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Empirix RAN VisionA real-time, network-wide analytics solution to monitor, troubleshoot and optimize the Radio Access Network

It has been estimated that about 80% of all problems experienced by subscribers on a mobile network are due to issues with the radio interface. These issues can have a critical impact, including lack of service, dropped calls, and slow data download speeds. The implications of these problems can be far reaching for the operator, and in many cases translate into a direct loss of revenue due to increased churn rates, increased costs for customer care and longer times to find and resolve problems.

GAIN REAL-TIME INSIGHT TO THE RADIO ACCESS NETWORK WITH EMPIRIX RAN VISIONEmpirix RAN Vision is an intuitive, real-time, network-wide application that allows prompt detection of problems in both 3G and 4G radio environments as well as ac-curate diagnosis of their root cause. It combines intelligent workflows with in-depth analysis to provide real-time key performance indicators (KPIs) with alarms to allow an operator to optimize the network.

When RAN Vision is deployed network-wide, it dramatically reduces the need for drive testing. RAN Vision also reduces radio engineers’ workload by decreasing the time required to solve problems from hours to minutes. With RAN Vision, every subscriber call or session in 3G and 4G radio environments can be rapidly analyzed to identify issues. RAN Vision allows a complete end-to-end view of the network from the RAN to the core, and streamlines the operational workflows with this single solution across all technology domains.

Benefits

uu Easily identify under-performing

cells

uu Allow radio engineers to focus on

problem resolution

uu Identify subscribers affected by

dropped calls and data sessions

failures

uu Understand where high value

roamers are being lost from the

network

uu Identify which handsets are

impacting network performance

and customer experience

uu Understand, in real-time, the impact

of changes to the radio network

uu Reduce the time to investigate

issues with intuitive root cause

identification

uu Reduce costs by dramatically

reducing the need for drive testing

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MONITORING POINTS AND PROBE DEPLOYMENTThe Empirix RAN Vision solution is fully modular; thus, it can be deployed only where required.

An example of this is shown in the diagrams below, which illustrate the probe moni-toring points as red dots to monitor 3G and/or LTE Access Networks in the top and bottom illustrations, respectively:

FEATURESSession Trace and Subscriber Analytics

Troubleshooting for Tier-2 customer support is a primary RAN Vision value-add.

Empirix RAN Vision enables a service provider to automatically generate a set of pre-defined KPIs, then extract and correlate all of the protocol procedures related to a single subscriber, pinpointed through a specific identifier. This powerful capability,

Solution Components

uu E-XMS Probe System

– Capture live traffic on multiple 10/40 GbE interfaces

uu RAN Vision

– Web-based GUI

– Data collection and aggregation from a probe system

– End-to-end monitoring with networkwide views

– In-context troubleshooting, drill down and event ladders

– In-depth views at single subscriber granularity

– Pre-defined reports

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called Subscriber View, is capable of automatically showing the message sequences across the various interfaces via call ladder diagrams. The integrated protocol analyzer can also show the detailed content of each packet.

Radio Analysis

Analyze, optimize and troubleshoot radio performance as it relates to signal coverage, interference, pilot pollution, domi-nance, and overshooting cells.

Network Performance

Obtain deep insights about RRC & RAB procedures, UE state changes, soft/softer handovers (3G) and inter-frequency hando-vers grouped by network elements.

Roaming Analysis

Troubleshoot and analyze roaming activity and Quality of Experi-ence for roamers. Understand where roamers join the network and more importantly, where they are lost from the network.

This capability provides visibility regarding home networks and rank cells by roaming activity.

Handset Analysis

Analyze handset performance by dropped calls, call setup, radio analysis, call release, L3 analysis and release causes.

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APPLICATIONS AND USERSNetwork Operations: Tier 2 and Tier 3 Support

Empirix RAN Vision is the ideal solution to enable network operations personnel to quickly react to subscriber’s complaints that cannot be resolved by Tier 1 Support (a.k.a. Customer Care). RAN Vision’s troubleshooting capabilities are especially useful for multi-leg, multi-protocol call flows in the Radio Access Network. Robust correlation options allow operators to see end-to-end call flows to quickly diagnose problems that may be caused by one too many network elements involved in a voice or data session call.

Radio Quality and Network Planning: Cell Performance

Empirix RAN Vision provides the requisite flexibility for the radio quality department to easily generate reports periodically regarding the status of each cell in the access network in order to identify areas affected by radio signal issues.

This information is also useful to network planning teams who need to prioritize investments in order to upgrade overloaded areas or to management that need to have visibility into the network Quality of Service over time.

Network Engineering: Handset and Node Performance

Empirix RAN Vision provides Quality of Service reports grouped by handset type that can be used to evaluate the impact of new devices being introduced into the network.

Reports grouped by single network elements (such as RNC, eNodeB and cell) are also provided to validate their performance over time and respective Quality of Service delivered.

KEY BENEFITSDecrease Mean-Time-To-Repair (MTTR)

Empirix RAN Vision’s advanced troubleshooting and diagnostics features dramatically reduce the amount of time that network operations personnel need to spend investigating complex issues resulting from subscriber complaints in order to identify root causes of problems.

Proactively Enhance the Customer Experience

Customer Experience is vastly improved by using Empirix RAN Vision to detect issues related to the radio signals before they impact subscribers. This will also increase service availability and, more importantly for mobile data, it will improve service perfor-mance—which is the real way subscribers compare mobile operators.

Reduce Operational Costs and Optimize Technical Resources

Empirix RAN Vision fully meets the needs of technical departments looking to reduce operational costs and optimize resource time spent to keep the mobile service up and running.

For example, personnel responsible for Radio Access Network nodes require flexible reports that cover the service accessibility, retain-ability and performance provided by each network entity involved in provisioning a service. RAN Vision helps to monitor and maintain the performance of all nodes involved in the entire service chain in order to meet the mandated levels.

SUPPORTED INTERFACESThe list below shows the interfaces supported by the Empirix RAN Vision solution.

3G Access Network:uu Iubuu IuCSuu IuPS

LTE Access Network:uu X2uu S1-C

SA:B

R:E

RV:0216