Actix Spotlight Training Manual

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Spotlight Training Course

UMTS and GSM

Actix Training Services

Edition B Comment [sf1]: If you can see this,

Instructor Guide comments are visible throughout the document!

To hide, from the Reviewing toolbar, select Final instead of Final Showing Markup

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All contents of this document are the property of Actix and are provided for information purposes only. The information in this document is subject to change without notice. Actix will not be held liable for technical or editorial omissions made herein, and will not be held liable for incidental, consequential or other similar damages resulting from the use of its products.

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Aims of the course

After this course, you should be able to:

• Appreciate common network problems and how they are classified in Spotlight.

• Configure Spotlight to work with your data and methodologies. • Appreciate pre-defined Spotlight Reports.

• Appreciate different analyses methods (Event Based and Radio Network Analyses) in Spotlight.

• Use Spotlight to analyze problems in data sets of differing sizes. • Appreciate the role thresholds perform in Spotlight and how to

modify them.

From the Repository Analysis - Drilldown, you should be able to: • Add extra data during the analysis.

• Save the project file.

• Create and save your own template for your project. • Start Spotlight and reload the project file.

• Drilldown problem by File or Time to message level with or without loading the whole file.

• Perform different analyses based on handset and scanner data. • Perform 3G-2G Neighbor Analysis.

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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: critical issues, where an event has occurred that discontinued a call, and important issues, where the quality of service has been reduced without necessarily ending any calls.

Cell coverage, interference problems and UMTS/GSM 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 are shown as Critical Issues in the Issues panel).

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Actix Spotlight Features

The following Actix Spotlight features are available for UMTS and GSM:

Radio Network Analyses

Cell Coverage Analysis (based on Scanner/Handset data)

Determines the coverage footprint of cells and identifies overshoot against coverage design boundaries.

Missing Neighbors Analysis (3G-3G, 3G-2G)

Pilot Pollution Analysis (based on Scanner/Handset data)

Event-based troubleshooting

Automated root-cause diagnostics for the most common subscriber problems such as dropped calls and call setup failure.

Reporting

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What’s in Spotlight?

New Project and Template Creation

Provides a link to the new template configuration wizard or allows a user to create a new project using an existing template.

New Template Configuration Wizard

Step by step wizard that guides the user to configure a new template with required devices, KPIs, reports, queries and so on.

Data Configuration

Step by step wizard that guides the user to configure thresholds and cellrefs and also select data to process into the repository.

Summary Dashboard

From the Repository Dashboard, the user can choose to further

investigate and perform either Event based or Radio Network analyses.

Spotlight Report(s)

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.

Radio Network Investigation/Analyses

Provides a breakdown of the important issues by filename and handset identifier. These tabular pages are reached through links on the Summary Dashboard.

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New Project and Template Creation

To create new project, click on New Project.

To open an existing project, click on Open.

To delete an existing project, click on Delete. To start Analyzer Classic, click

on Classic Mode.

Comment [sf2]: Normally, if you

prefer not to use Spotlight, you can always use the “legacy” Analyzer Classic link. But this is not

recommended since the whole point of Spotlight , is not using Analyzer to drill down.

Comment [sf3]: Upon launch of the

Actix software, the ‘Choose an Engineering Process’ dialog shows all the Engineering Processes that you are licensed to use, and so a user's software may display other processes to those shown here.

Comment [sf4]: To start a new

project, click on “New Project”, otherwise you can either “Open” or “Delete” an existing project (if you have one). If you prefer to start with Analyzer Classic, click on “Classic mode”

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Creating New Project Template

Spotlight project templates define KPIs, reports and attributes, which are available within a Spotlight project, and how the data is to be stored in the repository. It is important to configure a project template correctly because it controls not only what analysis is available, but also how the data is organized, and this can affect the validity of the analysis.

In addition, the way you configure the project template can affect the performance of the projects that are based on it. For example, if you include KPIs and reports that are not relevant, performance may be slower than necessary, particularly when creating the project and loading data into it, but also when subsequently closing and reloading it.

Although Spotlight is based on the Repository technology, project templates are not the same as repository templates. When you create a project template using Spotlight's New Template option, Spotlight also generates a repository

template based on the KPIs and other options that are selected. During this process Spotlight uses a default repository template that is supplied with Spotlight.

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New Project Creation (using a pre-defined template):

You can use the default repository template or an existing custom-defined template by starting a new Spotlight project on the Creating a New ProjectÆ Step 1: Name and Template page, click on New Template. Follow the instructions and configure your template by following the three simple steps as below:

Step 1: Name and Template Step 2: Preferences and Thresholds Step 3: Choose Data

Step 1: Name and Template

1. Key in a meaningful project name.

2. Select a suitable pre-defined template.

If you prefer to create your own template, click on New Template.

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Step 2: Preferences and Thresholds

Preferences settings provide a link to the Actix Software preferences dialog.

Spotlight is a map-centric product. So, it is necessary to have a valid cellrefs file corresponding to the drive test data.

Thresholds (See Appendix A for all UMTS Spotlight thresholds information)

are user-definable values that can be used as constants in event detection and queries.

This opens the Preferences dialog.

Select a cellrefs file if you have not already done so.

If you have selected a new cellrefs file, you will need to restart the Spotlight application and return to this point.

3. This opens the Thresholds dialog.

You do not need to make any changes here yet, but click the button to have a quick look at the dialog.

See Appendix A for all thresholds details. Choose the correct cellrefs file for Actix

Spotlight to refer to.

Click Next when you are done with your configuration.

Comment [sf5]: All thresholds used in

UMTS Spotlight are provided in an Appendix to this document.

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Step 3: Choose Data

All file information is displayed. You can either add more files, more folders or remove files.

Note: The entire process of loading data is dependent on the volume of data to

be loaded into the project. However, once the data has been loaded into the Repository, it can be reattached very quickly.

Click on Done to load your data files. Choose the data file(s) you would

like to load by clicking on Add File.

You can also add the entire folder by clicking on Add Folder and/or Add all subfolders.

