................................................................................... 39
WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH ANALYZER ? ....................................................................... 39
GETTING STARTED ............................................................................................ 40
EXPLORING WORKSPACE...................................................................................... 42
VIEWING DATA ................................................................................................ 46
Displaying on chart .................................................................................... 46
Displaying on Map ..................................................................................... 50
Displaying in a Table .................................................................................. 52
PERFORMING LTE ANALYSES ................................................................................. 54
Stateform ................................................................................................ 54
Protocol Stack Browser ............................................................................... 61
PERFORMING CUSTOMIZED LTE ANALYSES ................................................................. 62
About Queries ........................................................................................... 62
Binned Query ............................................................................................ 63
Histogram ................................................................................................ 64
Crosstab Query ......................................................................................... 65
REPORTING NETWORK PERFORMANCE ....................................................................... 68
Creating Custom Single File Report ............................................................... 68
Creating Custom Multiple Files Report ........................................................... 71
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Superstream............................................................................................. 75
Repository ................................................................................................ 77
SAVING Y OUR WORK.......................................................................................... 83
Saving Screen Layouts ............................................................................... 83
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Analyzer LTE Training
Introduction
Scope of the course
The Analyzer LTE Training Course provides a comprehensive overview of Spotlight and Analyzer for
LTE. The goal of the course is to give an understanding o f the capabilities of the system and how it
can help users to improve quality of service for their network subscribers. Advanced users will be
introduced to new network applications.
The instructors for this course are experts in using Actix solutions to increase productivity, and are
familiar with the challenges faced by engineers working in cellular/PCS environments.
Class size is limited to ensure that everyone receives extensive one on one instruction. Participants
have many opportunities to ask questions relevant to their particular optimization needs. Upon
completing the course, participants will be able to use what they learned in class to identify and
solve real network problems.
The Analyzer LTE Training Course begins with a high-level presentation of the Actix platform
interface and its capabilities. We will then cover how existing optimization processes can be
tailored to the specific needs of the participants.
Engineers looking to further understand the application of log file data in optimizing
networks.
Prerequisites
Familiarity with network infrastructure and operation of the air interface.
A general understanding of drive test and call trace collection and post-processing
methodology and advantages/limitations with each dataset.
Access to Actix software and a familiarity with the Actix software platform.
Basic computer literacy, including familiarity with Windows and MS Office applications.
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Appreciate common network problems and how they are classified in Spotlight and
Analyzer.
Configure Spotlight and Analyzer to work with your data and methodologies.
Appreciate different analyses methods (Event Based and Radio Network Analyses) in
Spotlight.
Appreciate manual analyses (create and customize your own methods, queries and
reports, repositories and screen layout) in Analyzer
Use Spotlight and Analyzer to analyze problems in data sets of differing sizes.
Appreciate the role thresholds perform in Spotlight and Analyzer, and how to modify them.
Spotlight related
From the Repository Analysis - Drilldown, you should be able to:
Drilldown problem by File or Time to message level with or without loading the whole file.
Help File
This training manual mainly contains LTE-related information and features in Spotlight and
Analyzer. For basic features of Spotlight and Analyzer, or information regarding how to
troubleshoot network in other technologies, please refer to the Help in Spotlight or Analyzer,
which can be accessed by clicking on the Help button at the top right. You can look up information
about a particular topic either by choosing an item from the index or by entering keywords to
perform a search.
Specific information such as attributes (engineering parameters) can be found in Attribute
Reference. You can look up an item in the alphabetized list, or you can open the Context Help
window, and then click on an item in the Workspace.
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Key features
The following key features are available for LTE in Spotlight and Analyzer:
Flexible voice and data service KPIs: Spotlight and Analyzer support powerful top
down KPIs allowing operators to evaluate the quality of different voice and data services as
perceived by end users.
Full RF analysis: Spotlight and Analyzer provide automated drop call diagnosis and
integrated radio network analysis to diagnose cell coverage, missing neighbor, and
interference or pollution problems.
Data session analysis: Spotlight and Analyzer provide detailed data session analysis to
identify if poor data service performance is due to poor radio quality or congestion on the
core or radio network.
IP packet inspection: Analyzer provides full IP layer decodes and session analysis to
provide full inspection into the IP traffic layer.
Performance Reports: Analyzer allows you to create and customize reports for you to
quickly create RF analysis and acceptance reports.
