Practical approach to optimize

Paging Success Rate in CDMA Network

Dr.Jey Veerasamy, John Jubin, and Sanjay Kodali
Wireless System Laboratory
Samsung Telecommunications America
1301 E. Lookout Dr. Richardson, Texas 75082 USA
{j.veerasamy, j.jubin, s.kodali}@samsung.com

Abstract - Paging success rate is one of the setup for terminations and to reroute the calls to voicemail
important performance metrics used by wireless service quickly.
providers. It measures the page response acceptance
rate when the MSC/VLR believes that the mobile is in 2 DEFINITION
the coverage area and pages the mobile to find the
Most common definition of Paging Success rate is the
terminating mobile party to complete the incoming call.
percentage of valid page responses received by the system
Obviously, the page message has to reach the mobile,
divided by the # of times paging process was initiated by
and then the page response message has to reach MSC
MSC to complete the incoming termination attempts.
before the originating party gives up. Note that this
paper is not about paging algorithms, rather about
Why should the Paging Success rate be maximized?
achieving the best page response rate for any paging
1. Service provider wants to reliably deliver the
algorithm. We present all the important factors & the
incoming calls to the mobile subscribers who are
parameters that impact the paging success in this paper,
in service at that moment.
based on our experience with commercial operation of
2. Service provider wants to connect the incoming
Samsung CDMA BSS. We believe that the most details
call to the terminating party or voicemail as
are applicable to other wireless networks too.
quickly as possible. Page timeout occurs when the
paging process fails to bring in a valid page
1 BACKGROUND
response. Lengthier the paging process is, more
Locating the mobiles to terminate the incoming calls time the originator has to wait for page timeout to
successfully & quickly is one of the challenges of wireless get rerouted to voicemail.
network. Obvious complexity for the wireless network 3. Service provider uses the paging success rate to
comes from the air-interface and the mobility. Within the measure the effectiveness of the paging process.
wireless network, termination processing is more complex
than origination processing since the mobile has to be We present various factors and parameters involved in
located first & the page response should be received from improving paging success rate in CDMA networks.
the mobile as quickly as possible. Lot of work has been
done in the area of designing effective paging algorithms. 3 TIMER VALUES
References [2] [3] [4] and [5] are a few recent publications.
Mobile can be in any one of the following three areas
In this paper, we focus on the practical considerations to
at any particular instant: in coverage, out of coverage, or
get the best paging success rate, independent of any
particular paging algorithm. marginal coverage. We will cover the marginal coverage
Mobile users expect all incoming calls to be reliably case bit later. Ideally, every time a termination request
comes in, MSC should know whether the mobile is in
delivered to them as long as the mobiles show in-
coverage at that moment. If the mobile is known to be out
coverage. Also, callers would prefer the calls to be either
of coverage, MSC will not initiate the paging process.
answered quickly or rerouted to voicemail quickly.
Unfortunately, since the mobile cannot send a message to
Currently, it is possible for the paging process to take as
long as 30 seconds and to see that the incoming call being the system after it has gone out of coverage or has run out
rerouted to voicemail upon page timeout after 35 seconds of power, MSCs knowledge is not guaranteed to be
accurate. So, the MSC approximates this decision by
or so. This is significantly longer duration for reaching
following a simple rule: If it has not received any message
voicemail compared to the landline network, in which it is
from a mobile for reasonable period of time, it assumes
typically 15 seconds or so. This paper primarily focuses on
that the mobile is not reachable. Such duration or timer is
improving call delivery reliability, which is also called as
paging success rate by service providers. Our secondary called as Mobile inactivity timer, and it is typically
goal is to reduce the page response delay, to speed up call configurable in MSC.

