Telecommunication system engineering

Introduction to Telephony Lecture # 2 13-02-2013

Introduction to Telephony

Telecommunications
Telecommunication deals with the service of providing electrical communications at a distance. The world wide public switched telephone network (PSTN) is immense. This same PSTN serves as a vehicle for video conferencing and point to point connectivity. The primary concern of this course is to describe the development of PSTN, why it is build like this and how it is evolving.
Introduction to Telephony

A simple telephone connection

A common telephone is a device connected to outside world by a pair of wires. It consists of a hand set and a cradle with a signalling device mainly push buttons these days. The handset is made of two electro-acoustic transducer, a mouthpiece (transmitters or microphone) and an earpiece (receiver or speaker). There is a side-tone, that is the sound of speakers own voice heard from the earpiece. The level of the side-tone must be controlled ?
Introduction to Telephony

A simple telephone connection (contd)

The transmitter converts acoustic (sound) energy into the electrical energy through carbon granule transmitter. To transmit an electrical signal, a dc potential of 3-5 V is required across the its electrodes. This voltage is supplied by central battery in the switching centre, that has been standardized at -48 V dc. Off-hook
The condition where handset is separate from the cradle. It is an active state i.e., the closed loop between the network and the telephone and a tone can be heard.

On-hook
The condition where handset is on the cradle. It is an idle state i.e., the open loop between the network and the telephone.

Introduction to Telephony

A simple telephone connection (contd)

Dual-tone multi-frequency signaling
DTMF (dual tone multi frequency) is the signal that you generate when you press an ordinary telephone's touch keys. With DTMF, each key you press on your phone generates two tones of specific frequencies. So that a voice can't imitate the tones, one tone is generated from a high-frequency group of tones and the other from a low frequency group. Here are the signals you send when you press your Touchtone phone keys:
Frequency 697 Hz 770 Hz 852 Hz 941 Hz 1209 Hz 1336 Hz 1477 Hz

1 4 7 *

2 5 8 0

3 6 9 #

Introduction to Telephony

A simple telephone connection (contd)

System limitations
Length limitation for a 19 gauge loop connection for the standard central power supply. Limitations are attenuation and voltage drop at the transmitters. Supported length for operation is 30 km, for an efficient handset. The length can be increased by adding amplifiers at suitable distanced to maintain operation.

B
Introduction to Telephony

A simple telephone connection (contd)

The system mentioned previously is for two subscribers only, what if there are multiple users in the picture?
Build more personal loops among the users. There should be a sort of switching mechanism to select the specific required user.

A 8-point mesh connection

Subscriber connected in star arrangements

Introduction to Telephony

Traffic, sources and sinks

Traffic is the term that quantifies the usage of the telecommunication system. Sources are the initializers of the call. Sinks are the call destination points. Nodal points or nodes are termed as switches.

Introduction to Telephony

Telephone network: Introductory terminologies

Telephone network A systematic development of interconnecting transmission media arranged so that one telephone user can other with in the network. Subscriber line The telephone line connecting a subscriber to a switch are subscriber lines. Trunks The telephone line connecting one switch to another is called trunk. Local Exchange A local exchange has a serving area, which is geographical area in which the exchange is located: all subscribers in that area are served by that exchange. Toll area A toll area includes many exchanges, toll calls are same as long distance calls
Introduction to Telephony

Essentials of traffic
Most important part of telecommunications engineering practice is to determine, the number of trunks required between the exchanges, it is termed as dimensioning of route. Key parameters in dimensioning
Traffic path: it is a line, path, time-slot, frequency-band, trunk, or switch. Calling rate: number of times a traffic path is used for a period of time. Holding time: the duration for which the traffic path was occupied. Carried traffic: is the volume of the traffic actually carried by a switch. Offered traffic: maximum volume of the traffic that the switch can allow .
Introduction to Telephony

Typical traffic intensity

Introduction to Telephony

Busy Hour definitions

Busy Hour The busy hour to one hour period for which the number of calls attempted are the greatest. Peak Busy Hour The peak hour every day. Time consistent busy hour The one hour period for which the average callattempt count is greatest over the days under consideration.
Introduction to Telephony

Measurements of telephone traffic

Traffic measurements are used for long term planning of the network. Lets define the telephone traffic as the product of number of calls originated during a period of one hour (C) and average holding time (T). A=CxT It is dimensional less quantity, but it is also used as call-seconds, call-minutes or call-hours.
Introduction to Telephony

Measurements of telephone traffic (contd)

Traffic density number of simultaneous calls at a given moment. Traffic intensity The average traffic density during 1-hour period.
The preferred unit of traffic intensity is Erlang, it is also a dimensionless quantity. 1 Erlang means that one circuit is occupied for 1 hour.