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Spotlight Analyzer
Creating projects using LTE templates, settings, Setting preferences, aggregating data
LTE thresholds and loading logfiles and loading logfiles
Viewing Data by selecting the related category Viewing Data by displaying in maps,
and issues. The detailed diagnostics and charts, tables or reports to facilitate easy
information will be displayed in customized maps analysis
and Stateforms to facilitate easy analysis
Yes
If more detailed
Performing customized LTE analyses analyses required
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Analyzer LTE Training
Spotlight
Solving common network problems with Spotlight
With the Seek-See-Solve approach, Spotlight is designed to allow you to follow your own
investigations throughout the various analysis pages and reports. However, a typical path through
Spotlight is to start from the Summary Dashboard, examine the summary map and then the
appropriate report for the loaded data, which might indicate the presence of one or more
problems. Spotlight breaks these problems down into two groups:
important issues, where the quality of service has been reduced without necessarily
ending any calls.
Cell coverage, interference problems and LTE visualization can be investigated from the Radio
Network Explorer analyses (links to these are shown as Important Issues in the Issues panel of
the Summary Dashboard). These then point you at specific problem events which you can examine
and diagnose using the Event Explorer (links to these failure events are shown as Critical Issues
in the Issues panel).
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Spotlight features
The Spotlight features available for LTE are radio network analyses, event-based troubleshooting
and reporting.
Event-based troubleshooting
Automated root-cause diagnostics for the most common subscriber problems such as
call drops, call setup failure, location update failures, handover failures and low throughput
issues.
Reporting
Integrated, professional-quality reports, including embedded maps.
What’s in Spotlight?
New Project and Template Creation
A step-by-step wizard guides the user to create a new project using an e xisting template
or provides a link to the new template configuration wizard.
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Data Configuration
A step-by-step wizard helps you configure thresholds (the Threshold Editor dialog is shown
below) and cellrefs, and also to select data to process into the repository.
Summary Dashboard
From the Summary Dashboard, you can choose a problem (critical or important issues)
to further investigate using either Event-based or Radio Network analyses.
Spotlight Report
Identifies critical and important issues, and provides links to summary statistics of the
loaded data files.
Event Investigation/Analyses
Provides a breakdown of the critical and important issues by filename and handset
identifier. These tabular pages are reached through links on the Summary Dashboard.
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Return to Event Explorer page or restore Filter out files and stream Return the current page
page if y ou are currently in this page. from all analy ses. to its default appearance.
Return to Summary Open the “Choose an Engineering Load additional files Display help for
Dashboard page. Process” dialog, allowing you to to the current the current page.
select another Spotlight project. project repository .
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Starting up Spotlight
Yes
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Getting Started
Before you begin, ensure that you have a valid
Spotlight/Analyzer license, a cellrefs that contains your
network information and a set of data you want to
investigate. It is crucial that you follow the
following steps to avoid inaccurate results or have
to go through these steps again for
reconfiguration later.
Let’s begin by performing the following steps:
1 Start Spotlight.
2 Create a new project by click on the New
Project button.
3 In New Project Step 1: Key in your project name, select a
suitable LTE template and click on the Next button to proceed
to New Project Step 2.
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Note Ensure your thresholds are set before loading the data
because they will affect the way that Spotlight analyses, diagnoses
and displays data.
5 In step 3: click on “Add Files” button to load your log files or data.
If you prefer to load the entire folder, click on “Add Folder” button.
Click on “Done” button to begin saving settings and loading files.
Exploring Workspace
Summary Dashboard
After the data is loaded, an overview page or Summary Dashboard is
displayed. The Summary Dashboard shows an overview of the data
loaded in the current Repository project on a per device basis. If you have
configured multiple devices during the template configuration phase, a
separate tab per device will appear in the dashboard.
As you can see below, this page is divided into three parts:
Top Panel, Issues Panel, and Map.
Top Panel
Click on the “globe” to
change your background
map properties
Issues
Panel
Map
Top Panel
This panel contains a summary table of the loaded dataset information. You can view the LTE
report (Data Service Analysis Report) or go to the Event Explorer (event-based analyses, i.e.
dropped connection, failed connection) page or Radio Network (radio network analyses, i.e.
coverage, low throughput) page.
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Issues Panel
This panel lists all the critical (event-based KPIs) and important issues (radio network analyses)
that need further investigation. Click on any KPI that you might want to further investigate.
Map
The map is an integral part of the interface representing the drive route with the default attribute
plotted (RSRP or the application throughput).
To change preferences:
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You can display the function name by deselecting the “Use Small Toolbars” checkbox.
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LTE Report
The Spotlight LTE report (Data Service Analysis Report) shows a quick overview of your
network performance. It is divided into a Report sheet and different activities (FTP, HTTP)
sheet(s), which consists of FTP, HTTP download information (statistics based on status and types
of analyses) and application throughput.
