Introduction To Npop
Introduction To Npop
Introduction to NPOP
TBU18006W
Content:
1. Network Planning and Optimization Basic Principles
2. Activities of Network Planning and Optimization
3. Role of the Network Planning and Optimization Professional
Audience
Personnel in charge of Network Planning and Optimization.
Objectives
Upon completion of this training, you should be able to:
Describe the added value of Network Planning and Optimization to the customer.
Understand the benefits of a Network Planning and Optimization methodology.
Identify the relationships a Network Planning and Optimization Professional must
cultivate.
“Work” efficiently with resources available within Alcatel-Lucent that supports the
Network Planning and Optimization Professional.
Estimated Duration
3 hours
Just as the football team requires a coach to direct their overall activities and ensure the proper players are
on the pitch, so also Migration requires similar coordination. This takes the form of Migration Program
Management.
Migration Schedule Management identifies the timing of key milestones for migration of each technology,
site and end-user group and defines key dependencies between the migration program and the broader IP
Transformation program.
Dynamic Resource Management provides the capability to accurately estimate the human resources and
physical tools, that are required to deliver the migration program, along with the ability to quickly respond to
program changes.
It also acts as the primary input for Resource Fulfillment Planning, which creates and maintains a regularly
updated view of the resources available to fulfill the migration program. This allows the forecasting of
resource shortfalls or over-provision of resources in specific time periods or geographies, which can then be
proactively managed.
It is important to note, that just as the coach participates in the games and practices, so also all of these
program management activities are required for both capability and execution projects. Our experience
shows that the program management requirements during the capability phase are often underestimated.
High-Level Design
Update & confirm complete & accurate
Bill of Material (BoM) of network
components
Troubleshooting
Network acceptance
Network
RF Planning Site verif & Network or Acceptance
Audit & Pre- Cluster RF Area E2E QoS KPI
Optimization Optimization optimization
Network Assessment
Failure Cause Trending
Features Activation
Core Network
On-Site Network Consultant MSC1 : Traffic characteristics
1400000 10000
Call presented /h
On-site technical support 1200000 9000
8000
1000000 7000
erlang
6000
Provides expert assistance for new equipment and new
800000
5000
600000 call attempts 4000
3000
software releases, or any share of our global expertise 400000
200000
Call processed
Switched 2000
1000
0 0
with local customers
10
12
14
16
18
20
22
0
2
4
6
8
hour
Network Planning: aims at defining the location and configuration of the sites and resources needs over the time (from
initial need to forecasts for several years):
Site geographical location
Number of sectors
Number of cells per sector
Number of frequencies per cell
Antenna system configuration:
o Antenna location (macro, micro, or indoor site)
o Antenna type
o Antenna azimuth
o Antenna tilt (electrical, mechanical)
o TMA or not
o Tx diversity or not
o 2 Rx or 4 Rx diversity
Node B max output power:
o TEU board type (MP, HP, LP)
o Number of TEUs
Node B traffic capacity (number of BB boards)
Number and traffic capacity of RNCs, MSCs, SGSNs, GGSNs, etc.
Type and dimensioning of transport interfaces
Network Design: Initial Network Design aims at building the Bill of Quantities (BoQ) of the network for a traffic forecast.
BoQ is the list and number of the Network Elements necessary to match the Operator Requirements in terms of Coverage,
Quality and Traffic capacity of the network. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are agreed between supplier and operator
at this stage.
This is the service portfolio with service families in the colored boxes and basic services attached.
NPOP will work on both “Planning & Design” and “QAO” services.
Perform Technology Impact Assessment (TIA) to determine if and how new technology
can impact the network and network operations in terms of:
Architecture & Capacity
Traffic & Quality of Services
Growth strategies, what-if scenarios
Etc.
Assess network quality to ensure high-level Quality of Experience when introducing new
service application
The Traffic mix shall first be estimated / validated as to have the right sizing figures. It has to be coherent
from one network layer to the others.