Introduction to Telephony

Blockage, Lost calls, and grade of service

In order to understand these terms lets first consider Peg count: calls offered Usage: Traffic carried Overflow: call encountering trunk busy Grade of service:
Grade of service = number of lost calls / Peg count

Introduction to Telephony

Handling of lost calls

Lost calls are handled in numerous ways some of them are.
Lost call held (LCH) Lost call cleared (LCC) Lost call delayed (LCD)

Introduction to Telephony

Handling of Lost calls

Lost Calls Held (LCH) This concept assumes that the telephone user will immediately reattempt the call on receiving the congestion message and will continue to redial. The user hopes to seize the next available switching equipment is free. Lost Call Cleared (LCC) On receiving the congestion signal, the user will hang up and wait for a while for attempting the call. Such calls usually disappear from the system. Lost Call Delayed This concept assumes that the user request is automatically put in a queue, where it waits for its turn to be routed.

Probability distributions curves for traffic theory

The origination calls at an exchange closely fit a family of probability distribution curve following the a Poisson distribution. Most distribution curves are two parameters curves, mean and variance.
mean is average variance is parameter for dispersion

Smooth, Rough and Random traffic

VMR (variance to mean ratio) It is the coefficient of over-dispersion, and characterizes the traffic patterns. Smooth traffic: VMR < 1 Random traffic: VMR = 1 Rough traffic: VMR > 1

Erlang traffic formula

Erlang traffic formula is commonly used for dimensioning the route (finding the number of trunks required to accommodate required traffic). The parameters that are basically dealt with are for computing the traffic are
Call arrival and holding time distribution Number of traffic sources Availability of the traffic sources Handling of lost calls

n is number of serving channels A is mean traffic offered EB is the grade of service

Erlang B table

Waiting systems (Queuing)

Queuing system is required when the scenario of lost call delay (LCD) is encountered. There are four ways (queuing discipline) to select the waiting call from the queue.
First come first serve Random selection Last come first serve Priority selection

Waiting systems (Queuing) contd

Grade of service for the queuing system is defined by the probability of delay. Other factors include
Average delay on all calls Length of the queue

Dimensioning and efficiency

Efficiency is rate of utilization of resources. 100 % efficiency will be achieved when all the trunks are busy with calls for all the times. Practically achieving 100%, will mean that there will be a lot of lost calls, hence decreasing the grade of service. Optimize dimensioning will mean a trade off between grade of service and efficiency.

Alternate routing
One way to achieve higher efficiency is to use alternate routing. Lost calls are routed through routes other then the direct route to the destination.
Z

Direct route

The basic problem is to increase circuit group efficiency.

Efficiency versus circuit group size

Increase in the circuit group (using the higher number of trunks), increases the efficiency. For a grade of service p = 0.01
11 trunks will carry 5 Erlang of traffic, trunk to Erlang ratio is more than 2:1. 30 trunks will carry 20 Erlang of traffic, trunk to Erlang ratio is 3:2. 120 trunks will carry 100 Erlang of traffic, trunk to Erlang ratio is 6:5.

Basis of network configuration

Tandem Exchange

Mesh Configuration Usually applied for higher traffic among exchanges

Star Configuration Usually applied for lower traffic among exchanges

Note: In practice most networks are compromise between mesh and star configurations

Double star configuration Star connections utilizing an intervening(dominant) exchange for the connection among them selves

Hierarchical networks
Hierarchal networks are systematic networks developed to reduce trunk groups. This network gives orders of importance to the exchanges making up the network.
1A 1B

2A1 3A1 3A2 3A3

2A2 3A4 3B1

2B1 3B2

2B2 3B3 3B4

The rank of the exchanges is based on the sizes of the boxes

Connection through hierarchical networks

1A 1B 2A1 3A1 3A2 3A3 2A2 3A4 3B1 2B1 3B2 2B2 3B3 3B4
The case with no congestion between 2B1 & 2B2

1A

1B

2A1 3A1 3A2 3A3

2A2 3A4 3B1

2B1 3B2

2B2 3B3 3B4

The case with congestion between 2B1 & 2B2. The dotted line is showing final route.

The route for the overflow traffic through the highest exchange level is the Final route.

The trend away from a hierarchical structures

There are trends that are pushing away the hierarchal networks, but they will remain in the system for foreseeable future. The reasons are
Satellite communications allowed direct routes between continents. Optic fibres offered higher performance and higher bandwidths over long distances. Optimum routing through signalling system 7.

Routing method
There are generally three routing methods between intermediate nodes (switches). Right through routing
The originating exchange determines the route of the route from source to destination. Addition of a new exchange in the network will require the updated at all exchanges.

Own exchange routing

This routing allows changes in routing as call proceeds to its destination. Minimal switch modification is required for the addition of new exchange. It is suited when alternate switching is mostly encountered.

Computer controlled routing

The switching is computer based. The route is mapped in memory based on network details.

Quality of service
The most common measure of quality of service is customer satisfaction. It is usually measured by how well the customer can hear the calling party Other factors include
Delay before receiving dialling tone Post dial delay Correctness of billing Reasonable cost of the customer services. Responsiveness to servicing requests.

Sample problems 1
The two neighboring exchanges that were build a decade ago, had 5 trunks between them, with the increase of users now, the grade of service has declined to 0.4. How many more truncks will be required to improve the scenario. Further more the user requirements is expected to rise by 10% with in an year. How many more truncks will be needed to meet these future requirements.
Introduction to Telephony

Introduction to Telephony

Sample problem 2

Introduction to Telephony