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AMR Full Rate - Possible effect the customer may experience 1 Valid System Release
This document is valid for the following BSC system release R10 and R11

AMR FR Feature
The AMR FR feature makes it possible to offer an enhanced speech quality for AMR capable mobiles in a network. The enhanced speech quality also provides better coverage at the edges of the cell, thus making it possible to increase the coverage area with fair speech quality. AMR also tolerates more interference than the EFR speech codec. This enables higher traffic load, which leads to higher capacity. In mixed AMR/EFR networks the disconnection criteria (RLINK timer) setting greatly influences the MoU/Drop. It has been observed that when it is set to 20 (which is optimum for EFR), the MoU/Drop decreases in mixed AMR/EFR network. One cause for this decrease is that the AMR subscriber behaviour is different to the EFR subscriber behaviour. Increasing the RLINK value will affect both the EFR and AMR subscribers, so the AMR penetration has to be taken into account when considering an increase in the parameter. Due to the more robustness of the AMR codecs, the subscriber behaviour will change in areas with poor C/I conditions.

KPI: Call minutes per drop (MoU / Drop)

The KPI MoU/Drop is a good measurement to keep track of the performance of a BSC node, and to detect abnormalities in it. The KPI will be impacted by the activation of AMR, as the feature introduces a modification in the network that has an impact on a portion of the existing subscribers (the ones with an AMR phone). The AMR activation will change: The coverage for AMR users

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The calling habits for AMR users

Both changes will have an impact in the two measurements used to calculate the MOU/Drop (amount of traffic and dropped calls). The magnitude of the impact on the KPI will be determined by the following factors: The AMR penetration (amount of AMR users) The amount of areas with poor C/I conditions The amount of traffic in the areas with poor C/I conditions

Out of the three factors only the first one can be precisely measured, although it will dynamically change. This is the reason why the AMR impact on the KPI is difficult to predict. A comparison of the MOU/Drop change between different regions, during activation of AMR, will be invalid, as the magnitude of the factors impacting the KPI will rarely be the same among the different regions. The introduction of AMR is modifying the existing network, by improving the speech quality for the users with AMR phones. After activation of AMR a new baseline for the MOU/Drop should be set for each node.

3.1

Improvement of Radio Conditions

The decrease in MoU/Drop is generated by the fact that the subscriber perceives a fair speech quality, but will pass the limit for the signalling channel (SACCH). By this the Network (BSC) will experience a loss of measurement reports, and due to this disconnect (drop) the call. A change of the radio environment to improve the Radio conditions at some particular spots should decrease the affect on the MoU/Drop when activating AMR.

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Speech Quality of EFR and AMR-FR

C/I RxQual
EFR FER EFR Quality

16 dB

13 dB

10 dB

7 dB

4 dB

1 dB

3
0.8%<BER<1.6%

4
1.6%<BER<3.2%

5
3.2%<BER<6.4%

6
6.4%<BER<12.8%

7
BER>12.8%

1%

3%

20%

Excellent

Good

Fair

Poor to Bad

AMR12.2 FER AMR12.2 Quality FR-AMR5.9 FER FR-AMR5.9 Quality FR-AMR4.75 FER FR-AMR4.75 Quality FR-AMR (LA) Quality

1%

3%

20%

Excellent Good

Good

Fair
1%

Poor to Bad
3%

Fair

Poor to Bad
1% 3%

Fair Excellent Good Fair

Poor to Bad Poor to Bad

Assumption: TU3 IFH is Typical Excellent Quality: MOS > 3.9 Good Quality: MOS > 3.5 Fair Quality: MOS > 3.2

AMR Tutorial Rev A Speech Quality of EFR and AMR-FR

15 Commercial in Confidence Speech Quality of EFR and AMR-FR

Instead of the subscriber disconnecting the call due to experiencing poor speech quality, the subscriber will maintain the call and disconnect abnormally (drop) at the expiration of the RLINK timer due to a failure in the signalling link. This signalling link has the same error protection for both EFR/AMR and is not protected by the AMR speech coding.

Acceptable quality

Subscribers may due to bad speech quality hang up.

AMR-HR FR EFR

-> 12-13 dB -> 12-13 dB -> 9-10 dB -> 5-6 dB -> 3-4 dB

Same signalling for all speech codec's

Signalling (Independent of AMR) AMR-FR

AMR-FR is more robust than signalling. Acceptable quality at drop

DROP

Good radio Environment

Bad radio Environment

Drop if too long on the right side of this point due to lost signalling

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EFR & AMR-FR will drop at the same location

Areas with bad radio environment quality, e.g. indoor areas (parking, elevator), radio shadow.

AMR-FR mobile FR mobile

DROP

Two mobiles (one EFR and one AMR FR) moving into a bad radio environment side by side will theoretically drop at the same location. Hard to test in network as the mobiles will have slight different conditions. Lab required.

Different user behavior for EFR vs. AMR-FR

OP DR
d ge an up

AMR-FR mobile FR mobile

An AMR-FR user will not realize the bad radio environment and therefore either pass the area or drop. An EFR user will either try to move away from the area or hang up.

This system behaviour has been verified in Ericsson Test Plant

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By extending the disconnection criteria within the RLINK (parameters RLINKT and RLINKUP). This will allow the subscriber more time to hang up the call before dropping the call due to the expiration of the RLINK timers, or move back into an area with better C/I. Thereby having a direct influence on the MoU/Drop. AMR penetration into the network should be taken into consideration. The effect of increasing the values for the RLINK timers on the network,will be that the SACCH channels will be occupied longer. It is also expected that the number of normal disconnections and disconnections when an urgency condition existed will increase.

Abbreviations
AMR AMR-FR BSC EFR KPI MoU RLINK RLINKT RLINKUP SACCH Adaptive Multi-Rate speech Adaptive Multi-Rate (AMR) Full-rate speech Codec Base Station Controller Enhanced Full Rate speech Codec Key Performance indicator Minute of usage age Radio Link
Radio link time-out (downlink) Radio link time-out (uplink)

Slow Associated Control Channel