UTRAN Network and Service Analyzer

This product is no longer sold by Tektronix. Contact NetScout for more information.

Features & Benefits

• Automatic UTRAN topology discovery - provides a graphical map of the network reducing the overhead time needed to understand the configuration of the environment under test.
• Automatic UTRAN instrument configuration - provides automatic configuration of all necessary parameters to monitor the UTRAN, reducing the overhead time to set-up test equipment to a few minutes
• UTRAN Multi Interface Call Trace - allows to trace subscribers’ calls/sessions, as they travel across the network, including both control plane and user plane analysis, enabling fast and easy identification of network problems and 3G service quality degradation from the symptom down to the root cause
• UTRAN Key Performance Indicators - for UTRAN and 3G Mobile Services performance evaluation improve customer perceived quality of service and reduce customer churn
• Cell Overlapping Matrix - calculates detailed interference measurements and cell neighbor relation, reducing the need for expensive drive test campaign by using passive Iub monitoring equipment
• Multi User Operation - increases work productivity by reducing waiting time to access test and measurement equipment
• Hardware Filters - to filter out unnecessary data while monitoring UTRAN interfaces to increase the measurement device performance
• NSA supports W-CDMA (FDD) and TD-SCDMA (TDD) based implementations, based on STM-1 or Gigabit Ethernet (UTRAN-IP) environments

Applications

• The UTRAN Network and Service Analyzer suite is for UMTS Mobile Network Operators’ Operation and Maintenance technicians to perform effective troubleshooting of live or trial networks under significant traffic load conditions within affordable time and cost limits
• For UMTS Mobile Network Operators’ UTRAN Optimization technicians to maintain proper UTRAN optimization to guarantee high quality of service
• For UMTS Equipment Manufactures’ Test Engineers to perform efficient troubleshooting during load, stress, duration and acceptance tests of network elements in labs or trial networks

The UTRAN Network and Service Analyzer is a suite of software applications for troubleshooting and optimization of 3G networks and services. It is designed to support the K18 and K15 platform. The UTRAN Network and Service Analyzer enables 3G Mobile Network Operators and Equipment Manufacturer to identify the root cause of poor quality of 3G services, by mapping 3G service problems into the underlying UTRAN network problems.

Breakthrough Solution for Troubleshooting and Optimization of 3G Mobile Networks and Services

The UTRAN Network and Service Analyzer is a suite of real time and off-line software applications for troubleshooting and optimization of 3G networks and services supporting the K18 and K15 platform and running on a Windows XP based PC.

The K18/K15 platform performs real-time capture under heavy load from UTRAN STM-1/OC-3 or GbE interfaces, hardware filtering (e.g. control plane/user plane, VPI/VCI), and first level hardware processing. The PC performs application measurements and acts as a data archive server. Communication between the K18/K15 platform and the PC is achieved via 100Base-T Fast Ethernet standard infrastructure.

Automatic UTRAN topology discovery

A real time expert software application provides a graphical map of the network topology being monitored by the instrument. Network elements (e.g. cell, NodeB, RNC, SGSN, MSC), logical interfaces (e.g. Iub, Iur, Iu-PS, Iu-CS) and logical links (e.g. control plane channels, user plane channels) are displayed in a graphical environment that represents the starting point for an analysis session.

Automatic UTRAN instrument configuration

An expert software application provides automatic configuration of all the necessary parameters to monitor the UTRAN Iub, Iur, Iu-PS, Iu-CS interfaces just by listening to live or simulated traffic, reducing the overhead time to set up test equipment to a few minutes. Both control plane and user plane channels are automatically detected and configured, enabling the user to focus on measurements activities rather than spend time on instrument configuration.

UTRAN Multi Interface Call Trace

A software application for UTRAN Iub, Iu-PS, Iu-CS interfaces allows to trace subscribers’ calls both in real-time and off-line, as they travel across the network over multiple interfaces, over several network elements, including both control plane and user plane analysis, enabling fast and easy identification of network problems and 3G service quality degradation from the symptom down to the root cause.

The GUI allows drill-down troubleshooting from the problem symptom to the root cause with just a mouse-click featuring three windows: the “call overview window”, the “message sequence chart” and the “detailed monitored window”.

In the “overview window” each line represents a call with its most important attributes. The call detail record (CDR) contains summary information about the call (e.g. start and stop time, call status, call type (voice, video or data), NBAP, RRC, NAS, RNSAP release cause, IMSI, TMSI, P-TMSI, IMEI, MSISDN, Calling Party Number, Called Party Number, Cell ID, NodeB ID, RNC ID, S-RNC ID, D-RNC ID, SGSN ID, MSC ID).

Different color codes can be attributed to calls depending on the content of the fields in the CDR, enabling the user to highlight specific calls characteristics under analysis (e.g. all video calls can be highlighted in red). Filtering can be applied to the content of the fields in the CDR, enabling the user to focus on a specific subset of calls (e.g. all calls placed by a specific subscriber can be isolated). The frames can be exported to standard office applications to create reports about network problems. The user plane of each call can also be exported to allow a subsequent offline analysis of voice/video quality.

The “Arrow Diagram” graphically shows the message flow (arrows) of the call and the involved network elements (vertical lines) in a very intuitive way. A deep protocol knowledge is not required.

For in-depth troubleshooting of the problem’s root cause, all details about the protocol messages and their parameters are shown in the “Detailed Monitor Window”.

UTRAN Key Performance Indicators

A software application for UTRAN Iub, Iur, Iu-CS, Iu-PS interfaces provides a comprehensive set of UTRAN and 3G Services Key Performance Indicators (KPI), allowing domain area identification of service problems, mapping of service problems into network problems and time reduction for network optimization and troubleshooting activities.

The application enables to correlate radio measurements (e.g. BER, BLER, SIR, Transmitted Code Power, Received Total Wideband Power) with control plane KPI (e.g. RRC/GMM/MM/SM/CC procedure success/failure rate with distribution per cause) and user plane KPI (e.g. throughput) to understand the influence of the radio link quality and of the handovers on the network behavior.

The application enables to look at the same set of KPI from different perspectives by enabling KPI calculation and analysis per service (e.g. voice, video, packet), per network element (e.g. cell, NodeB, RNC, SGSN), per subscriber (e.g. IMSI) and per handset type (e.g. IMEI).

The GUI supports drill-down troubleshooting from the problem symptom down to the root cause with just a mouse-click: color codes can be set in case measurements exceeds predefined thresholds and it is possible to navigate from any KPI measurement to the detailed list of calls that contributed to the generation of that KPI and to the detailed decoding of each single call.

The application provides a graphical environment to define custom KPI in order to allow technicians to carry out ad hoc benchmarking activities.

The KPI measurements are stored within an open MYSQL database and can be accessed by third party tools to allow easy integration of the solution within already existing measurement systems.

Cell Overlapping Matrix

A software application generates the RNC Cell Overlapped Matrix by collecting radio interface measurements constantly flowing from the handsets (RRC measurement reports), enabling reduction of drive test activities and RNC reconfiguration tasks for UTRAN performance optimization.

The application calculates a matrix that shows the best neighbor cells for any given cell and can therefore be used for optimizing the scrambling code plan and as the checklist for neighbors plan.

Multi User Operation

Thanks to its distributed software architecture, the UTRAN Network and Service Analyzer enables offline Multi User operation. Several technicians can work in parallel and share the same information collected by the measurement device, increasing work productivity by reducing waiting time to access test and measurement equipment.