The report sheet contains a technology independent overview of all the activities , while the activity
sheet contains radio KPIs for all technologies.
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Issues Panel
This panel lists all the critical and important issues occurring in the dataset and allows you to
investigate an issue or troubleshoot a problem in more detail.
Category
First, you have to select a category, indicating which type of analysis or informatio n you want to
be displayed on the issues panel. For example, if you select LTE as your category, all event-based
critical issues and radio network’s important issues will be displayed (as shown below). If you
choose DSA Task Summary as your category, you w ill get a list of tasks summary which contains
the FTP, HTTP, Web browsing Uplink and Downlink success rate and throughput measurements.
We’ll go through these categories again later in the Throughput Analysis chapter.
Critical Issues
The critical issues section provides an overview and links to the drive in terms of failure events.
To investigate the KPIs and the cause of the dropped connection, click on the link to go to the
Event Dashboard.
Important Issues
On the other hand, the important issues section provides an overview and links to the
corresponding radio network analysis page. For further investigation, click on the link to go to the
Radio Network Dashboard.
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3 It is a good idea to filter out unimportant information, i.e. numbers of samples < 50 or
distance > 15km. To do so, create a filter by clicking on the Filters(#) link.
Set your criteria and click on Add Filter. Click OK to apply filter.
Sort the column again after you’ve applied the filter.
4 Select an interesting sector to vie w in detail. The map and left panel will be updated
accordingly. The red circle represents your pre -defined boundary in Thresholds settings .
Any data points outside this circle represent overspill.
You can also change the cell-site properties to plot on the map according to the serving
PCI’s color.
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5 Make use of the additional features to help you visualize the coverage footprint of your
network.
To create a filter
Additional Features
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2 In the Event Explorer page, the top panel contains site information with numbers of
failures (depending on the problem), a side panel with a list of diagnostics (in a table and
also detailed information) of what causes the fail, and a map to help you to visualize where
the problem occurred.
You can click on the column header to sort your information, or click
on an individual row to view a particular failed event. You can even
perform a specific analysis, filter your information, or choose a
specific attribute or event to be plotted in the map.
3 Let’s say we want to confirm if the dropped connection is caused by interference. First of
all, scroll down (in the side panel) to read more about the detail event diagnostics.
According to the diagnostics and measurements, when the connection dropped, the quality
was bad (-20 dB) but the signal
strength was reasonable (-89 dBm).
The CQI value was low and > 86% of
these CQI values were lower than 10.
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4 This will bring us to the Drilldown page. As you can see, Spotlight displayed the
appropriate forms, Protocol Stack Browser (PSB) and map plotted with the related
attributes. This will help you to understand what has happened between 5 seconds before
and 30 seconds after the connection was dropped. Let’s take a closer look at each o f the
forms and the map.
Scroll down and select the attribute you want to delete one at the time. Delete
Event_Task_Fail, Event_Task_Start and Event_Task_End.
Click OK to save.
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Examine “Task Chart”. There is a lot of “Ping” information displayed on the chart and it is
almost too cluttered to view. To get a cleaner view, edit the chart by clicking on to
toggle to Design mode.
5 The Time Chart is looking cleaner now.
Move your mouse over the chart to view individual measurements.
Just before the drop,
the throughput and CQI
value fell from average
to 0.
6 Now let’s take a look at the Protocol State Browser. If we scroll up to view what
happened before the connection was dropped, notice that about 1 to 2 seconds before the
drop, the neighbor cell has much better signal strength. Requests for changing serving cell
have also appeared a few times. There should have been a handover but unfortunately no
handover occurred.
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7 Continue to look at the map. You can plot an extra attribute on the map by clicking on the
Attributes icon. From the Edit Attributes dialog, Add the attribute from the Available
Attributes column and click OK to show it on the map.
Click on a beam to see the current serving PCI (solid line) and which one
is the neighbor cell (dash line).
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If for some reason the layers are overlapped or you want to rearrange them, click on the
Layers icon to reorder them.
8 Click on a point in the map and now take a look at the Stateform next to the map.
All measurements and related information will be displayed on the Stateform. Again, if you
want to modify the form, right-click on the form and toggle Design Mode. Edit the form,
save it and toggle back to View mode. For example, change the RI attribute to
Throughput.
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9 It is useful to synchronize your view, i.e. to show the same map and Stateform information
at the same time. Click on a point in the map to synchronize with the Stateform’s display.
You can even step through the whole drive route by clicking on the play button. If
necessary, change the speed of playback using the slider.
