CONGESTION CONTROL IN GSM NETWORK

 

CONGESTION CONTROL IN GSM NETWORK

 

ABSTRACT

 

GSM traffic congestion has always been a major issue and difficulty in Nigeria for both service providers and users. This work is heavily concerned with traffic control congestion and management in mobile wireless communications, with the goal of ensuring customer satisfaction by providing very precise and reliable throughput whenever a wireless network is used. Increase the dependability and error-free data transfer in mobile communication as well, to enable simultaneous access to users without interference or congestion. The research was developed by investigating the use of Etisalat and critically analyzing the call data that was collected during a busy hour for a week, and these data are used to describe a model to estimate the maximum number of calls a channel can handle concurrently based on the number of Etisalat’s channels. The information is utilized to calculate the overall load per call setup attempt, the effective load or successful call setup (times), available channels or successful TCH assignments, and the blocking rate or TCH congestion ratio (%). This was accomplished through the use of the correlated analysis hypothesis. In this experiment, it was observed that many available channels are being underutilized, particularly in locations with low blocking ratios, where the available channels surpassed the required channels for transmitting the effective load. As a result, extra channels that have been underutilized should be converted to other cells that may be facing congestion in order to reduce impulsive congestion in the majority of these cells. This would help to alleviate traffic congestion and save a lot of money that would otherwise be squandered on purchasing new cells or more channels for effective transmission on congested cells. Because of its powerful features with the Visual Studio 2012 development environment, the Microsoft Visual BASIC programming language was employed.

 

 

CHAPITRE ONE

 

1.0 BEGINNING

 

Since its beginning in 2001, wireless technology has had a significant impact on the globalization of the Nigerian economy. However, the significant growth in subscriptions has presented some issues to operators in terms of how to deal with the recurring congestion in mobile wireless communication posed in their services, causing many frustrations to customers. Because its purpose is to deliver high-quality services to end users (subscribers) in terms of speech, worldwide roaming, and lower prices. GSM has advanced and now has more subscribers than analog systems(6). According to our study, there are well over 9 million GSM subscribers in Nigeria competing for access virtually at the same time, making the country one of the fastest growing GSM markets in Africa and the globe at large(9). It is also stated that the Nigerian telecommunications sector expects to achieve a tele density of 100% by 2020, which would be driven by huge advances in telephone and mobile communication, necessitating a significant rise in information and communication technology (ICT).

 

MTN, AIRTEL, GLOMOBILE, ETISALAT, and MTEL are the five largest Global System for Mobile (GSM) telecommunications operators in Nigeria, which has a population density of over 170 million people. But among the many operators MTN has the most patronage with over 57.2 million users although the rivalry is getting tighter as the day goes by as operates have to compete for the same potential consumers.(1,9). In the years since the beginning of the GSM era in Nigeria, the emphasis has shifted from providing coverage to providing excellent service, and the joy of owning a phone set has gradually given place to complaints of dropped calls and congestion among customers.

 

As a result, congestion simply refers to a state of being congested, overloaded, or jammed due to a high volume of traffic. This happens when too many subscribers compete for or seek to utilize the same resources at nearly the same time, resulting in poor throughput, slow speed, and a weak network among mobile wireless communication. Congestion occurs when too many packets are present in or on a subnet, resulting in performance degradation; that is, when too much traffic is supplied. This happens when the incoming packets from the source node are too many for the router to manage, resulting in streams of packets arriving on three or four input lines and sharing the same output line(6). When this happens, a queue forms, generating congestion, and if there is insufficient memory to keep the stream of packets, it will eventually result in the loss of some packets during transmission. Congestion can also occur in a network when a large number of subscribers compete for access at the same time, causing the input traffic rate to surpass the capacity of the output line; when routers have an infinite amount of memory, congestion worsens(9). Congestion control, on the other hand, is the control of traffic entering a telecommunications network in order to avoid congestive collapse. A system is said to be congested if it is receiving more traffic than its rated capacity due to an excessive number of active customers. System maintenance and repair actions might generate system congestion, but whatever the reason of the overload, it will manifest as a depletion of resources necessary to the system’s operation. Congestion control differs from flow control in that congestion is a global issue including all hosts, routers, and the store-and-forward processing within the routers, whereas flow control relates to point-to-point traffic between a specific sender and a given receiver.

 

Traffic is the utilization of specified resources such as radio channels; for example, when a user makes a phone call, the channel is seized for communication, resulting in traffic generation. As a result, traffic is proportional to the Average Call Duration (6).