Click on Done to begin your troubleshooting. Actix Software will first save the Settings and Thresholds as part of the project. The progress bar for data processing will appear and this will give you an idea of how long it will take.

Comment [sf6]: The project will be saved to this folder: \Documents and Settings\All Users\Application

Data\Actix\Analyzer\Projects (depending on your current Windows user settings). For best use, aim for at least 1GB free disk space per project. Spotlight support max populated data volume: 3Gb

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Exercise: New Template Configuration

Start a new Spotlight project and on the Creating a New Project Æ Step 1: Name and Tempalte page, click on New Template. You then need to fill out options on four pages as follows:

Step 1: Choose Name and Starting Template Step 2: Choose Devices

Step 3: Choose KPIs and Reports Step 4: Choose Attributes

In this exercise, you will be creating your own UMTS Template and define all the related devices (handset and/or scanner if you have them), KPIs, Reports, Queries and Attributes. Let’s start by creating a template as shown below:

Step 1: Choose Name and Starting Template

1. Key in a meaningful Project

Name.

2. Click on New Template to create your template.

3. Key in a meaningful Template Name for easy access in the future.

4. Choose a template you would like to base the project on by clicking on Based on Template.

5. Click Next to start to create your template.

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Step 2: Choose Devices

By default, all devices are aggregated into one device (ALL). In this page, you can define your devices. Click on Add Device. Enter the Device Name and the related Filter that identifies the stream of interest within the logfile.

Choose a meaningful Device Name. Actix software determines whether data from a stream should be loaded into the Device based on whether the Filter

text matches any text in the data stream name. For example, if you have TemExp (1) and TemExp (2) in your logfile, Filter 1) uniquely identifies the handset stream in the file, while using an identifier that is common to many types of logfiles. If the Filter field is left empty, data from all streams will be loaded into the device.

1. Add a Device if you

would like to define your own devices

2. Key in the Device Name.

3. Key in the Filter to uniquely identifies different devices.

4. If have a different format or device, click on Import From File to add your device filter(s).

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Step 3: Choose KPIs and Reports

You can choose the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) and Reports needed from these three columns (select whichever applies):

Event KPIs

Radio Network KPIs Summary Report

For this exercise, select or check on all UMTS Event & Radio Network KPIs and the related UMTS reports. To ensure best load time performance, do not forget to uncheck other options you do not require. Click Next> to continue.

Choose the appropriate Event KPIs, Radio Network KPIs and Reports.

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Step 4: Choose Attributes

In this step, you can add more binned attributes to the set of default attributes available in the repository. You can also configure location binning settings in this page.

For this exercise, choose all UMTS-related binned queries and UMTS attributes required for your template by checking the checkbox on the left of the Attribute. Click Done when you’ve finished.

After clicking Done on the fourth page, you are returned to the New Project

start page, where the new template appears in the list of project templates. 2. Select all the required attributes.

3. Configure the binning method. 1. Choose your required binned Data Queries.

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Note that for convenience, Spotlight appends the date on which it was created to the project template's name.

Select your new template. Click Next> to continue to select the cellref file, and change the settings and configure thresholds, as described in Step 2 and

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UMTS Summary Dashboard

Spotlight Summary Dashboard provides you a quick 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 be displayed on the dashboard. The Summary Dashboard consists of three main components:

Repository Summary Issues

Map

Click on Log Files to display all information regarding the data file(s) you’ve loaded.

Click on Report to generate your UMTS Spotlight Report based on the configuration and settings you’ve defined. The report consists of RF parameter charts and maps with important events and attributes. Click on Event Explorer to drill down to

all Event-based analysis such as Dropped calls, Call setup Failures etc.

Click on Radio Network Explorer to investigate all Radio Network problems and perform wide-area coverage-based analyses.

Map is the main integral part of Spotlight interface, where it shows the entire drive with Uu_Scan_RSSI being the default attribute is plotted. The cell wedges are colour coded: Green represents site that were serving during part of the drive.

The UMTS Issues panel lists all critical and important issues occurring in the dataset. It allows you to investigate further and drill down to issues in more detail by clicking on the link of the KPIs. The Critical Issues section provides an overview of the drive in terms of failure events. The Important Issues section includes the radio network analyses.

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UMTS Spotlight Reports

Reports are a good place to start when attempting to identify problems in the loaded data. These can be accessed by clicking on the Reports link from Spotlight's Summary Dashboard page.

Note: A report must have been activated in the current project's template. It

shows all unfiltered data in the project database for the associated technology.

Click on one of the reports in navigation tabs such as Report, Overview, Overview Map, Radio, CS Domain and PS Domain to explore various pages of the report.

You can either click on the Save button to save report in .htm format or click on the Show Excel Report button to export the report to Microsoft Excel format.

Note that if you run the report again on different data, the map bitmaps will be updated to reflect the new data. If you subsequently reopen the workbook that was saved earlier, Excel will ask if you want to update. Choose the Don't Update option, or the maps will be updated with the data from the latest running of the report.

The Save button exports the report as a web page. Note that the web page has an associated subfolder with a unique name containing various image and other files relating to that report. However, the image files in each subfolder are always called image1.gif, image2.gif, which may cause you problems in some situations.

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Report: File Overview

Click on any of the navigation tabs such as Report, Overview, Overview Map, Radio, CS Domain and PS Domain to explore various pages of the report.

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Report: Overview Map

Maps with Measurements and Failure Events help you to visualize the problem better and to create an appealing report.

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Report: Radio

Statistics and histogram give you a quick overview of the statistics (min, max, average etc.) and the distribution of the EcIo and RSCP analyses.

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Report: CS Domain or PS Domain

CS Call Information drills down to each call and provides call information based on your log file. Call Drops will be highlighted in Red while Call Setup Failures will be highlighted in Orange.

Note that the PS Domain Report looks about the same except only PS call information will be displayed.

