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Grade of Service

Grade of service is a measure of the quality of voice service in telecommunications engineering. It is defined as the probability that a call will be blocked or delayed during periods of heavy traffic, known as the busy hour. Grade of service is calculated based on the number of calls lost or delayed due to congestion, with lower probabilities indicating better quality of service. It is an important metric that network operators use to determine how many circuits are needed to maintain a specified level of quality during peak demand periods.

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276 views

Grade of Service

Grade of service is a measure of the quality of voice service in telecommunications engineering. It is defined as the probability that a call will be blocked or delayed during periods of heavy traffic, known as the busy hour. Grade of service is calculated based on the number of calls lost or delayed due to congestion, with lower probabilities indicating better quality of service. It is an important metric that network operators use to determine how many circuits are needed to maintain a specified level of quality during peak demand periods.

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Shyam Krishna
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Grade of Service

In telecommunication engineering, and in particular teletraffic engineering, the


quality of voice service is specified by two measures: the grade of service (GoS) and
the quality of service (QoS).
Grade of service is the probability of a call in a circuit group being blocked or
delayed for more than a specified interval, expressed as a vulgar fraction or decimal
fraction. This is always with reference to the busy hour when the traffic intensity is
the greatest. Grade of service may be viewed independently from the perspective of
incoming versus outgoing calls, and is not necessarily equal in each direction or
between different source-destination pairs.
On the other hand, the quality of service which a single circuit is designed or
conditioned to provide, e.g. voice grade or program grade is called the quality of
service. Quality criteria for such circuits may include equalization for amplitude over
a specified band of frequencies, or in the case of digital data transported via analogue
circuits, may include equalization for phase. Criteria for mobile quality of service in
cellular telephone circuits include the probability of abnormal termination of the call.

What is Grade of Service and how is it measured?


When a user attempts to make a telephone call, the routing equipment handling the
call has to determine whether to accept the call, reroute the call to alternative
equipment, or reject the call entirely. Rejected calls occur as a result of heavy traffic
loads (congestion) on the system and can result in the call either being delayed or lost.
If a call is delayed, the user simply has to wait for the traffic to decrease, however if a
call is lost then it is removed from the system.
The Grade of Service is one aspect of the quality a customer can expect to experience
when making a telephone call. In a Loss System, the Grade of Service is described as
that proportion of calls that are lost due to congestion in the busy hour. For a Lost Call
system, the Grade of Service can be measured using Equation 1.

For a delayed call system, the Grade of Service is measured using three separate
terms:

The mean delay td Describes the average time a user spends waiting for a
connection if their call is delayed.
The mean delay to Describes the average time a user spends waiting for a
connection whether or not their call is delayed.
The probability that a user may be delayed longer than time t while waiting for
a connection. Time t is chosen by the telecommunications service provider so
that they can measure whether their services conform to a set Grade of
Service.

Where and when is Grade of Service measured?


The Grade of Service can be measured using different sections of a network. When a
call is routed from one end to another, it will pass through several exchanges. If the
Grade of Service is calculated based on the number of calls rejected by the final
circuit group, then the Grade of Service is determined by the final circuit group
blocking criteria. If the Grade of Service is calculated based on the number of rejected
calls between exchanges, then the Grade of Service is determined by the exchange-toexchange blocking criteria.
The Grade of Service should be calculated using both the access networks and the
core networks as it is these networks that allow a user to complete an end-to-end
connection. Furthermore, the Grade of Service should be calculated from the average
of the busy hour traffic intensities of the 30 busiest traffic days of the year. This will
cater for most scenarios as the traffic intensity will seldom exceed the reference level.

Class of Service
Different telecommunications applications require different Qualities of Service. For
example, if a telecommunications service provider decides to offer different qualities
of voice connection, then a premium voice connection will require a better connection
quality compared to an ordinary voice connection. Thus different Qualities of Service
are appropriate, depending on the intended use. To help telecommunications service
providers to market their different services, each service is placed into a specific class.
Each Class of Service determines the level of service required.
To identify the Class of Service for a specific service, the networks switches and
routers examine the call based on several factors. Such factors can include:

The type of service and priority due to precedence


The identity of the initiating party
The identity of the recipient party

Quality of Service in broadband networks


In broadband networks, the Quality of Service is measured using two criteria. The
first criterion is the probability of packet losses or delays in already accepted calls.
The second criterion refers to the probability that a new incoming call will be
rejected. To avoid the former, broadband networks limit the number of active calls so
that packets from established calls will not be lost due to new calls arriving. As in
circuit-switched networks, the Grade of Service can be calculated for individual
switches or for the whole network.

Maintaining a Grade of Service


The telecommunications provider is usually aware of the required Grade of Service
for a particular product. To achieve and maintain a given Grade of Service, the
operator must ensure that sufficient telecommunications circuits or routes are

available to meet a specific level of demand. It should also be kept in mind that too
many circuits will create a situation where the operator is providing excess capacity
which may never be used, or at the very least may be severely underutilized. This
adds costs which must be borne by other parts of the network. To determine the
correct number of circuits that are required, telecommunications service providers
make use of Traffic Tables. It follows that in order for a telecommunications network
to continue to offer a given Grade of Service, the number of circuits provided in a
circuit group must increase (non-linearly) if the traffic intensity increases.

Erlang's lost call assumptions


To calculate the Grade of Service of a specified group of circuits or routes, A.K.
Erlang used a set of assumptions that relied on the network losing calls when all
circuits in a group were busy. These assumptions are:

All traffic through the network is pure-chance traffic, i.e. all call arrivals and
terminations are independent random events
There is statistical equilibrium, i.e., the average number of calls does not
change
Full availability of the network, i.e., every outlet from a switch is accessible
from every inlet
Any call that encounters congestion is immediately lost.

From these assumptions Erlang developed the Erlang-B formula which describes the
probability of congestion in a circuit group. The probability of congestion gives the
Grade of Service experienced.

Calculating the Grade of Service


To determine the Grade of Service of a network when the traffic load and number of
circuits are known, telecommunications network operators make use of Equation 2,
which is the Erlang-B equation.

A = Expected traffic intensity in Erlangs, N = Number of circuits in group.


This equation allows operators to determine whether each of their circuit groups meet
the required Grade of Service, simply by monitoring the reference traffic intensity.
(For delay networks, the Erlang-C formula allows network operators to determine the
probability of delay depending on peak traffic and the number of circuits.)

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