 

When the transmission of data increases, network congestion can occur, resulting in a drop in throughput. It can also occur as a result of transferring more data than the network components can handle, leading the buffers on the network elements to fill and possibly overflow(12). While traffic congestion is a situation that happens on GSM networks as demand increases and is characterized by reduced speeds, longer journey times, and queuing. This occurs along multiple channels within the network architecture when the common, dedicated, traffic, and pulse code modulation (PCM) channels are not available for assignment to the incoming or outgoing service request. In conclusion, when backbone links fail, it indicates that the available links have been overutilized (12). GSM is a cellular network that connects mobile phones to search for cells in the near vicinity and operates on four different frequencies. A network has five cell sizes: macro, micro, Pico, femto, and umbrella cells, with coverage areas altering depending on the implementation environment. Macro cells are those in which the base station antenna is mounted on a tower or a building above the average roof top level, whereas micro cells are those in which the antenna height is below the normal roof top level and are frequently utilized in urban areas (12). As a result, the goal was to try to minimize and manage the effects of congestion on mobile wireless communication (GSM) by critically reviewing and analyzing the GSM network architecture, its mode of operation, and the causes of traffic congestion in order to provide an optimal preventive and control measure that will reduce the rate of congestion while also improving the throughput of calls made. This will improve the service quality supplied to subscribers.

 

1.1 THE STUDY’S BACKGROUND

 

The cellular telephone, sometimes known as the cell phone, is the current telephone technological trend. A cellular phone is designed to give the user as much flexibility of movement as possible.

 

As a result, the density of cellular phones is rapidly increasing. Other reasons contributing to this increase include lower service costs and an ever-expanding choice of services offered through cell phones. With the advent of the Advanced Cellular System in the United States of America, the cellular system began.

 

Lee (2006) describes the 1983 Mobile Phone Service (AMPS) technology. Asia, Latin America, and Oceania countries approved the AMPs standard, providing the world’s greatest potential cellular market (Mehrotra, 1997).

 

The GSM communication revolution in Nigeria began in August 2001, ushering in a significant shift in the face of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) (Adegoke et al., 2000).

 

Most mobile telephone systems were built on electronics technology in the early 1980s. Some of the issues that analog systems face include their inability to meet expanding bandwidth demands in a cost-effective manner because analog transceivers can only handle one call at a time. with addition, certain facilities and services are not possible with the analog system. Digital technology, on the other hand, was embraced. The benefits of digital systems over analog systems include ease of signaling, lower levels of interference, integration of transmission and switching, and improved capacity capacity. As the number of customers expanded, the limitations of the analog system became obvious. This resulted in the digital system. GSM is a more modern system than analog and uses digital data to accommodate more subscribers. This technology far exceeded expectations in terms of subscriber growth.

 

The GSM mobile phone provides high-quality voice communications with low bandwidth, a data link for fax and SMS, and a complete dialup access to the internet for e-mail and web browsing. As a result, the emergence of mobile computers, intelligent handsets, personal digital assistants (PDA) computers, or intelligent handsets is felt. The necessity for mobile computing arose from the desire to access information anywhere and at any time. The disadvantage of this technique is that it wastes radio resources.

 

The growing use of mobile phones and ancillary devices for data communication has increased the demand for a quick, dependable, and accessible infrastructure. Mobile communications currently exhibits a wide range of services such as e-payment, e-government, e-health, and so on. Mobile terminals are now becoming computer embedded systems with strict real time requirements for signaling and voice processing (Sconres,1997), necessitating a slew of technical hurdles in their design and implementation.

 

1.2 STUDY GOAL AND OBJECTIVE

 

The primary goal of this project effort is to create a congestion control system model for the Etisalat Communication network. Other goals of this research project include:

 

To assess the essential research related to network congestion.

 

Highlight all available network congestion control methods – Etisalat Nigeria

 

Implement a hybrid approach to control congestion in the Etisalat communication network.

 

To investigate the impact of Etisalat network congestion on the expansion of the communication network.

 

1.3 QUESTIONS FOR RESEARCH

 

The research questions will be customized to the study’s objective, so that if they are answered, one will clearly understand why congestion control inside the GSM network is required in the management of the Etisalat network and its expansion. The following are the questions:

 

What are the current difficulties that are causing congestion in network communication coverage?

 

How effective is the current congestion control system’s model architecture?

 

Do you have an Etisalat SIM card that you may use to communicate?

 

If you do, how do you use or prefer the network over the other accessible networks?

 

Why do you utilize or avoid the network?

 

1.4 HYPOTHESIS OF RESEARCH

 

This is the instrument for testing the subject’s reliability by comparing the two variables – congestion control (independent variable) and Congestion (dependent variable). The hypotheses are as follows:

 

H0- There is a substantial association between network congestion and Etisalat network growth management.

 

H1- There is no substantial association between network congestion and Etisalat network growth management.