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Event Explorer

The Event Explorer provides a detailed analysis of critical failure events such as Call Drops and Call Setup Failure. You could arrive at this page from the

Summary Dashboard as a result of clicking on a Critical Issue or on the Event Explorer icon.

Spotlight contains the following Event Explorer pages for you to perform a wide range of analyses:

Circuit Switched o Dropped Calls o Call Setup Failures o Location Update Failures Handover Issues

o Handover Failures

o Missing Neighbors (Only available for Handset and Scanner data files, using the handset and scanner merge feature)

o Information only

% Strong NBR Diff Baud (better than the serving cell) % NBR with 5dB (within 5dB of the serving cell)

% NBR with 5dB diff Baud (within 5dB of the serving cell but different frequency)

The table in the top panel has a row for each site and lists the failure rates for that site. On the bottom side panel, there is a list of all the dropped calls occurring in the drive. If you select a check box in one of the rows, the bottom side panel will only show the events appearing for the site or sector in that row.

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Click on a KPI link to go to the corresponding event-based analysis section.

Click on Event Explorer on the top panel to go to the event dashboard page. Click on Select Category to select the technology, if you have loaded different technology logfiles.

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If the top table shows high values for a particular problem KPI, check the top left hand box to enable the selection boxes for each row. Then check each row with high “problem” KPIs. The side panel is now filtered to show the events appearing for only the selected site or sector rows.

If there are too many rows in the table, you might want to sort by the Diagnostics column to see the diagnostic types grouped alphabetically.

View and Drilldown Further View Only

You can sort by the Diagnostics column to see the diagnostic types grouped alphabetically.

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Additional Features

You can narrow down your results by choosing which analysis you want to perform, applying filter, displaying your selected attributes or events you would like to look at.

Add Filter

Choose a suitable KPI category that you would like to look at quickly to narrow down your result.

Create or Add filter or filters to cut down the outcome and bring you closer to your desire result. You can also delete your filter by clicking on Remove Filter or Remove All.

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Attributes

Events

To help you to understand the problem better, you can visualize more attributes by displaying them on the map. Select the attributes you would like to display on current map from the Attributes drop down list.

You can also view different types of failure events, Pilot Pollution, Too Many Server etc… by selecting them from the Events drop down list. If you’ve loaded other technology logfile, the relevant events will be displayed in the drop down list.

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Detailed Event Diagnostics

The Detailed Event Diagnostics section provides diagnosis for the failure event. It consists of the following sections:

Causes

Possible causes for the call drop. Further Explanation

Details on the causes for the call drop

Further Analysis

Suggestions on how to proceed with further analysis

Measurement Information RF measurements around the event

In this example, the cause of the dropped call is due to Handover Problem. Further investigate the problem by drilling down to a selected sector(s).

Check on the Drill Down checkbox of event that you would like to drill down to.

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Drilldown

Until this stage, the analysis has been based the database. If you would like to drill down further to message level, click on Begin Drilldown.

The table on the left shows a row for each Dropped Call event selected for further drilldown, together with a diagnosis of the cause.

There are a few additional views to help analyze the event in more detail. A map and the UMTS Event Navigator window display attributes relating to the selected event. There is also a Protocol Stack Browser providing detailed messaging around the event.

Note: All the views will only have data for

the time window specified in the previous step.

1. Check on Load entire file if you would like to load the whole file. Note that this will take longer.

2. Key in the desire time in seconds for Before and After box.

3. Check on Load All Devices if you have collected handset and scanner data together, and would like to load all the devices combined.

4. Click on Begin Drilldown to extract detail information (up to message level) from the database.

File-based drilldown:

Load the entire file containing the event and analyze further.

Time Window drilldown:

Specify a time window before and after the event and Actix software will only load data for that window (fastest loading and best time performance)

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Exercise: Drop Call Analysis

In this exercise, we will analyze a call drop where the Dropped Call event will appear on the map. The cell wedges are colour coded to represent dropped call numbers. The side panel lists all the critical events occurring in the drive. We’ll first look at the diagnostics panel on the left or the table in the top panel where a row for each site lists the failure rates for that site. Note that the table shows a set of KPIs corresponding to the currently selected Category. This prevents the table from becoming cluttered by only showing a small set of related KPIs at the same time.

Investigate this drop call. Confirm if it is due to poor coverage and see if you can find more information.

Poor EcNo and Good RSSI when call dropped is shown on UMTS Handset State Form. The chart also shows the TxPower, SIR and SIR Target.

The UMTS Event

Navigatior State Form

shows the event and SC.

Stronger neighbors not

selected for handover. The Protocol Stack Browser provides detailed messaging around the event. This view (screen layout) provides most of

the information needed to diagnose a dropped call. It can be modified by saving a

new screen layout. _{Comment [sf7]: This set of views}

displayed (Screen Layout) can be modified by the user by saving new screen layout.

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Radio Network Analyses

Spotlight contains the following Radio Network Analyses to provide you to perform wide area coverage based analyses in UMTS:

Cell Coverage Analysis (based on Scanner/Handset data)

Determines the coverage footprint of cells and identifies overshoot against coverage design boundaries.

Missing Neighbors Analysis (3G-3G, 3G-2G)

Pilot Pollution Analysis (based on Scanner/Handset data)

The UMTS Issues or Important Issues side panel on the Summary Dashboard provides a link to each of the above analysis. Click on a link to go to the corresponding radio network analysis section, or click on Radio Network Explorer to go to the corresponding radio network analysis section.

Click on Radio Network Explorer on the top panel to go to the Radio Network dashboard page.

Click on a link to go to the corresponding Radio Network analysis section.

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Cell Coverage Analyses

The Cell Coverage Analyses allow you to determine coverage for the cells in their networks. You can use this analysis to:

Determine the coverage footprint for each cell. Visualize where a cell is the best server.

Visualize where cells are overshooting their coverage design boundary (defined by SL_Overspill_Dist_Threshold).

These analyses are available for both scanner and handset data. The following analyses are available as part of the cell coverage analyses:

Cell Footprint Analysis

This analysis allows you to determine the coverage footprint for each cell.

