HAKAM M.

ZAIDAN Northern Technical University

MSc. In COMPUTER ENGINEERING TECHNICAL ENG. COLLEGE \ MOSUL

Teletraffic Engineering
HAKAM M. ZAIDAN Northern Technical University
MSc. In COMPUTER ENGINEERING TECHNICAL ENG. COLLEGE \ MOSUL

Introduction
• There are many telephone customers, much larger than the number of available trunks, but not
every customer makes or receives a telephone call at the same time.

• The number of trunks connecting the Mobile Switching Center (MSC) A with another MSC B are the
number of voice pairs used in the connection.

• One of the most important steps in telecommunication engineering is to determine the number of
trunks required on a route or a connection between MSCs.

• To dimension a route correctly, we must have some idea of its usage, that is, how many subscribers
are expected to talk at one time over the route.

• The usage of a transmission route or an MSC brings us into the realm of teletraffic engineering.
HAKAM M. ZAIDAN Northern Technical University
MSc. In COMPUTER ENGINEERING TECHNICAL ENG. COLLEGE \ MOSUL

Introduction
• The call capacity of an MSC is expressed as the maximum number of originating plus incoming (O + I) calls that can be handled
during a high-traffic hour while meeting the dial-tone delay requirements.

• The call capacity of an MSC depends on the subscriber call mix, feature mix, and equipment configuration.

• Typically, processor capacity limits the MSC call capacity under specific conditions,

• But the switching networking, peripheral equipment, trunk terminations, or directory numbers can limit MSC call capacity as
well.

• The call volume offered to an MSC depends on geographical area, class of service mix, and time of day.

• An MSC is required to process calls while serving a representative supplementary feature (such as call waiting, call forwarding,
etc.).

• The call capacity of an MSC is needed to plan, engineer, and administer its use.
HAKAM M. ZAIDAN Northern Technical University
MSc. In COMPUTER ENGINEERING TECHNICAL ENG. COLLEGE \ MOSUL

Service Level
• Service level for telecommunication traffic can be divided into two main areas:
• The delay in receiving a dial tone (for a mobile system, radio signaling delays contribute to dial-tone delay) and
• The probability of service denial.

• Dial-tone delay is the maximum amount of time a subscriber must wait to hear a dial-tone after removing the handset
from the hook.

• Dial-tone delay has the following characteristics:

• A large number of users compete for a small number of servers (dial-tone connections, dial-tone generators).
• An assumption that the user will wait until a server is available.

• Service denial, or the probability that the service trunk will not be available, is similar to dial-tone delay, with several
additional characteristics:
• A large number of users compete for a small number of trunks.
• An assumption that no delay will be encountered. The user is either given access to a trunk or is advised by a busy signal or a recording
that none are available.
• The user may frequently reinstate the call attempt after receiving a busy signal.
HAKAM M. ZAIDAN Northern Technical University
MSc. In COMPUTER ENGINEERING TECHNICAL ENG. COLLEGE \ MOSUL

Service Level

• For both cases, the basic measure of performance is either the

probability that service delay will exceed some specified value or the
probability that the call will be denied or blocked (the blocking
probability).

• In a system that drops calls when serving trunks are not available (a
loss system), the blocking probability represents the performance
measure.
HAKAM M. ZAIDAN Northern Technical University
MSc. In COMPUTER ENGINEERING TECHNICAL ENG. COLLEGE \ MOSUL

Traffic Usage
• A traffic path is a communication channel, time slot, frequency band, line, trunk, switch, or circuit over
which individual communications take place in sequence.

• Traffic usage is defined by two parameters, calling rate and call holding time
• Calling rate, or the number of times a route or traffic path is used per unit time; more properly defined, the call intensity
(i.e., calls per hour) per traffic path during busy hour.
• Call holding time, or the average duration of occupancy of a traffic path by a call.

• The carried traffic is the volume of traffic actually carried by a switch.

• offered traffic is the volume of traffic offered to a switch.

• The offered load is the sum of the carried load and overflow (traffic that cannot be handled by the switch).
• Offered load = carried load + overflow
HAKAM M. ZAIDAN Northern Technical University
MSc. In COMPUTER ENGINEERING TECHNICAL ENG. COLLEGE \ MOSUL

Traffic Usage
• The Figure shows a typical hour-by-hour
voice traffic variation for an MSC.

• We notice that the busiest period, the busy

hour (BH) is between 10 A.M. and 11 A.M.

• We define the busy hour as the span of time

(not necessarily a clock hour) that has the
highest average traffic load for the business
day throughout the busy season.

• The peak hour is defined as the clock hour

with highest traffic load for a single day.
HAKAM M. ZAIDAN Northern Technical University
MSc. In COMPUTER ENGINEERING TECHNICAL ENG. COLLEGE \ MOSUL

Traffic Usage
• Since traffic also varies from month to month, we define the average
busy season (ABS) as the three months (not necessarily consecutive)
with the highest average BH traffic load per access line.

• Telephone systems are not engineered for maximum peak loads, but
for some typical BH load.

• The blocking probability is defined as the average ratio of blocked

calls to total calls and is referred to as the “Grade of Service” GoS.
HAKAM M. ZAIDAN Northern Technical University
MSc. In COMPUTER ENGINEERING TECHNICAL ENG. COLLEGE \ MOSUL

Traffic Measurement Units

• Traffic is measured in either Erlangs, percentage of occupancy (Percentage of time a server is busy), centrum (100) call seconds
(CCS), or peg count (The number of attempts to use a piece of equipment).  •
• Traffic intensity is the average number of calls simultaneously in progress during a particular period of time. It is measured either in
units of Erlangs or CCS.

• An average of one call in progress during an hour represents a traffic intensity of 1 Erlang; thus 1 Erlang equals 1 x 3600 call seconds
(36 CCS).

• The Erlang is a dimensionless number. Traffic intensity can be obtained as:

•
• Where is the traffic intensity, T is the duration of monitoring period, is the holding time of the ith individual call, is the total number of calls in
monitoring period, is the average holding time, and number of calls per unit time.

• The usage (U), peg count (PC) per time period, overflow (O) per period, and average holding time t are related as:
• U = (PC - O) .
HAKAM M. ZAIDAN Northern Technical University
MSc. In COMPUTER ENGINEERING TECHNICAL ENG. COLLEGE \ MOSUL

Example:
• In a switching office an equipment component with an average  •
holding time of 5 seconds has a peg count of 450 for a one-hour
period. Assuming that there was no overflow (i.e., the system handled
all calls), how much usage in Erlangs has accumulated on the piece of
the equipment?

• Sol:
U = (PC - O) .
U = (450 – 0) . 5/3600 = 0.625 Erlangs
HAKAM M. ZAIDAN Northern Technical University
MSc. In COMPUTER ENGINEERING TECHNICAL ENG. COLLEGE \ MOSUL

Example:
• In a wireless network each subscriber generates two calls per hour on  •
the average and a typical call holding time is 120 seconds. What is the
traffic intensity?

• Sol:
HAKAM M. ZAIDAN Northern Technical University
MSc. In COMPUTER ENGINEERING TECHNICAL ENG. COLLEGE \ MOSUL

Pre-Test
• In order to determine voice
traffic on a line, we collected the
following data during a period of
90 minutes. Calculate the traffic
intensity in Erlangs