10 Make use of the additional features to help to you to visualize and further investigate your
dropped connection.
To create filter
Additional Features
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The followings issues and tasks you can investigate in a DSA Failure page (default) are:
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From the Select Category drop down list in the Summary Dashboard, you can select these
three DSA categories:
We will perform some Throughput Analyses by viewing the DSA All Services and Tasks
category in the next chapter.
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Throughput Analyses
This analysis allows you to analyze and investigate the throughput by using the DSA
Services and Tasks page. Click the Display All # Task link to view the related
information in Event Explorer page. In the following examples, we’ll be
viewing the FTP DL link.
In the side panel in Event Explorer page, you can find a list of FTP tasks with throughput
measurement and status. The four typical statuses are:
OK = Successful or completed
D = Dropped
C = User Cancelled
“Interrupted” and “User Cancelled” tasks are neither
neither failed nor successful, and therefore are not taken
taken into account in the KPIs.
Click on any of the headers to sort your information accordingly. For example, to iden tify
worst/best performing tasks, you could also sort by Throughput (Tput DL). To only view
successful or completed tasks, sort by Status.
If you continue to scroll down, below the Drilldown-Throughput-Status table, you can see some
useful data service statistics. The information displayed depends on the task type (upload or
download), as well as the technologies that the UE experienced during the task.
Once you are ready to proceed, click on the Drill Down checkbox and follow by clicking the Begin
Drilldown button to begin your analysis. We’ll continue to analyze high and low throughput in the
following sections.
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The duration of task reported by the In the beginning of the task (before the FTP download), the
logging tool is about 30 seconds CQI value was average and Modulation was not very high.
(which is the time difference between After the handover, the radio quality was gradually improved
“Task Start” and “Task End” events in
and when the transmission began, the application throughput
the Stateform), but the duration of
the data transfer is only 4.19 seconds and CQI value were high, MIMO usage was up to 100% and
during the UE was in LTE “connected” Frame Usage was at 100%. See the next page for more
mode (see Stateform). detailed information.
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Move your mouse over any point of the transmission to view detailed information.
High throughput
High throughput
(18 Mbps for application throughput and 26 Mbits/s for Layer 1 DL throughput).
Very good modulation (64 QAM and most of the time MIMO usage at 100%) during FTP
download.
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In the Drilldown page: The average throughput achieved on LTE is low but
OK (about 3 Mbit/s). Modulation and Coding Scheme
values range from 0 to 20, with an average of 9. The
spread of values is explained by the Task Chart,
where we can see that the radio conditions were
good initially and worsen progressively until the UE is
redirected to UMTS.
On the left side panel of the Drilldown page, the Key Issues section explains that the reason
for the low throughput was due to a reselection to HSDPA from LTE during the transmission.
The redirected reselection from LTE to UMTS caused the UE to be idle for almost 21 seconds.
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Low throughput
Let’s look at the Task Chart:
The FTP download started in LTE. It Following the redirected reselection The task completes
started with a slightly above average from LTE to UMTS, the UE stays idle normally in HSDPA.
throughput, good CQI, high MIMO for a while before reconfiguring to
usage and good Frame Usage. HSDPA.
Throughput started high, but degraded very quickly till 0, at which point the UE was
redirected to UMTS. Once the reselection was completed, it continued to transmit in a
lower throughput in HSDPA.
Fairly low Frame Usage in HSDPA mode, and an inverse relationship between CQI and
Frame Usage in HSDPA (i.e. the Frame Usage goes up when CQI goes down) whilst the
throughput remains flat; which could indicate that the throughput is not limited by the air
interface.
Good system bandwidth allocation (~90%) in both LTE (number of RBs) an d HSDPA
modes (number of codes).
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Example 1
When the radio quality degraded, so did the throughput value, the CQI values and MIMO usage.
Now take a closer look at the correlation between the MIMO usage and the Frame Usage. Since
more data is being transmitted using MIMO, less frame usage is required (lower frame usage %).
When there is almost no MIMO transmission, the Frame Usage % increases to almost
100% because the network has to transmit more frames to compensate the rate.
See example 2 for correlations between the CQI, Resource Block allocation and Frame Usage.
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Example 2
The following Task Chart shows a more erratic application throughput (between 0 and 10 Mbit/s)
but the CQI value is about average (less dramatic than the throughput’s value).
Now take a closer look at the correlation between the CQI, Resource Block allocation and Frame
Usage %. As the CQI value increases, the # of RB decreases and so does the Frame Usage.
As for the radio condition, the radio link quality is good (good RSRQ and RSRP value).