Best Server Analysis

You can quickly visualize where a cell is the best server by selecting a cell.

Cell Overspill Analysis

Visually determine where cells are overshooting their coverage design boundary (configurable).

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Radio Network Explorer Interface

The Radio Network Explorer interface consists of the following components:

Top Panel

Summary information is displayed in the top panel. When no rows are selected, overview information is displayed in the side panel. The top panel includes the following tabular form information on the sites:

Scanner

o EcNo, RSCP (Max, Min, Av)

o > Beam – Percentage of points outside the cell beamwidth o > 180 Beam – Percentage of points outside the 180 Beamwidth Handset

o EcNo, RSCP (Max, Min, Av)

o Link Diff. – This is the diference between UL and DL pathloss and is used to highlight cell with possible LNA (TMA) issues. That is if the difference is greater the 8dB

o Downlink Interference factor o Percenatge of coverage issues

• System interference • Limited coverage • Poor UL & DL

Note: Clicking on a row in this table causes the side panel to display

more information about the site. The map zooms to the site and displays the site’s coverage.

Map

When a row is clicked in the top panel or a site is clicked on the map, the map shows the coverage wedge for the selected cell, EcIo and RSCP. The red circle represents the user-configured coverage design boundary, and data points outside this circle represent overspill.

Side Panel

This displays various KPI values for the site selected and a histogram of the distances at which the cell was measured.

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The page operates in two modes: Best Server and Where Seen. Changing the mode affects the EcIo attribute that is displayed on the map. In Best Server mode, the EcIo when the selected cell was the best server is displayed. In

Where Seen mode, the EcIo whenever the cell was measured is displayed. Note: In the where seen mode, the coverage footprint for only the cells that

were best servers in the drive can be visualized.

Sort all information by clicking on the headings of the top panel’s table.

Cell Coverage This details panel displays various KPI values for the site selected and a histogram of the distances at which the cell was measured.

Best Server and Where Seen mode for handset and scanner can be selected from the Analysis drop down menu.

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Exercise: Cell Coverage Analysis Using Handset Data

The Summary Dashboard shows a Important Issue relating to Poor Coverage. Hovering over the link shows the thresholds used to identify this issue.

1. Click on the issue link to open the Cell Coverage analysis page.

2. The Issues panel showed a high percentage of System Interference issues, so examine the top table of the analysis for indications of poorly performing cells.

3. Sort by Average EcIo and color the cells by EcIo by clicking on the icon beside the column heading.

This is based on the following Thresholds:

Changing the thresholds value will only take effect after the next load of data.

Several rows have a low sample count and so are unreliable to use in this investigation. To remove rows with low sample counts, apply a filter.

Note that all samples less than 50 are not displayed after the filter is applied.

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4. Examine the map and note that there are some samples with poor EcIo, despite being very close to the problem sector.

Note that drive test data is binned according to the selections made in step 4 of defining the project template. However, any events displayed on the map (for example, by using the Events drop-down menu) will use the exact position rather than a binned position, so events might not align with the data points.

5. Are any other cells interfering to cause this situation? Experiment with plotting various Events and Attributes.

Plotting the Uu_ActiveSet_Count attribute shows that there is only one clear server, Site 0433 Sector C. This may indicate a missing neighbor or maybe not.

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6. Click on the 3G Missing Neighbor tab. Note that the map and table keep the focus on the selected cell.

Miscellaneous Navigation Concepts

When moving from a Critical Issue to an Important Issue, all diagnostic views will be unloaded, except for those opened by the user - for example: table, Message Browser, Protocol Stack Browser.

During your analysis, you may have found it necessary to move or remove the existing diagnostic views, and to open one or more new views. To get back to the original layout, select Click here to re-sync views for this investigation. Note that this will not affect any views you opened earlier.

Seems like there is no recommendation for “Addition” - there is no missing neighbor in this example.

Continue with the next Missing Neighbors exercise to find a good example of a missing neighbor.

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Example: Missing Neighbors Analysis

This analysis lets you groom neighbor lists based on scanner data for sites within a user-defined radius (Tools Æ Display Thresholds Æ Spotlight Æ

SL_Overspill_Dist_Threshold) of the cell selected. The suggestions made by

the software can be exported directly to a CSV file for easy import and updates directly to the switch.

If the cellrefs file contains neighbor information, the analysis examines the relationship between the existing neighbors and the potential neighbors as seen by the scanner, and generates add, remove and retain recommendations for each site and cell. The interface consists of the following components:

Top Panel

Summary information is displayed in the top panel. It includes in a tabular form a number of “addition”, “removal” and “retain” neighbor

recommendations for every site. Clicking on a row in this table causes neighbor information for the selected cell to be displayed in the side panel, and lines to neighbors to be drawn on the map.

Map

When a row is clicked in the top panel or a site is clicked on the map, lines to neighbors are drawn from that site. The circle represents the user-defined radius used by the analysis to identify potential neighbors. As the data point used in the analysis are displayed.

Side Panel

Details of the neighbor recommendations are displayed on the side panel. Check boxes next to a recommendation can be selected for export to a CSV file.

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Before You Begin

Before you begin, you should have collected the following:

Scanner data that relates to a single UMTS frequency that is loaded as a separate stream with a suitable matching cellrefs file. Increasingly, UMTS scanners are able to scan several frequencies (identified by the UARFCN) simultaneously.

This must have been loaded using a suitable matching CellRefs file, which must contain a field called WCDMANeighborList on the WCDMA_Cell network element.

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Using Neighbor List Analysis

1. To start this analysis, from the Summary Dashboard page, click on the

Radio Network Explorer button and click on this tab, or click on an

appropriate Important Issue in the left-hand Issues panel.

2. If you have not done so before, check the data settings that control the neighbor list analysis algorithm. These are the default settings

recommended by Actix (see Appendix B for details).

3. Sort by the Additions column in the top table to find out which site/sector has the most missing neighbors.

You can now see the sector with the highest number of recommended additions to its neighbor list.