The Planning & design of each layer will have an impact on the others and any new hypothesis may need a full
network size recomputation.
Even if a lower CAPEX on a network layer is a good thing, it may imply a higher cost (CAPEX or OPEX) on
another layer that will conduct to a final higher cost.
Also depending on the redundancy and resiliency required, one or several solutions could be foreseen, and the
NPOP should choose only one and explain why this one is preferred.
As well some steps of the deployment may have useless capacity in regards of this steps traffic forecast, but it
may reduce the final cost as no upgrade will be necessary with additional costs in the future steps.
The QoS level could be sometimes estimated but it will always need to be tuned from the integration time to
the acceptance time and after. The After acceptance is usually performed by the customer but can be out-
tasked / out-sourced to ALU in Post-launch optimization services.
BoQ is done as to define per equipment the number of Racks, boards, links, etc. As to tackle the traffic mix
that has been defined as to be processed by this element. This includes the User traffic as well as the
signaling and OAM traffics.
The Equipement redundancy / security (and not the one that may exists at Network layer is studied also) e.g:
board redundancy to prevent HW failure and bad Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) issues (not SDH protection
constraint as MS-SPRING, etc.).
Area surveys
Frequency spectrum partitioning design
RNP tool calibration
Coverage predictions based on the
full interference analysis required for
spread spectrum networks,
compared to maximum path loss
Definition of search areas (SAM)
Selection of number of sectors/cells per site
together with project management and operator
Traffic forecast analysis
Maximize Site Sharing
Overlay onto existing networks
RF validation of sites & configuration
Get “real” design acceptance from operator
based on coverage prediction and predefined
design level thresholds
Area surveys: As well check of correctness of geo data and feasibility of the equipment installation in the site
that was forecasted for it
Frequency spectrum partitioning design
RNP tool calibration: For the different morpho classes:
Performing of drive measurements.
Calibration of correction factor and standard deviation by comparison of measurements to predicted
received power values of the tool.
Definition of search areas (SAM – Search Area Map):
A team searches for site locations in the defined areas.
Selection of number of sectors/cells per site together with project management and operator: Get ‘real’
design acceptance from the operator based on coverage prediction and predefined design level thresholds
The interface type is defined more precisely as the expected NE location may differ from the planned one and
may be the interface type should be changed to a Long Haul rather than Short Haul.
Connection issues and interconnections with other networks are studied more carefully since now the
customer can provide more information than in the Offer/ RFQ phase.
General IP, Signaling etc. Addresses policy are fixed e.g. Class D or C or... IP addresses for a site .... Or a
LAN...
The services are sometimes using different NEs and the call flows may differ depending on services
specificities. This is fixed at this stage.
Migration constraints (even due to square meters) are seen at this step.
The DCN and all charging, management flows are studied more precisely as usually underestimated at offer
stage.
Security, resiliency... are also more precise as Firewall configuration starts to be established as to know
which flow and LAN should be secured and up to which level...
All Rights Reserved © Alcatel-Lucent
Phase 2: Network Design
Low-Level Design (LLD)
23
Lab Integration
Network Build
NPOP does not play any role in the deployment phase except for support
in case of design modification, parameters of KPI issues
All Rights Reserved © Alcatel-Lucent 2010
Deliverables
Alcatel-Lucent must provide the following deliverables:
History of Optimization actions and recommendations
Base Station configuration
Drive routes (cluster optimization & network E2E verification)
Final Exit Metrics Summary (according to agreed test protocol)
The commitments are based at network level, and they enable to get a Go decision
for:
Commercial opening
Payment triggering
End-User
quality for
voice
QoS KPI Commitment by Call set-up
success rate
Alcatel-Lucent
Quality of
CS and PS Handover
call Call drop success rate
rate
Call drop rate: Number of calls which are prematurely terminated over the total number of calls
Quality of CS & PS call: Block error rate on transport channel blocks depending on the radio bearer
End-user quality for voice: Mean Opinion Score (MOS) combining perception and comfort
End-user quality for applications over IP: Throughput, response time, jitter and Packet Loss Rate for
streaming application
Typical KPIs:
AMR 12.2: Long-voice calls
o Call success rate (number of calls maintained during 2 min/call attempts), BLER
Packet background 64/384kbit/s
o Call success rate (number of calls maintained until the end of transfer/call attempts), FTP throughput,
BLER
Accessibility: short successive AMR & PS calls
NPA is a monitoring service that provides the KPI and recommendations to customer usually over a year
contract with a periodicity that is Monthly/quarterly (even Weekly or daily). The recommendations provided
are high level ones as to allow the customer to investigate by himself the root cause of the founded issues.