In other words, the air interface is good (and so can deliver more throughput) but the network has
nothing to transmit at this particular time. That explains the erratic application throughput.
In this case, we can conclude that radio link quality is not the limiting factor here.
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Analyzer
What can you do with Analyzer?
A flowchart depicting/describing the best practice when troubleshooting a network problem using
Analyzer:
Starting up Analyzer
Exploring workspace by
examining the loaded data
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Getting Started
Before you begin, ensure that you have a valid Analyzer license, a cellref
that contains your network information, and a set of data you want to
investigate. It is crucial that you follow the following steps to avoid
inaccurate results or have to go through these steps again for
reconfiguration later.
1 Start up Analyzer.
2 Select File Preferences.
3 Locate General Settings CellRefs in Change Preferences dialog box and change your
Cellrefs filename. Normally it is a .txt file.
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Another way of doing this is by clicking on Cellref File icon in the Home tab’s
Preferences area:
To make sure you’ve loaded the correct cellrefs, click on Map icon from the Home or
View tab to display a new map.
Change map unit by right-clicking on map, Map Units Distance Kilometer (or other unit)
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Exploring Workspace
After the data is loaded, a blank workspace is displayed with the Attribute
Explorer docked on the left panel. If you recall, in Spotlight, you get a
summary of your data, issues and problem encountered with diagnostics
and a map. Within Analyzer, you perform manual analysis and therefore no
pre-defined screen layout is displayed.
Here is where you can load your data file, create a repository and
perform dataset operations for a quick overview of your network.
indicates that the Attribute Explorer is currently docked on this
Attribute Explorer
panel. Click on to undock it. This will allow you to move the
Attribute Explorer panel around.
Here you can view and search your attributes in your data file. You
can also create and save a group of attributes you often use in
“Favorites”.
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Expand the “Loaded Data Files” node by clicking on to see all the available attributes
in your data file(s).
2 You can select and display the attribute(s) on map, chart, table, workbook etc… to view
your data, the same way you view the data in Spotlight.
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Type in the attribute you want to search for (a whole or partial word) in the
Sort by Group:
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Your favorite group can be viewed by clicking on the Favorites icon in the Attribute Explorer.
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Viewing Data
You can view your data the same way as you do in Spotlight. In Analyzer, you
have to make decisions as to which attribute(s) you want to be displayed and
how you want to view your data in a way that helps you to troubleshoot or
investigate an issue.
Displaying on chart
To take a quick look at the radio condition of the drive data, select and
display the RSRQ attribute in a chart. The attribute is located at LTE
Downlink Measurements LTE_UE_RSRQ. Right-click on the attribute
and display on chart.
Here you can see the distribution of the radio quality throughout the drive along with the timeline.
You can also view the same data on map and table
.
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Data Aggregation
You can change the binning settings by clicking on or click on the current binning
mode in Home Preferences
There are four methods to aggregate data in Analyzer. The se different binning modes are based on
time (default), location, distance and message.
In order to perform a detailed manual analysis, change the binning mode to Message and make
sure Message = “1000” Milliseconds so that you can view every message in your data.
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Take a look at the chart again. Data is now displayed more densely on the chart.
Drag and drop the LTE Event Data RRC LTE_RRCConnectionDrop attribute to the same
chart to see when the connection was dropped.
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It looks like the channel interference plus noise ratio value degraded tremendously right before the
drop as well.
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Displaying on Map
Display the same attributes (LTE_UE_RSRQ and LTE_RRCConnectionDrop) on the map to
visualize the area, radio condition and location of the dropped connection.
Zoom in to take a closer look at the 1st drop.
This will help you identify the serving sectors based on their own color.
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Click on the Direction icon to display the direction of the drive route.
At this point, we may also want to replay the file around the time of the
problem in order to see the serving sectors and how RSRQ ended up
being so low when the connection dropped.
Anyway, our understanding of the information will still be limited if we
only view data on the map and chart.
Display more attributes on table, open a Stateform (or any pre-
configured analyses), or a Protocol Stack Browser in Analyzer to to
obtain more information.
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Displaying in a Table
Display the following attributes in a table:
LTE_UE_PCI
LTE_UE_RSRP
LTE_UE_RSRQ
LTE_RRC_RRCConnectionDrop
To go to the next
dropped connection,
press Ctrl- .
It seems like there are lots of empty rows in the table and you have to keep scrolling down to find
the next measurement. This problem can be resolved by selecting the
Hide empty rows checkbox to hide these empty rows.
If you wish to view this set of data on chart or map, just click on the chart or map icon on
the top right.