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4. Click on the top row in the table to show information for that sector.

The map now shows green lines to each recommended additional neighbor. The thickness of each line shows how well the suggestion meets the criteria of the analysis. The circle represents the user-defined radius

(SL_Overspill_Dist_Threshold) used by the analysis to identify potential neighbors. The map also displays the data points used in the analysis.

Note that drive test data is binned according to the selections made in step 4 of defining the project template. However, any events displayed on the map (for example, by using the Events drop-down menu) will use the exact position rather than a binned position, so events might not align with the data points.

The thickness of the line indicates the higher percentage, i.e.: Site 0342 sector b1 should be retained (the line is blue) because it has been scanned of total 28.6% and it is a co-sector of sector a1.

A Green line indicates the selected sector is recommended to be added, while a red line indicates that the selected sector should be removed.

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5. Examine each suggested additional neighbor.

You may have reasons for refusing to accept the suggestion on geographical grounds (for example, existing cells between the sector and the suggested addition), or for reasons related to the data settings. If you disagree with a suggested addition, you may want to use the SC Search feature to find an alternative sector to add to the neighbor list. Note that in this case you will not be able to output your choice, and will need to make the correction to the switch manually (for example, by editing the CSV file).

6. If you accept all suggestions for a sector, you can click the related button in the table to mark your choice.

7. Repeat this process for each row in the top table, as necessary. Note that the number beside the

button changes to match your selection.

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8. You can now go through the same process for the 'Removals' column. Note that by default the map does not show lines for removal

recommendations.

9. Once you are satisfied with the recommendations that you have selected, you can output them to a CSV file. From the top of the page, click the

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Additional Features for 3G Neighbor Analysis

These are some additional features available at this interface:

View SC search feature

Visualize an SC on the map where the specified SCs will be colored red in

all the sites. This is very useful to quickly identify the Co-SC locations.

Data Settings dialog box

This opens up a dialog box for configuring the algorithm that Spotlight uses for the UMTS missing neighbor analysis, which can be used to build lists of suggested neighbor cells to add and remove. All of the options in the group take effect when you run the UMTS Missing Neighbor analysis.

Filters

The table on the top panel can be filtered by adding filters through this dialog.

Attributes drop down menu

Lets you plot on the map one or more commonly used attributes. Currently plotted attributes are shown in red in the list. The currently selected attributes will be kept as you move between Spotlight's analysis pages.

Events drop down menu

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Device

View SC

Visualize an SC on the map. Specify an SC and this feature colors red all the sites using this SC.

Filter

Key in the SC you would like to search for in the Scrambling Code field. Click on Search to search for the SC 273.

Note SC 273 is highlighted in RED in the map: Choose the device (handset or scanner)

that you would like to look at. In this example, there is only one device “All”, where everything is grouped together.

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Data Settings

(See Appendix B for details)

Export Data

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Add Filter

Attributes

Create or Add filter or filters to cut down the outcome and bring you closer to your desire result. You can also delete your filter by clicking on Remove Filter or Remove All.

To help you to understand the problem better, you can visualize more attributes by displaying them on the map. Select the attributes you would like to display on the current map from the Attributes drop down list.

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Events

You can also view different types of failure events by selecting them from the Events drop down list.

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Exercise: 3G-2G Missing Neighbors Analysis

Situations where the 3G network cannot carry a call due to interference or poor radio conditions - and the call needs to be carried out or completed in the 2G network - are typically caused by missing neighbors, which are cells that have not been defined in the neighbor list of the strongest cell at a given location, but which have an RxLevel good enough to be added to the UE’s neighbor list as a potential cell to hand over from 3G to 2G.

The analysis is a single defined process that integrates map visualization of neighbor relationships with reported recommendations.

The 3G-2G Missing Neighbors analysis uses scanner data for cells within a specified radius and compares the visible channels to the current neighbor list as given in the 2G cellrefs data. The results of the analysis are presented in a map and table.

Sort by Additions column to find out the recommendation of which missing neighbor sites/sectors should be added.

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Before You Begin

You will need to have loaded the following:

1. A UMTS scanner stream that relates to a single UMTS frequency. Increasingly, UMTS scanners are able to scan several frequencies (identified by the UARFCN) simultaneously.

2. A GSM scanner or handset stream that was logged at the same time. If a handset stream is used, it must have been logged in idle mode.

3. These must have been loaded using a suitable matching cellrefs file, which must contain a field called GSMNeighborList on the WCDMA_Cell network element.

Using Neighbor List Analysis

1. To start this analysis, from the Summary Dashboard page, click on the

Radio Network Explorer button and click on this tab, or click on an

appropriate Important Issue in the left-hand Issues panel:

2. If you have not done so before, check the data settings that control the neighbor list analysis algorithm. In this example we will be interested in the Minimum Sample Count and the Addition Threshold. If you alter a data setting, the analysis will immediately update.

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3. Sort the top table by the Additions column. You can now see the sector with the highest number of recommended additions to its neighbor list. Check that the Server Count column shows an acceptable value (you can also define a cutoff threshold using the Minimum Sample Count as shown above).

4. Click on the top row in the table to show information for that sector.

There are many additions in this example as the cellrefs file does not contain any 3G-2G neighbor definitions - therefore there are also no retentions or removals suggested.

The side panel on the left shows each recommendation for a sector individually, sorted by the % of data points that meet the recommendation algorithm. If you accept the suggestion, you can select the checkbox in the table to mark your choice.

The map now shows lines to the recommended additions. The thickness of each line shows how well the suggestion meets the criteria of the analysis. The circle represents the user-defined radius (SL_Overspill_Dist_Threshold) used by the analysis to identify potential neighbors. It also displays the data points used in the analysis Add the CPICH_Scan_EcIo_SortedBy_EcIo_0 attribute to the map.

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5. Select and examine a few suggested additional neighbors. If you accept all suggestions for a sector, you can select the related checkbox in the table to mark your choice.

Note that the number beside the button changes to match your selection. For example, there were 178 suggested additions in the first row, with none currently selected for export, the number would show 0/178.