For weekly periodicity, we provide only dashboards and on daily basis this is rather only alerts & warning
without reports that are provided.
NPA service can also be oriented more on Capacity monitoring rather than on QoS.
The assessment is an Audit (but customers don’t like this terminology). We check the QoS issues and we
provide operational recommendations that customer can implement. The root cause analysis is rather
performed by ALU teams. Remember that we don’t investigate up to the precise cause troubleshooting. This
service can be proposed every year or every 6 months for example depending on the traffic evolution and
customer issues.
The optimization service is usually performed by services people on-site, in customer premises, as to monitor
daily and implement corrections as to enhance or maintain the QoS level at the required / satisfying level.
This optimization can also be in an out-tasking service that also encompasses the Network operation.
The Three services are based on QoS Data collection. Those QoS data are stored in the NEs, the OMCs or other
tools such as NPO.
Follow the computation of the KPI from the NE counters. NPO provides this kind of computation as well as
YAM (over RAMSES) on Core side.
Then Optimizers analyze those data as to check where are the main issues and dig more or less down to the
root cause of the bad KPI. Depending on the service, and of course its associated workload, cost & price, the
analysis ends with alerts, high-level recommendations, operational recommendations or even implementation
and verification of the improvement.
Only the Optimization service can be subject to KPI commitment. The modification implementation is
preferred to be under ALU responsibility in this case.
But optimization doesn’t always mean KPI commitment. Also remember that the implementation of the
modification isn’t always performed by ALU. In such a case, the offer should limit our responsibility on the KPI
commitment as they are linked to implementation delay of the needed recommendations.
So it’s important to provide the service as requested by the customer and not over commit on the request or
offer we did. Otherwise we will need more resources and workload than expected and we will encounter
revenues issues.
Preventive detection depending on the report periodicity, i.e. every quarter if quarterly report.
Daily option on Core: An alert is raised when one of the main KPIs passes a threshold
and needs urgent corrective action
Gather
current Follow-up Typical Optimization Activities
traffic data trends Performance monitoring
Parameters tuning
Identify Feature testing
weaknesses
Follow-up Capacity optimization
KPIs daily Capacity upgrade
Network Densification
T0 T1
Setup
Monitor
Kick-off meeting
Team and tools Modify
setup
Recommendations
Procedures and Analyze
KPIs list Go
agreement Implementation
agreement
Implement
QoS modifications
observation
and Analysis
Continuous
optimization
Long Term
Customers usually don’t read all the documentation. It is important to extract the main points and make a
short summary as to be more confident that at least this will be read by the customer management.
Context can explain some issues that we may have encountered during data collection that can explain why
we have difficulties to pinpoint the issues or explain how to correct as not enough information or some
modifications on the network have changed the reading of the observation data. For example, if a re-routing
has been implemented, the traffic flows are changed so the capacity check and QoS seen can be quite
different before and after the modification
PM or optimizers should follow when recommendations are provided if the customer implement them and if
the effect is positive on the QoS. If ALU do the implementation, it’s even better.