 

1.5 THE STUDY’S IMPORTANCE

 

This research will assist us understand the current state of Etisalat GSM network congestion control in Nigeria, as well as areas that need to be addressed for improved performance. This research will help Nigerian telecommunications businesses (namely Etisalat) attain high performance and profit. This research is also relevant in other ways, such as:

 

Use Inter-switch to route calls to the appropriate destination without delay, distortion, or diversion.

 

Determine the calling and receiving networks and use this information to calculate interconnection tariffs.

 

All GSM communication companies must keep a database of all registered GSM lines.

 

1.6 STUDY SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS

 

This study looks at the network connection and traffic control of the Etisalat network in Nigeria. The solution addresses all types of network congestion, including phone calls, data connections, SMS, Push SMS, and video calls across the network. Call identification, recording, and network connection are all included.

 

The following are some of the restrictions encountered throughout the design of this project:

 

• Financial Constraints: The design was realized, but only after substantial financial investment. The computer time has to be purchased. The typing and planning of the task also have cost implications. However, in order to remedy the problems, I sought funds from guardians and relatives.

 

• Excellent programming technique: The programming part of this project presented a number of difficult bugs that took me several days to resolve. ADO, DAO, and Jet Engine run time problems are examples of such issues. For example, the Microsoft Access office 2000 edition does not support VB-6. Unless changed to a lower version of Microsoft Access 1997 edition (i.e. version 2.0). Other technological issues requiring semantic and syntactic methods were also discovered. In order to solve these challenges, I gathered more information from well-known textbooks and programs.

 

• It is impossible to ignore the epileptic nature of power supply.

 

1.7 TERM DEFINITION

 

Inter-switch Link (ISL) is a trunking mechanism created by Cisco for Ethernet and Token Ring trunk connections.

 

Congestion is the overpopulation of a route, which results in slow and inefficient flow. It is a situation in computing in which the amount of information to be communicated exceeds the capacity of the data connection path.

 

Air interface: The radio transmission link between the base station and the mobile terminal in a mobile phone network.

 

Asymmetric transmission refers to data transmissions in which traffic from the network to the subscriber is faster than traffic from the subscriber to the network.

 

Subscriber Identity Module (SIM): A smart card carrying the subscriber’s phone number, encoded network identifying details, the PIN, and other user data such as the phone book. A user’s SIM card can be transferred from phone to phone because it carries all of the necessary information to activate the phone.

 

Telecommunications devices and systems send electrical or optical signals over large distances. Telecommunication allows individuals all around the world to interact with one another, access information instantaneously, and communicate from remote locations.

 

A computer network is a system that uses a communication link to connect two or more computers.

 

1.8 THE METHODOLOGY

 

The SSADM method was also employed with the Image culture of everyday activities, which was monitored and recorded using the DDCM monitoring and recording system from key books. This study also employed an analytical method, which is recommended as the best control measure for GSM congestion. This research has enabled several of the key performance metrics to meet the International Telecommunication Union’s suggested benchmark.

 

 

1.9 RESOURCES

 

[1] Ajala. A Nigerian case study of “GIS and GSM Network Quality Monitoring.” 2005, MTN Nigeria Communications Limited

 

[2] Bartomiej et al. “Performance Evaluation of Scalable Congestion Control Schemes for Elastic Traffic in Cellular Networks with Power Control”, INIRA, France, 2006.

 

[3] Chen,y. L.G. Cuthbert & Co. “Joint Performance of Cell Selection/Reselection and Soft Handover in the Downlink Direction of 3G WCDMA Systems,” 4th International Conference on 3G Mobile Communication Technologies, London (conf. publ. No. 494). 227-231, United Kingdom, 2003.

 

[4] Fatima de Lima, P. D. Antonia, A.F. Loureiro, Leonard B. E. O. Claudio Marcio de Souza, V.” GPRS Systems Performance Analysis, International Telecommunications Symposium (ITS)”, Natal, Brazil, 2002.

 

[5] Gunnar, H., “GSM Networks: Protocols, Terminology, and Implementation,” Artech House mobile communication library, ISBN 0-89006-471-7, Boston, London, 1998.

 

[6] B. M. Kuboye, B. K. Alese, and O. Fajuyibe. “Development of Models for Managing Network Congestion on Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) in Nigeria,” Journal of Wireless Networking and Communications, 2011, 1(1), p 8-15.

 

McLean, Virginia, “The Telecommunications Review”, 1997.

 

[8] Misha, R. “Advanced Cellular Network Planning and Optimization, 2G/2.5G/3G…Evolution to 4G,” John Wiley & Sons Limited, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex PO198SQ, England, 2004.