If you clicked, read 178/178. If you do not want to select every recommendation for a sector, you can use the table in the side panel on the left. So if you selected 13 additions, this would result in that number - useful if, as in this example, there are many recommendations, and you need to keep track of how many you have already selected. If you refuse to accept the suggestion, for example because there is no 3G-2G neighbor data in the cellrefs file, the sheer number of suggested additions is 51, compared with the maximum permitted number of 32. Note that the more potential neighbors you add, the longer it will take for a handset to find appropriate neighbors, conceivably resulting in a

dropped call. You may well have an upper limit already defined by your internal guidelines.

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6. If you disagree with a suggested addition, you may want to use the View SC feature to find an alternative sector to add to the neighbor list. Note that in this case you will not be able to output your choice, and will need to make the correction to the switch manually (for example, by editing the CSV file).

7. Repeat this process for each row in the top table, as necessary.

8. You could now go through the same process for the 'Removals' column (this example contains no 'removals' suggestions). Note that by default the map does not show lines for removal recommendations.

9. Once you are satisfied with the recommendations that you have selected, you can output them to a CSV file. From the top of the page, click the

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Example: Pilot Pollution Analysis

This analysis give you the ability to quickly identify ‘inbound’ vs. ‘outbound’ pilot pollution and visually see the offending sectors on the map. You can determine the relative degree of pollution for each cell and prioritize which cells in the network are the strong candidates for down-tilts and coverage

optimization. This analysis is available for scanner as well as handset data.

Interface

The interface consists of the following components:

Top Panel

Summary information is displayed in the top panel. It includes in a tabular form the number of pilot pollution events for each site, and the total number of inbound/outbound polluters. Clicking on a row in this table causes pilot pollution information for the selected cell to be displayed in the side panel, and lines to polluters to be drawn on the map.

Map

When a row is clicked in the top panel or a site is clicked on the map, lines to inbound as well as outbound pollution are drawn from that site. All the pilot pollution events involving the site also get plotted on the map. The lines to polluters have a direction arrow suggesting inbound or outbound pollution.

Side Panel

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You can choose any of the following Analysis types:

Outbound cells are where the selected sector is polluting other sectors.

Outbound pollution lines are drawn in red from the selected sector to the sectors being polluted. The arrow on each line points from the polluting sector to the polluted sector.

The thickness of the lines indicates the degree to which pilot pollution was detected for the selected sector, based on the loaded data.

Inbound cells are where the selected sector is being polluted by other sectors.

Inbound pilot pollution lines are drawn in blue. Rolling over the lines with the cursor displays more detailed information.

All Inbound and Outbound sites and cells (sectors) of the selected sector is listed in the Cell Pilot Pollution Details panel.

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Additional Features for Pilot Pollution Analysis

These are some additional features available in this interface:

Filters

Commonly used attributes that can be selected to be plotted on the map.

Event attributes that can be selected to be plotted on the map. So for example, while looking at pilot pollution, you could dump the UMTS Dropped Call event on the map and quickly find out if the call dropped due to pilot pollution.

Analysis drop down

Select Scanner or Handset analysis.

Overview

Clicking on this link will display an overview of pilot pollution in the entire drive.

View SC

Visualize a SC on the map. Input an SC to visualize on the map, and this feature would color all the sites with this SC red. This helps in quickly identifying Co-SC locations.

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Exercise: Pilot Pollution Analysis Using Scanner Data

1. From the Summary Dashboard, click on an appropriate Important Issue in

the left-hand Issues panel, such as Too Many Servers (a pilot pollution issue). Alternatively, click on the Radio Network Explorer button and click on the Cell Pilot Pollution tab.

2. Sort by # Outbound Cells

In this example, sector 0433b1 looks like the best candidate for investigation as it has a high number of Too Many Servers events, and Outbound and Inbound Cell polluters.

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3. De-select the Inbound Cells box to hide the inbound polluting lines. The map now highlights the selected sector.

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5. On the map, to show lines to cells, drag a box around the area with a cluster of Too Many Server events by using the Area Select in the map.

There is no clear dominator in this area, and a few polluting cells are some distance away, so you would need to improve the coverage in that area.

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6. In the image below, the EcIo values have been plotted on the map to confirm the situation near the Too Many Server events.

7. To see how the selected sector is polluting other sectors, from the top table, de-select Inbound Cells and select Outbound Cells.

8. The selected sector is causing pollution at quite a distance, past much closer sectors. This confirms that the selected sector may need some downtilt to avoid causing the pollution and to increase nearby coverage. Use the Cell Coverage tab to see how best to improve the coverage for the selected sector.

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GSM Summary Dashboard

Spotlight Summary Dashboard provides you a quick 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 be displayed on the dashboard. The Summary Dashboard consists of three main components:

Repository Summary Issues panel

Map

Click on Log Files to display all information regarding the data file(s) you’ve loaded.

Click on Reports to generate your GSM Spotlight Report based on the configuration and settings you’ve defined. The report consists of some RF parameter charts and maps with important events and attributes. Click on Event Explorer to drill down to

all event-based analyses such as Dropped Calls, Call Setup Failures etc.

Click on Radio Network Explorer to investigate all Radio Network problems and perform wide area coverage-based analyses.

Map is an integral part of theSpotlight interface, showing the entire drive, with RxLev being the default attribute plotted. The cell wedges are colour coded: Green represents site that were serving during part of the drive.

GSM Issues panel lists all critical and important issues occurring in the dataset. It allows you to further investigate and drill down to issues in more detail by clicking on the link of the KPIs. The Critical issues section provides an overview of the drive in terms of failure Events. The Important Issues section includes the Radio Network analyses.

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GSM Spotlight Reports

Reports are a good place to start when attempting to identify problems in the loaded data. These can be accessed by clicking on the Reports link from Spotlight's Summary Dashboard page.

Note: A report must have been activated in the current project's template. It shows all unfiltered data in the project database for the associated technology.

