Internal Use Only

<>
All Rights reserved, No Spreading abroad without Permission of ZTE
1
The Analysis of SMS Delay
Issue Description:
There is SMS delay issue in the network.
According to the customers description, MS receives no SMS for a long time. After customers
make a call the MS will receive a lot of SMS which should be received several hours ago.
Reason:
The SMS center sends once SMS.
1. SMS center will not send SMS if there is no paging response from MS. It may caused by
paging lost or some other reasons.
2. When SMS center does not receive the paging response, it will inform VLR to set the flag
which means the MS is out-of-service and do not send following SMS paging.
3. Once the MS activated by location update, MOC, MTC or other services with
authentication the VLR will reset the flag and SMS center resends the SMS. So if one
SMS missed all the following SMS will be delayed. This is the root cause of SMS delay.
Analysis:
ZTE optimization team did the test on April 25
th
. The test cell is IIB234 sector2 on BSC ISB995.
MS1 did PS upload service and MS2 sent SMS to MS1. SMS delay issue was captured twice.
One was MS error and the other one was paging lost.
The analysis is as follows:
Case1
The MS1 received the paging request when doing PS service, but there is no paging response.
So the SMS center stopped sending SMS paging. This is caused by MS issue.

Case2
In the normal case MS1 receive the packet paging request of SMS sent by MS2 at the same
time. Then comes the paging response and receive the SMS, as the following figure shows.
Internal Use Only
<>
All Rights reserved, No Spreading abroad without Permission of ZTE
2

In this abnormal case, the MS1 havent received any paging request before or after SMS sent.
The MS looks like out-of-service.

According to the paging retransmission setting, the MSC should sent paging twice after each 6
seconds, but it failed as before.

There are several cases in which MS cannot receive the paging messages when doing PS
services:
1. A interface sends paging message to CCCH while MS is in idle mode, the delay time is
0-2s for the affection of paging group. If the MS is in PS service in the 2s the CCCH paging
message will be lost.
2. A interface sends paging message while MS accesses in UL service, there is no IMSI and
the Paging Coordinate function cannot be supported at this time. So the paging message
can only be sent on CCCH which the MS also cannot receive.
3. A interface sends paging message while MS is releasing PS service, the paging
message will start Paging Coordinate function on PACCH at this time. If the MS has
Internal Use Only
<>
All Rights reserved, No Spreading abroad without Permission of ZTE
3
already released and come back to CCCH, the paging message cannot be received.
Suggestion:
1. According to TP, there is similar SMS delay issue in NSN network. And this issue had
been improved after changing paging retransmission time from 3 to 4. In ZTE CN the max
paging retransmission time can be set to 3. So we suggest increasing the paging interval
time to improve. The current setting is 6s, the suggestion value is 8s.
2. The SMS center sends SMS to MS only once. If the strategy can be modified that the SMS
center sends SMS twice, this issue will also be improved. It is the similar method as NSN
did which means increases another 3 paging request.
3. The paging success rate in current network is about 95%-96%, ZTE optimization team will
continue to improve it. We plan to do more test and analyze abnormal paging lost. But the
paging success rate cannot reach 100% so SMS delay can only be improved but not
avoidable.