You can now see the actual measurement of each attribute on table.
If you wish, you can also display these attributes in a Workbook (Excel).
Rearrange the map, chart and table in your workspace so that you can see them
Clicking at any point in the table to synchronize table with the map and chart.
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Attribute Spy
Attribute Spy is a smart feature that allows you to display the attributes set at a message, as well
as to perform some basic operations on them. A lot of the time you might not know what other
attributes are associate to the attribute you have just displayed on a map. For example in our
previous filter example, LTE_UE_CINR.
To find out information of an attribute at a particular selected point, and even any other associated
attributes, you can click on Attribute Spy from the View tab. The AxaAOAttributeSpy Class
window will be opened.
In your CINR chart or table, click on any point that contains the LTE_UE_CINR attribute. The same
attribute will be selected in the Attribute column in the window. Right-click on the attribute and
select Filter Stream where “IsValid(LTE_UE_CINR)” to eliminate all the empty rows.
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Stateform
Stateform allows you to view multiple performance metrics simultaneously.
Used in conjunction with the replay tool, maps, tables, and charts, you can
quickly ascertain the values of several radio parameters for problem
identification.
To open a pre-configured LTE Stateform, click on the Stateform icon in the View tab:
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Let’s open the LTE Radio Charts (same as the “Task chart” in Spotlight) and take a closer look.
To do so:
1 Click on Stateform dropdown list from the View tab and select Data Services
DataServicesAnalysis_DL_Radio Charts Stateform.
2 If the Stateform contains some “Ping” information (too crowded to look at), toggle to
Design mode and remove the event tasks such as “Fail”, “Start” and “End”.
See Step 4 in Spotlight’s LTE Failure: Dropped Connection Analysis if you cannot
remember how to remove the event tasks.
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3 Arrange your Stateform, chart, table and map in the Workspace so that you can see them
all side-by-side. Click on a point in the map or chart to synchronize your view and
information.
At this point of time, we still cannot conclude what really caused the connection drop.
4 To further investigate this, we should probably look at the neighbor’s radio condition by
displaying the best neighbor’s RSRQ, RSRP and PCI on a table. We should also check out
the RRC and Layer 3 messages for the handset by opening the LTE Handset PSB. We’ll
take a look at this later in other chapters.
If this is not enough, try customizing your own Stateform (See example below).
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If you do not have the Stateforms window open, click Tools Stateforms Editor.
1 To start a new Stateforms file, right-click inside the Stateforms Editor and select
Design Mode. The Stateforms sheet can now be edited and objects can be added.
Toggle
Design
Mode
Array Scan
Delete Copy Label Attribute Chart
5 To display the value for LTE_UE_PCI label, click the Attribute Value button then
click and drag a rectangle to the right of the LTE_UE_PCI label.
6 Select the LTE_UE_PCI Attribute Value object and make the following modifications:
Specify Min+Max: True
Bar Range Min: 0
Bar Range Max: 0
Attribute: LTE Downlink Measurements LTE_UE_PCI
8 To create the Attribute Bar for LTE_UE_RSRQ, click on the Attribute Value button
then click and drag a rectangle to the right of the LTE_UE_RSRQ attribute value object.
Repeat the same for LTE_UE_RSRP.
9 Select LTE_UE_RSRQ Attribute Bar and make the following modifications in the Attribute
Window:
Specify Min+Max: True
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Bar Color:
Attribute: LTE Downlink Measurements LTE_UE_RSRQ
Show Value Text: False
Show Min Text: True
Show Max Text: True
Show Minor Ticks: True
Show Major Ticks: True
Minor Ticks Spacing: 5
Minor Ticks Spacing: 20
Border Line: True
Autosize Font: False
Font Size: 6
10 Repeat the same settings for RSRP except the followings:
Bar Range Min: -130
Bar Range Max: 40
Bar Color:
Attribute: LTE Downlink Measurements LTE_UE_RSRP
11 To add the Group Box object, click on the Group Box button, then click and drag a
rectangle around all of the items in your form.
12 Select the Group Box object and make the following modification in the Attribute Window:
Caption: Network Parameters
Fore Color: Dark Blue
Autosize Font: False
Font Size: 14
Default Font: False
Font Bold: True
13 Click the Save As button and save the Stateforms file in the Stateforms directory and call
it LTE NetworkParameters - Trainings.axl.
14 Return to the View Mode by clicking the Toggle Design Mode button.
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15 Test your new form by displaying a parameter from your logfile’s stream on a map. Click
on any point on the map, and see the parameter values for PCI, RSRQ and RSRP appear
on your Stateform.