Click on one of the reports in the navigation tabs, such as Report, File Overview, Overview Map, Radio and CS Domain to explore various pages of the report.

You can either click on the Save button to save the report in .htm format, or click on Show Excel Report button to export the report to Microsoft Excel format. Note that if you run the report again on different data, the map bitmaps will be updated to reflect the new data. If you subsequently reopen the workbook that was saved earlier, Excel will ask if you want to update. It is important that you choose the Don't Update option, or the maps will be updated with the data from the latest running of the report.

The Save button exports the report as a web page. Note that the web page has an associated subfolder with a unique name containing various image and other files relating to that report. However, the image files in each subfolder are always called image1.gif, image2.gif, which may cause you problems in some situations.

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Report: File Overview

Click on any of the navigation tabs, such as Report, File Overview, Overview Map, Radio and CS Domain to explore various pages of the report.

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Report: Overview Map

Maps with Measurements and Failure Events help you to visualize the problem better and create a more appealing report.

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Report: Radio

Statistics and histograms give you a quick overview of the statistics (min, max, average, etc.) and the distribution of the RxQual and RxLev analysis.

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Report: CS Domain

Call Information drills down to each call and provides call information based on your log file. Call Drops will be highlighted in Red while call setup failure will be highlighted in Orange.

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Event Explorer

The Event Explorer provides a detailed analysis of critical failure events such as Call Drops and Call Setup Failures. You could arrive at this page from the Summary Dashboard as a result of clicking on a Critical Issue or on the Event Explorer icon.

Spotlight contains the following Event Explorer pages for you to perform a wide range of analyses:

Circuit Switched o Dropped Calls o Call Setup Failures o Location Update Failures Handover Issues

o Handover Failures

o Missing Neighbors (Only available for Handset and Scanner data files, using the handset and scanner merge feature)

o Information only

% Strong NBR Diff Baud (better than the serving cell) % NBR with 5dB (within 5dB of the serving cell)

% NBR with 5dB diff Baud (within 5dB of the serving cell but different frequency)

The table in the top panel has a row for each site and lists the failure rates for that site. On the bottom side panel, there is a list of all the dropped calls occurring in the drive. If you select a check box in one of the rows, the bottom side panel will only show the events appearing for the site or sector in that row.

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Click on a KPI link to go to the corresponding event-based analysis section.

Click on Event Explorer on the top panel to go to the Event dashboard page.

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If the top table shows high values for a particular problem KPI, check the top left hand box to enable the selection boxes for each row. Then check each row with high problem KPIs. The side panel is now filtered to show the events appearing for only the selected site or sector rows.

If there are too many rows in the table, you might want to sort by the Diagnostics column to see the diagnostic types grouped alphabetically.

View and Drilldown Further

View Only You can sort by the Diagnostics column to see the diagnostic types grouped alphabetically.

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Additional Features

You can narrow down your results by choosing which analysis you want to perform, applying a filter, or displaying your selected attributes or events you would like to examine.

Add Filter

Choose a suitable KPI category that you would like to quickly look at, which reduces the clutter of KPIs in the top table.

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Attributes

Events

To help you to understand the problem better, you can visualize more attributes by displaying them on the map. Select the attributes you would like to display on the current map from the Attributes drop down list.

You can also view different types of failure events by selecting them from the Events drop down list.

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Detailed Event Diagnostics

The Detailed Event Diagnostics section provides diagnosis for the failure event. It consists of the following sections:

Causes

Possible causes for the call drop. See Appendix E for more information on how the diagnostic information is derived.

Further Explanation

Details on the causes for the call drop

Further Analysis

Suggestions on how to proceed with further analysis

Measurement Information RF measurements around the event In this example, the cause of the dropped call is due to Poor Coverage. Further investigate the problem by drilling down to a selected sector(s).

Check on the Drill Down checkbox of the event that you would like to drill down to.

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Drilldown

Up till this stage, the analysis has been generated from the database. If you would like to drill down further to message level, click on Begin Drilldown to drilldown further.

5. Check on Load entire file if you would like to Load the whole file. Note that this will take longer time.

6. Key in the desire time in seconds for Before and After box.

7. Check on Load All Devices if you have collected handset and scanner data together, and would like to load all the devices combined.

8. Click on Begin Drilldown to extract detail information (up to message level) from the repository (database) File-based drilldown:

Load the entire file containing the event and analyze further.

Time Window drilldown:

Specify a time window before and after the event and Actix software will only load data for that window (fastest loading and best time performance)

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Exercise: Drop Call Analysis

In this exercise, we will analyze a call drop where the dropped call event will appear on the map. The cell wedges are colour coded to represent dropped call numbers. The side panel lists all the critical events occurring in the drive.

We’ll first look at the diagnostics panel on the left or table in the top panel where it has a row for each site and lists the failure rates for that site. Note that the table shows a set of KPIs that correspond to the current Category to prevent the table from becoming cluttered by only showing a small set of related KPIs at the same time. Investigate this drop call. Confirm if it is due to poor coverage and see you can find more information.

Poor RxLev and poor Quality when call dropped is shown on GSM Line Chart State Form. The chart also shows the RxLev, Rx Qual and UE TxPower

Handover Failure right before the call dropped is shown on GSM

Troubleshooter Navigatior

State Form. It shows the event and serving BCCH.

Stronger neighbour not selected for handover

Protocol Stack Browser provides detail messaging around the event. Note that there was a Handover Failure before the drop. This view (screen layout) provides most of

the information needed to diagnose a dropped call. It can be modified by saving a

new screen layout. _{Comment [sf8]: This set of views}

displayed (Screen Layout) can be modified by the user by saving new screen layout.

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Radio Network Analyses

Spotlight contains the following Radio Network Analysis:

Coverage and Overspill Analysis (based on Handset and Scanner data)

Allows you to perform wide area coverage-based analyses in GSM; it determines the coverage footprint of cells and identifies overshoot against coverage design boundaries. The GSM Issues or Important Issues side panel on the Summary Dashboard provides a link to this analysis.