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 So, the mobiles are required to keep informing the
system periodically that they are active & reachable.
Another timer called periodic registration timer is used for
this purpose. This timer value can be configured in BSS
and it is conveyed to mobiles as part of broadcast control
messages over the air. Since the periodic registration is
used for detecting mobiles activity, periodic registration
timer value has to be smaller than the value of mobile
inactivity timer.
Too large value for mobile inactivity timer will make
the MSC predict that a mobile is in-service even though it
has gone outside the service area. MSC will unnecessarily
page such mobiles for long duration and this will result in
lower paging success rate. Too small value for mobile
inactivity timer will force the BSS to set small periodic
registration timer value too. Mobiles will re-register very
often, and use up too much system resources including
access channel, paging channel, BSC-BTS backhaul, and
BSC-MSC A-interface, and all the processors along the
way. If this results in congestion in those elements, paging
success and system performance can be seriously
impacted. Mobiles also will experience bit more battery
drain in idle mode, since it has to send more messages.
Practically, these timer values have to be tuned based
on each networks coverage characteristics. If insignificant
% of mobiles leave coverage area and the coverage holes
(including in-building issues) are minimal, then these timer
values can be as large as several hours, and the paging
success will not be impacted significantly. However, to
avoid the unnecessary waiting time for originating parties,
it makes sense to limit the mobile inactivity timer to 2 to 4
hours or so. If a significant % of mobiles do leave the
coverage area, then the mobile inactivity timer can be set to
1 hour or so. Related question is, how small the periodic
registration timer should be, compared to the mobile
inactivity timer? It can be set a few minutes smaller to
avoid race conditions. So, if the periodic registration timer
is set to 30 minutes, it would make sense to set the mobile
inactive timer to 40 minutes.
4 BALANCING LINK BUDGETS
Link budget is a term used to indicate the maximum
distance at which reasonable quality signal can be
received and the calls can be made and received with
reasonable quality. It is good to keep the forward (BTS to
mobile direction) and reverse links (mobile to BTS
direction) to be reasonably balanced to ensure good
performance in the wireless network. Let us consider the
extremes:
- Forward link reaches lot more distance than the
reverse link, i.e. an area exists that is covered by the
forward link, but not by the reverse link. In that area,
the mobiles can get the pilot signal and decode the
IEEE Communications Society / WCNC 2005
paging channel messages, but the base station cannot
decode the mobiles messages. Users in that area will
believe that they are in coverage, but they will not
receive any calls which can be a frustrating
experience. Either the base station transmits power for
pilot and paging channels should be reduced or reverse
link sensitivity of base station should be enhanced to
balance the links.
- The reverse link reaches more distance than the
forward link, i.e. an area exists that is covered by the
reverse link, but not by the forward link. In that area,
occasionally the mobiles may manage to read the
system configuration messages from the paging
channel and send registration messages to indicate to
MSC that they are active in the network. However,
since the forward link quality is poor, the mobiles will
have trouble in decoding the most paging channel
messages. Since the mobiles cannot decode the paging
channel messages consistently, they will keep going in
and out of coverage. Additionally, since the CDMA
standard requires that the system configuration
parameters should be current in the mobile (i.e. the
mobile should have read the configuration parameters
within the past 10 minutes) before transmitting any
message in the access channel, it is unlikely that the
mobile will be able to send the registration message.
So, this imbalance case may not impact the paging
success rate compared to the previous case. However,
the sensitivity of the access channel can be tuned
down to balance the links so that the registrations will
not get into the system and impact the paging success
rate.
While it is possible to recognize & correct major link
budget differences, it is impossible to achieve the perfect
balancing of both links, since the link budgets for each
subcell vary throughout the day depending on the traffic
load. Additionally, the paging channel in each subcell is
required to broadcast the overhead control messages
periodically every 1.28 sec once. So, the mobiles will
manage to read the control parameters at some point in the
link-imbalanced areas. Similarly, the mobile retries the
access probes in increasing power levels until the