You can display form by selecting the “LTE NetworkParameters-Training” from the
Stateform dropdown list:
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You can see that about a few seconds before the drop, the best neighbor cell’s has much better
signal strength. Have a look at the difference between the serving cell and the best neighbor cell.
Also, right after the drop, PCI 122 appears to be the serving cell and the radio conditions are good.
So if we could take a look at the RRC and Layer 3 messages, we could further investigate the
cause of the connection drop, and find out for instance whether the UE has requested a handover
in RRC Measurement Report messages before the drop occurred. To do so, we can open a P rotocol
Stack Browser or a Message Browser.
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Click on the Protocol Stack Browser dropdown list from the Home or View tabs to select
the LTE Handset option. Rearrange and synchronize the table, map, chart, Stateform and PSB to
view them side-by-side.
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Create new
query
Retrieve
queries from
another
folder
About Queries
Queries are a means of searching and filtering data based on events and thresholds you define.
Queries operate on binned data and are written using Boolean expressions and arithmetic
operations containing data parameters. Analyzer supports six types of queries:
Binned Query Analysis (using functions and inequalities to define a new parameter
based on existing parameters)
Cross Tab Query Analysis (to group data and display statistics for each group. The
groups can be sorted, and a query can contain several options for grouping data)
Event Query (to extract key performance statistics for a user-defined time or message
window before or after a defined event such as dropped connection)
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Binned Query
So far, we’ve managed to display the serving and best neighbor cells’ PCI, RSRQ and RSRP on
tables, and it was useful to look at a particular point of data. It will be nice if we could also see the
signal strength difference between the serving cell and the best neighbor cell throughout the whole
drive.
To do so, create a binned query that computes the difference between the serving cell’s RSRP and
the best neighbor cell’s RSRP:
1 Click on New Query followed by Binned in the Queries area of the Data tab. You
can also create a binned query in Analysis Manager by clicking on the Add
Binned Query icon to go to the Expression Builder.
So, our formula should look something like:
Difference = Best Neighbor Cell’s RSRP – Serving Cell’s RSRP
A positive value will indicate that the best neighbor is stronger than the serving cell.
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6 Apply the query by right-clicking your query and display on a chart, map or table.
In the example below, we’ve displayed the query on a map, along with a connection
dropped attribute. From the chart, we can see a big signal strength difference right before
the connections were dropped.
Histogram
A histogram’s results expressed as a percentage may provide a more meaningful comparison to
results expressed as a count. In the example below, we will use a histogram to look at the channel
to interference plus noise ratio (CINR). We will select a range from -50dB to 10dB and divide it
into 30 columns.
To create the appropriate histogram:
1 Click on New Query followed by Histogram in the Queries area of the Data tab.
You can also create a binned query in Analysis Manager by clicking on the Add
Histogram icon.
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Crosstab Query
The crosstab query is used to group data and display statistics for each group. The groups can be
sorted, and a query can contain several options for grouping data. It is flexible and you can
combine many different data groups together (you are not limited to one format group as you are
in binned and histogram queries).
In this example, we would like to see CINR distribution and the correlation between CINR, RSRP
and RSRQ. To create the appropriate crosstab query:
1 Click on New Query followed by Crosstab in the Queries area of the Data tab.
You can also create a binned query in Analysis Manager by clicking on the Add
Crosstab Query icon.
Click on the New Dimension button. The query dimension allows you to group and order
your results using the attribute you select. Use attribute chooser to select LTE
Downlink Measurement LTE_UE_CINR to add the CINR as the dimension. W e will
create a dimension for CINR’s histogram (set with 3 dB difference).
Click on Edit Dimension to open the Expression Builder to set your criteria.
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1 Now apply the query on a Statistics Explorer to see if your query works.
Always do so before you continue to build a bigger query!
3 dBs
difference for
each column
2 Next, create two new statistics: Avg RSRP and Avg RSRQ.
Use the attribute chooser to select LTE Downlink Measurement
LTE_UE_RSRP and LTE_UE_RSRQ to add the CINR as the statistics so that the state()
function is applied when an attribute is selected.
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3 Lastly, add a global filter to only retrieve data with status = connected.
Status = Connected
In the next chapter we will learn how to create a Single File Report using this crosstab
query. You will then use the report for other log files.
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Note Excel will launch and the Workbook will contain three
sheets, which can be accessed by clicking on the corresponding tab
at the bottom sheet window.
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As you can see, the above example has 5 sets of data. In order to view them all and
display on a single report, we can merge these sets of data by creating a superstream or
create a repository (a database with aggregated data).