Alternatively, click on Radio Network Explorer.

Click on a link to go to the corresponding Radio Network analysis section.

Click on Radio Network Explorer on the top panel to go to the Radio Network dashboard page.

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Cell Coverage Analysis

The Cell Coverage Analysis allow you to determine coverage for the cells in their networks. Using either scanner or handset data, you can use this analysis to:

Determine the coverage footprint for each cell. Visualize where a cell is the best server.

Visualize where cells are overshooting their coverage design boundary (defined by SC_Overspill_Dist_threshold).

Visualize the neighbor, BCCH and TCH plans.

The following analyses are available as part of the cell coverage analyses:

Cell Footprint Analysis

This analysis allows you to determine the coverage footprint for each cell

Best Server Analysis

You can quickly visualize where a cell is the best server by selecting a cell

Cell Overspill Analysis

Visually determine where cells are overshooting their coverage design boundary (configurable)

GSM Cell Visualization

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Radio Network Explorer Interface

This consists of the following components:

Top Panel

Summary information is displayed in the top panel. When no rows are selected overview information is displayed in the side panel. It includes in tabular form information on the sites, containing the following information:

o BCCH

o # - Number of samples. Ensure that you are looking at a statistically sensible number of samples.

o > Dist. - Number of samples greater than the coverage design boundary (defined by SL_Overspill_Dist_Threshold).

o RxQual, RxLev, (Av, Max, Min). Note that clicking on the icon only displays the Average value.

o % > Beam – Percentage of points outside the cell beamwidth.

o % >180 Beam – Percentage of points outside a hypothetical beamwidth of 180 degrees.

o Link Diff – This is the difference between UL and DL pathloss and is used to highlight cell with possible LNA (TMA) issues, if the difference is greater the 8 dB, where:

UL = UE Tx Power - BTS Sensitivity + BTS Antenna Gain DL = BTS EIRP - RxLevSub

o Poor Ql % and Poor Lv % combined with No Dom % (see Coverage Criteria in page 87 for details).

Note: Click on a row in this table causes the side panel to display more

information about the site and the map zooms to the site and displays its coverage.

Map

When a row is clicked in the top panel or a site is clicked on the map, the map shows the coverage wedge for the selected cell, RxLev (& RxQual for

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best server only). The red circle represents the user-configured coverage design boundary, and data points outside this circle represent overspill.

Side Panel

This displays various KPI values for the site selected and a histogram of the distances at which the cell was measured (on the Distance tab). The page operates in two modes: Best Server and Where Seen. Changing the mode affects the RxLev attribute that is displayed on the map. In Best Server mode the RxLev when the selected cell was the best server is displayed (note that in this mode, RxQual can be seen). In Where Seen mode, the RxLev whenever the cell was measured is displayed.

Note: In the where seen mode, coverage footprint for only the cells that were

best servers in the drive can be visualized.

Sort all information by clicking on the headings of the top panel’s table

In this example, the Quality tab of the side panel shows a high percentage of Poor RxQual at the same time as Good RxLev, which usually indicates interference.

Best Server and Where Seen mode can be selected from the Analysis drop down menu.

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Additional Features

These are some additional features available at this interface:

Filters

Select one or more commonly used attributes to plot on the map

Select one or more events to plot on the map

Analysis drop down menu

Select handset (Best Server or Where Seen)

Show Overview

Clicking on this link will display an overview of Grade of Service for the entire drive.

Device

Analysis

Choose the device (handset or scanner) that you would like to look at. In this example, there is only one device “All”, where everything is grouped together.

Where Seen is where the map will show a different footprint of the sector, where it was detected anywhere during the drive, not just the strongest signal. Note: The coverage footprint for only the cells that were best servers in the drive can be visualized.

Best Server is by selecting the row will select the cell on the map will show the areas on the map where the selected cell has been detected as the strongest cell.

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Add Filter

Attributes

To help you understand the problem better, you can visualize more attributes by displaying them on the map. Select the attributes you would like to display on the current map from the Attributes drop down list.

Actix Spotlight Training Manual

Spotlight Training Course

UMTS and GSM

Contents

Aims of the course

Solving common network problems with

Spotlight

Actix Spotlight Features

Radio Network Analyses

Event-based troubleshooting

Reporting

What’s in Spotlight?

New Project and Template Creation

Creating New Project Template

New Project Creation (using a pre-defined template):

Step 1: Name and Template

Step 2: Preferences and Thresholds

Step 3: Choose Data

Exercise: New Template Configuration

Step 1: Choose Name and Starting Template

Step 2: Choose Devices

Step 3: Choose KPIs and Reports

Step 4: Choose Attributes

UMTS Summary Dashboard

UMTS Spotlight Reports

Report: File Overview

Report: Overview Map

Report: Radio

Report: CS Domain or PS Domain

Event Explorer

Additional Features

Category

Add Filter

Attributes

Events

Detailed Event Diagnostics

Drilldown

Exercise: Drop Call Analysis

Radio Network Analyses

Cell Coverage Analyses

Radio Network Explorer Interface

Exercise: Cell Coverage Analysis Using Handset Data

Miscellaneous Navigation Concepts

Example: Missing Neighbors Analysis

Before You Begin

Using Neighbor List Analysis

Additional Features for 3G Neighbor Analysis

Device

View SC

Filter

Data Settings

Export Data

Add Filter

Attributes

Events

Exercise: 3G-2G Missing Neighbors Analysis

Before You Begin

Using Neighbor List Analysis

Example: Pilot Pollution Analysis

Interface

Additional Features for Pilot Pollution Analysis

Exercise: Pilot Pollution Analysis Using Scanner Data

GSM Summary Dashboard

GSM Spotlight Reports

Report: File Overview

Report: Overview Map

Report: Radio

Report: CS Domain

Event Explorer

Additional Features

Category

Add Filter

Attributes

Events

Detailed Event Diagnostics

Drilldown

Exercise: Drop Call Analysis

Radio Network Analyses

Cell Coverage Analysis

Radio Network Explorer Interface