acknowledgement is received from the base station, when
sending access channel message. So, as long as the mobiles
access the system from the link-imbalanced areas (i.e.
areas with marginal coverage), paging success will be
impacted. Service providers should ensure that a
negligible % of users are present in such link-imbalanced
areas to avoid poor performance and the impact to paging
success.
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 5 PAGING CHANNEL OPTIMIZATION any paging slot, they are quite flexible w.r.t.
scheduling. However, it is important to ensure that
There are several other items related to the paging
these messages are not delayed more than 0.5 second
channel that have to be optimized to ensure that the paging
or so, to avoid noticeable delay in call setup.
messages received from MSC will go out in the paging
channel almost 100% of the time.
Goal for paging channel scheduling algorithm is simple:
send as many pages as possible, but without violating
5.1 PAGING CHANNEL SCHEDULING overhead message transmission requirement, and without
Scheduling messages into the paging channel is quite starving non-slotted messages. One improvement is to use
complex due to the varying requirements that are the best-fit algorithm for sending overhead configuration
associated with each type of messages. Inefficient messages in each slot, instead of trying to accommodate
scheduling algorithms can result in delay & loss of the overhead messages in same order in every cycle. Filed
messages during scheduling, even at very low paging data shows that this reduces the probability of violating the
channel occupancy levels. There are three types of overhead message transmission requirement, while
messages that try to get through paging channel (each everything else remains the same.
paging slot contains the messages in this order too):
1. Slotted mode messages: General page messages 5.2 GPM MESSAGE SIZE
(GPM), feature notification messages (FNM), and
There are two parameters associated with each
databurst messages (DBM) are the common slotted
paging channel message that affects the probability of its
mode messages. These messages are very restrictive
successful receipt by the mobile: the starting position and
w.r.t. scheduling, since these messages are directed at
the message size. When the message starts in a new
the idle mode mobiles that are operating in slotted
10msec half-slot (in other words, whether the
mode. Most commercial CDMA networks use slot
Synchronization Capsule Indicator (SCI bit) bit is set
cycle index of 2, which allows the mobiles to wake up
before the message), then the mobiles can synchronize and
once in every 5.12 seconds to save the battery. In other
try to read the message & error in reading previous 10msec
words, a slotted mode message directed to a particular
slots will not affect decoding of this message. Each paging
mobile has to go in one particular slot within the span
channel message has message type, length, pay-load, and
of 64 paging slots, otherwise it has to wait for 5.12
CRC. Since there is SCI bit for every 10ms half-frame
seconds more to get another chance.
boundary, paging messages can be started at the boundary
2. Overhead configuration messages: CDMA air
to ensure that they will be decoded properly. Fig. 1 shows
standards mandate that all overhead channel messages
the packed structure with and without synchronization.
have to go out in the paging channel every 1.28
However, paging channel capacity will be impacted due to
seconds once. This requirement alone takes away
the fragmentation. Also, we can limit # of page records in
~25% of the paging channel space with the paging
each GPM to bring down the message error rate. In other
channel operating at full rate (i.e. 9600 bps)
words, we can send multiple GPMs with smaller # of page
complicates the paging channel scheduling algorithm.
records, instead of one big GPM. Of course, this also
3. Non-slotted messages: Channel assignment messages
reduces the paging capacity due to the fragmentation and
(CAM/ECAM), base station acknowledgement order
the header & CRC overhead for each GPM. Table 1 shows
(BS Ack), and registration accept order are a few non-
the message error rate for short and long GPMs.
slotted messages. Since these messages can go out in
Table 1 Probability for successful decoding of GPM
# of page records in GPM: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
# of bytes in corresponding GPM: 19 29 39 49 59 69 79 89 99 109
Message success rate (BER 0.01%) 98.1% 97.3% 96.6% 95.8% 95.0% 94.3% 93.5% 92.8% 92.0% 91.3%
Message error rate (BER 0.01%) 1.9% 2.7% 3.4% 4.2% 5.0% 5.7% 6.5% 7.2% 8.0% 8.7%
Message success rate (BER 0.02%) 96.3% 94.7% 93.2% 91.8% 90.3% 88.9% 87.5% 86.1% 84.7% 83.4%
Message error rate (BER 0.03%) 3.7% 5.3% 6.8% 8.2% 9.7% 11.1% 12.5% 13.9% 15.3% 16.6%
Message success rate (BER 0.05%) 90.9% 87.4% 83.9% 80.6% 77.5% 74.4% 71.5% 68.7% 66.0% 63.4%
Message error rate (BER 0.05%) 9.1% 12.6% 16.1% 19.4% 22.5% 25.6% 28.5% 31.3% 34.0% 36.6%