Customer won’t wait too long for an assessment, so it is important to do the audit in usually less than 6 weeks
as to provide information which are still valid since the network may not have changed too much in this
timeframe. Otherwise, the information will be obsolete and the recommendation will become useless
Never tell a customer (management) in a report or slides that its team isn’t good enough (even if right). You
would kill future business and have a reject from the report audience. Rather tell that things can be improved
and that we would be pleased to help them through a new service offer.
200000000
180000000
160000000
140000000
120000000
100000000
80000000
60000000
40000000
20000000
0
Capacity Status Evaluation
(Capacity Analysis) result:
05-nov-05
12-nov-05
19-nov-05
26-nov-05
07-janv-06
14-janv-06
21-janv-06
28-janv-06
01-oct-05
08-oct-05
15-oct-05
22-oct-05
29-oct-05
3 Dec 05
10 Dec 05
17 Dec 05
24 Dec 05
31 Dec 05
4 Feb 06
11 Feb 06
18 Feb 06
25 Feb 06
04-mars-06
11-mars-06
18-mars-06
25-mars-06
1 Apr 06
8 Apr 06
15 Apr 06
list of NEs that approach
capacity congestion and
CS DL traffic KBytes PS DL Traffic KBytes total PS + CS preventive actions to be
taken.
Capacity Analysis
Is based on counters monitoring and focus on two main elements:
Blocking rate = ratio (%) of call admission procedures rejected due to lack of
resources during observation period.
Element load = ratio (%) of resource usage during observation period
(used/available resources).
The Load, also compared with a predefined threshold (L1 < Blocking rate), helps
preventing congestion by identifying network elements that approach congestion
(blocking) limit and need attention.
Yes
Load < L1? No action required
No
Low
Load – L1 Parameters tuning
High
Resource addition
Capacity Planning
Depends on Current Capacity Status and forecast input like:
medium and long term traffic growth
new services/features that are activated
commercial promotions for the existing services
Etc.
Allows to anticipate operational actions needed to avoid capacity issues (parameters
tuning, network extensions, etc.).
Projected load
Evolution
Congestion limit Congestion limit
Conclusion: No Conclusion:
action required Additional resource
to forecast
Switch-on
Migration Strategy
Perform the design & planning of
the overall migration strategy
(activities, planning)
Customer Deliverables
Migration Strategy Document
Acceptance Report per site
following the traffic migration
All along the customer project life cycle, documentation is a key tool
for communicating, committing and getting contractual agreement and
payment with your customer
Planning and Design can be compared to house or building architecture to interior decoration. You define first
the main architecture without looking precisely inside but looking with external constraints.
If climate is cold, you’ll protect house against cold… if you’re near a historical monument, you may have
regulation constraints to respect…. As for a network to interconnect with other operators NW.
Then you look how the water, electricity…. Will goes inside the building as you do the HLD. You define the
main traffic streams and constraints inside the NW elements.
Only at the end you choose the painting colors etc… as in the LLD you define the IP/signaling Addresses etc….
As in a house, at each step you can modify a little the hypotheses but not too much without a big impact on
the house infrastructure and resiliency.
E ve
info ry missi
the rmatio ng
docu n
men in
A ts is
resp LU
onsi
bilit
y
Derive from the network architecture the operational network design taking into
account planning aspects, operational constraints, optimization of existing network
& quality expectation from end user point of view
Optimize the capacity of the network to meet traffic increase and customer
requirements thanks to either network extension or existing network modification
Ensure that design & optimization guaranty the capability for the network to
provide end-user with new services in line with customer environment,
business goals/drivers and quality
Ensure that the related deliverables & KPIs included in the contract are followed up
and met and identify and report risks associated
Develop and maintain a trust & win-win relationship with customer from initial
NPO scope agreement till final acceptance of NPO deliverables, taking ALU
business interests into account
Technical skills are critical (and important to keep developing technical skills)
Strategic thinking
Communication
Adaptability
Problem solving
Decision making
Additional Resources
BG Services URL:
http://servicesportfolio.web.lucent.com/services/category.cfm?id=1
H.Maillart
End of Module