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1 Before making any modifications, run the report by clicking the Open button from the
View tab.
2 Make modifications to the existing report, including adding additional parameters from the
same data stream, adding the same parameters from different data stream, or making
cosmetic adjustments.
3 Save the file.
Add Additional Parameters to the Report – To the existing report, add different
parameters from the same data stream using the Display on Workbook (Active) command.
Update the Report page to show results for all parameters included.
Create a Comparison Report – To the existing report, add the same parameter from a
different data stream using the Display on Workbook (Active) command. Update the
Report page to show results for both data sets.
Embedded an Excel Macro in a Report – Any Excel format or technique may be applied
to a report, including macros which automate specific tasks within Microsoft Excel. For
example, create a report that provides a comparison of a parameter at common locations
in two different logfiles.
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Crosstab Formatted
Create a line Sheet
chart based on
the new data.
Report Sheet
3 If everything looks correct in the Report sheet, go to the Crosstab Formatted Sheet and
remove all data in that sheet.
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Superstream
A superstream is a new stream created by merging two or more sets of data into one large data
set. Beware that the size can be huge (since the superstream contains all attributes, even those
that we might not need in our analysis).
To create a superstream:
3 Click on the Settings >> button if you want to merge your data with a common attribute
or a correlated parameter, which in this example is the LTE_UE_RSRQ attribute.
Note This merge method is useful when merging the data for two
devices (for instance a handset and a scanner) that were logged
concurrently, but for which the timestamps are not aligned. If the
two streams correspond to two consecutively logged log files, then
it is better to use the default “Use timestamps” method of
superstreaming.
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Click OK. A new stream, Super Streams containing the same attribute nodes will be
created in Attribute Explorer.
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Repository
The repository function provides a mechanism for handling large volumes of data, by loading the
results of queries into a relational database mainly applicable to crosstab, event and binned
queries.
In the Actix terminology, databases are ca lled repositories. A repository is based on a template,
which specifies how the results are to be structured into data sources (called devices) and which
attributes and queries are to be included in each device. The repository stores the binned data for
the attributes as described in Repository Binned Data.
Some of the engineering process modules use repositories to store data but hide the details of
creating repositories and loading data into them behind the task pages. However, Analyzer Classic
includes features that advanced users can use to create new repositories directly, and to open,
close, and delete existing repositories, and to load data into them.
When a repository is open, it is displayed in the Open Repositories folder in the Attribute
Explorer. Data is loaded into the devices based on the stream name filter and stream type
specified in the Define Devices page of the Repository Template.
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1 Click on Template Manager icon from the Data tab’s Repository area to open the
Repository Template Wizard window.
2 Click New to create a new template. This opens the Repository Template wizard's
Welcome page. Step through the selection by selecting the default settings except the
query selection:
3 Continue to click on Next > till you’ve reached the Name and Description step.
Key in a meaningful name for your repository template and a description about the
template.
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Creating a Repository
To create a repository based on the template you have just created:
3 In the Attribute Explorer, expand the Open Repositories node and right-click on the new
repository you have just created (in the example below this is LTE Training Repository)
to load your logfiles.
Right-click on your new
repository node and select Load
Data to load your logfiles.
4 Click on Add Files... to select your data files to be loaded into the repository.
Click OK to start loading the files.
5 A File load results window will be displayed and the Result column will show the status
of the file. OK means the files are successfully loaded.
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If you prefer to display the result directly into a workbook, right-click on the Open-
Repository Your New Repository All Queries Crosstab Queries Your
Crosstab Query Nam e and display it on Workbook.
2 A workbook in Excel with a report for all log files will be created where the repository is
loaded.
3 Save and name your report as Report for Your New Repository .
4 If everything looks correct in the report, remove all data in that sheet.
5 Save the file again and close the file after you have saved it.
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1 Click on Open from the View tab to open the Report for Your New Repository report
(the one you have just created). A Stream Selection window will appear.
2 Select the All stream from Your New Repository stream name and click OK to display
your repository report. Do you notice any difference?
Note
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Window layouts
To save your workspace, click File Save Workspace As and give the file a name. The
Analyzer file structure includes a ‘Workspaces’ folder that can be used to hold the saved
workspace(s), though you can save a workspace to any location.
A workspace created with Analyzer may be opened directly from the Windows Desktop. To start up
Analyzer with a set of commonly used queries, simply save a workspace with the queries of
interest, but no data files. The workspace may then be saved as a shortcut on the Windows
Desktop. Double-click on the Desktop shortcut to open Analyzer with all of your frequently used
queries in place.
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