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 When paging channel messages are NOT aligned with 10ms half-frames
1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

10ms half-frames start with SCI bit to indicate whether the message is aligned to SCI.

When paging channel messages are aligned with 10ms half-frames

1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0

Fig. 1. Packing messages into paging channel

available power for the traffic channels. So, it makes sense

5.3 PAGE RETRANSMISSIONS FROM BTS
Most commercial CDMA networks use the slot
cycle index of 2, and this enables the mobiles to wake up
just for 1 paging slot (i.e. 80 msec duration) in each cycle
of 5.12 seconds. So, to improve the paging success rate,
BTS can retransmit the page message in the hashed slot in
the next slot cycle. However, this will double the impact of
the paging messages on the paging channel occupancy.
Unless this mechanism is carefully implemented, non-
slotted messages may be starved or delayed too much. One
safe mechanism will be to retransmit the message only if
there is free space in the paging slot.
Note that the majority of the mobiles do receive the
first page message, and respond with the page response
right away. So, the page retransmission is not necessary in
those cases. Unfortunately, since we are considering the
retransmission from each site, valid page response receipt
by one BTS has to be informed to all other sites
immediately to avoid unnecessary re-transmission of that
page. Software complexity of propagating that information
to all sites and pulling the message from the paging
channel queue can be quite high. Also, there are enough
doubts whether repaging after 5.12 seconds is really
worth the effort since RF conditions may not change much
within that duration.
Implementing these enhancements will increase the
paging channel occupancy, which may necessitate
additional paging channel. Additional paging channel will
take away a portion of sites transmit power & reduce the
to consider other mechanisms like zone based paging,
before considering additional paging channel. Additional
paging channel will require additional channel element too.
6 ACCESS CHANNEL OCCUPANCY
Optimizing the access channel slot size will maximize
the access channel efficiency. Duration of each access
channel slot is determined by the following configuration
parameters: PAM_SZ (# of preamble frames) and
MAX_CAP_SZ (# of max. message related frames). Each
frame spans 20 msec. If the access channel sensitivity is
improved, # of frames for the preamble can be reduced.
Similarly, MAX_CAP_SZ should be set to the lowest
value that accommodates the biggest access channel
message.
Unlike additional paging channel, additional access
channel does not have the negative impact on RF resources
of the site. It simply brings down the collision probability
in the access channels. It does require additional channel
element though. Keeping the access channel collision at
reasonable level (~25%) will ensure that all page responses
do get into BSS within a reasonable time, as shown in Fig.
2. Also, less collision means that mobiles will spend less
time in access attempts and users perceived call setup
time might be reduced.

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 90.00%
80.00%
70.00%
60.00%
Probability
50.00%
40.00%
30.00%
20.00%
10.00%
0.00%
5% 10% 15% 20%
7 BSC-BTS BACKHAUL LINK CAPACITY
With the introduction of 3G packet data, managing
traffic in BSC-BTS backhaul links has become
complicated. There are at least 4 types of data that flow
through the links: packet data frames, voice frames, call
processing related control messages, and non-call
processing related messages including alarms & statistics.
Samsungs approach is to guarantee % of T1 bandwidth for
each data type. When one type of data exceeds its
allocated %, it will be carried through T1 as long as other
types of data together do not occupy their guaranteed %.
Page message is considered as part of non-call processing,
and appropriate % of T1 should be guaranteed to ensure
that the page messages are not discarded during congestion
in T1.
While these percentages can be determined using
traffic modeling, following approach can be used to ensure
that they are working properly under live traffic: Discard
statistics for T1 can be collected for each site for each type
of traffic periodically, and allocation percentages can be
tuned based on that statistics. Real-time discard statistics
can also be utilized to do adaptive resource allocation for
voice and packet data calls.
IEEE Communications Society / WCNC 2005
Probability for exactly ONE transmission
Probability for collison
Probability for BS to detect ONE transmission
Probability for BS to successfully decode access
channel message (Access Channel Occupancy)
25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50% 55% 60% 65% 70% 75% 80% 85% 90% 95%
Access channel busy%
Fig.2. Access Channel Occupancy
8 BSC-MSC SIGNALING LINK CAPACITY
Managing BSC-MSC signaling link occupancy is
relatively straightforward, since it carries only the
signaling messages. It is easier to compute the occupancy,
and add additional signaling links, if necessary. Also,
typically minimum 2 signaling links are equipped even for
a low-traffic BSC, for redundancy purposes. If signaling
link occupancy reaches close to 100%, A-interface
messages including page messages will be discarded. It
will result in both lower paging success rate and lower call
success rate. While the page messages add significant load
to signaling links on forward direction (MSC BSC), the
location update messages contribute to the loading in
reverse direction.
9 PAGE RETRY FROM MSC
Due to the issues related to BTS-initiated page
retransmission, it makes sense to retry page from MSC.
MSC can intelligently initiate retry only if a valid page
response was not received. However, there are a few
practical challenges: Since slot cycle index 2 is used by
most service providers, mobiles wake up only once in 5.12
seconds, receive the page message, and send the page
response. Also, getting the page response through access
channel via access attempt can take as long as 8 seconds in
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 the worst case. So, MSC has to settle for a longer page
retry timer.
Since the mobiles are distributed throughput 5.12
seconds to receive the page message, assuming 80%
probability for the access probe to reach the base station
and 1 access probe per second from the mobile, following
can be derived (see Table 2): 98% of the page responses
are received by MSC within 7 seconds after sending the
page message to BSS. MSC-BSS interface data collected in
the commercial network confirms that this computation is
reasonably accurate. So, the retry page can be sent 7
seconds after the first page. Note that MSCs are typically
smart enough to accept the page responses to the first page,
even after sending the retry page. Giving additional 3
seconds for the retry page and the internal system delays,
the page timeout can be declared after 7 + 7 + 3 = 17
seconds into the paging process. Current CDMA operators
seem to be using values of 20 to 35 seconds to declare the
page timeout, in turn, make the originating parties wait for
a long time before rerouting to voicemails. Note that, the
higher the paging success rate is, lower the importance of
timer value associated with the page timeout, since
smaller % of terminations will end up with the page
timeout.
10 PAGING SUCCESS FOR PACKET DATA
CALLS
Field data shows that the paging success rate for the
packet data calls is much better compared to the voice calls.
Since a typical packet data session switches between active
mode and dormant mode every few seconds once, mobiles
tend to be in-coverage when network initiated page
requests to re-activate the packet data call. In other words,
this is equivalent to paging the mobiles within 1 to 2
minutes after they registered which translates into higher
probability that mobiles are still in coverage and have not
moved far away.
11 PUSH TO TALK CALLS
Insufficient coverage area and coverage holes cause
service unavailability to users, and cause longer call wait
times to the originating parties. Recently, there has been a
lot of interest in bringing push to talk to all wireless
networks. One reason cited for the popularity of push to
talk calls is the long call setup delay for traditional calls.
Table 2 Page Response% distribution over time
Time (sec) 1.024 2.048 3.072
Paging Completed 20% 40% 60%
PgRsp% (computed) 16.0% 35.2%
PgRsp% (field data #1) 16.7% 37.2%
IEEE Communications Society / WCNC 2005
Field data shows that current paging process takes 5
seconds on average which means the termination call
setup will take min. 5 seconds on average. BTW, this does
not include the time that the terminating party takes to
answer the call after hearing the ring.
Currently, most mobiles use slot cycle index of 2, i.e.
they wake up once per every 5.12 seconds to check
whether there is an incoming call or message. This makes
the paging process slow and inflexible. Reducing the slot
cycle index to 0 (i.e. mobiles will wake up every second
once) or even negative slot cycle index will bring down the
delay to reach the mobile. Refer to IS2000 Release D
standard [1] for the details. Lower slot cycle index has not
been used till now due to the battery drainage concerns.
Reduced slot cycle index should make M-M call setup time
almost same as M-L call setup time, effectively bringing
down the user-perceived call setup time.
12 CONCLUSION
We presented several important parameters and issues
that impact the paging success rate in a CDMA wireless
network. While all of these parameters have an impact the
paging success rate, optimization in commercial Samsung
BSS suggests that, unless there are serious bottleneck
issues within the network elements, coverage plays the
major role in lowering the paging success rate.
REFERENCES
[1] IS-2000 CDMA air-interface standards,
http://www.3gpp2.org/Public_html/specs/index.cfm
[2] B. Krishnamachari, R.H. Gau, S.B. Wicker, and Z.J.
Haas, Optimal Sequential Paging in Cellular Wireless
Networks, Wireless Networks, Vol. 10, 2004, pp. 121
131.
[3] A. Pal and D.S. Khati, Dynamic Location
Management with Variable Size Location Areas, Inter.
Conf. on Computer Net. and Mobile Computing, 2001, pp.
73-78.
[4] J. Li, Y. Pan, and X. Jia, Analysis of Dynamic
Location Management for PCS Networks, IEEE Trans. on
Vehicular Tech., Vol. 51, No. 5, Sep. 2002, pp. 1109-1119.
[5] H.I. Liu and C.C. Yeh, Time-Varying Population
based Location Management Schemes, 8th Inter. Conf. on
Comm. Systems, Nov. 2002, pp. 839-845.
4.096 5.12 6.144 7.168 8.192 9.216
80% 100%
55.0% 75.0% 95.0% 98.9% 99.7% 99.8%
53.2% 71.2% 90.4% 98.7% 99.4% 100.0%
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