Operation Guide for LTE TAC Planning

INTERNAL

Product Name

Confidentiality

LTE RNP

Internal

Product Version

Total: 11 pages

eRAN 2.0

Operation Guide for LTE TAC Planning

(For internal use only)

Drafted by

Date

Reviewed by

Date

Reviewed by

Date

Approved by

Date

Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.

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Operation Guide for LTE TAC Planning

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Change History
Data

Revision Version

Change Description Reviewed by

Author

2010-01-30

1.0

Completed the draft.

Shuibin, Xie

2011-6-10

2011-04-22

English version

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Operation Guide for LTE TAC Planning

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Content
1 Overview...................................................................................... 6
2 TA Basic Theory............................................................................7
3 Principles of LTE TA Planning.........................................................8

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Figures
Figure 1 TAC Division.........................................................................9
Figure 2 Dividing TA by frequency band..........................................10
Figure 3 Dividing TA by geographical position.................................11

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Operation Guide for LTE TAC Planning

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Operation Guide for LTE TAC Planning

Keywords: LTE, TAC, TAL
Abstract: This document gives introduction to LTE TAC basic theory and TAC planning principles and
specifies the TAC planning by using U-NET tools.
Abbreviations and acronyms

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Acronym

Full Name

LTE

Long Term Evolution

TAC

Tracking Area Code

TAL

Tracking Area List

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Overview

In LTE network planning, tracking area (TA) division is extremely important. In Long Term
Evolution (LTE), TA planning principles are made to ensure the unlimited paging channel
capacity, minimize the UE location updating overhead at the TA border and simplify the
management. As a part of LTE network planning, TA planning is closely related to the paging
performance of the network. An appropriate TA planning can balance paging load, reduce TA
location updating signaling and effectively control the signaling load in the system.

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TA Basic Theory

TA is a concept set for user equipment (UE) location management by LTE system, identifying
a TA through Tracking Area Identity (TAI). And TAI is composed of Mobile Country Code
(MCC), Mobile Network Code (MNC) and Tracking Area Code (TAC).
To reduce the location updating signaling caused by UE location changing, a UE is registered
in multiple TAs which make up a Tracking Area List (TAL). At the same time, this TAL is
distributed to the UE. Therefore, the movement of the UE between TAL does not require TA
updating. When the UE attaches to the network, Mobility Management Entity (MME) is
responsible for distributing TAs to the UE. When the UE moves to a new TA (this TA is not in
its registered TAL), TA updating occurs. And MME redistributes a TAL to the UE and this
new TAL can contain some TAs in the earlier TAL.
For eNodeBs, each cell belongs to one TA, whose broadcast message only contains the
information of this TA. When MME sends paging message, it should send this message to all
the cells in the registered TAL of UE.

For USN V900R001C03SPC300 and its later version, a TA LIST can hold 16 TAIs while each TAI can
hold 100 eNodeBs. For the earlier versions of V900R001C03SPC300, a TA LIST can hold 16 TAIs
while each TAI can hold 30 eNodeBs.

In the LTE or System Architecture Evolution (SAE) system, TA planning is expected to meet
the following requirements:
1)

In LTE, TA configuration in the Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (EUTRAN) must be the same as that of the Evolved Packet Core (EPC).

2)

When a UE is in idle status, core network can know its TA.

3)

When an idle UE needs paging, the paging must be implemented in all the cells of the
registered TA of the UE.

4)

In the LTE system, it is recommended to reduce location updating signaling caused by

UE location changing as much as possible.

Paging load determines the maximum scope of TA, accordingly, the location updating load of
cells at the border of TA determines the minimum scope of TA, which is significantly
dependent on the maximum paging capacity of MME. The biggest difference between the
preceding requirements and that of the traditional Location Area (LA) and Routing Area (RA)
is to reduce location updating signaling of an idle UE through TA planning.

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Principles of LTE TA Planning

Considering the specification of Huawei MME product, a common networking area only
needs one MME for administration (administration capacity of Huawei MME is about 10,00020,000 BTSs). Therefore, this document only focuses on one MME administration scenario.
For multiple MME scenarios, consider them after MME clustering.
According to the experience in network planning, TA planning shall follow the following
principles:

The scope of a TA can be neither too large nor too small. The maximum value of a
TAC is determined by the maximum paging capacity of MME.
The same paging message for a UE is sent in all the cells of the registered TAL of this
UE. Therefore, if the paging coverage area is too large, it will cause overload in paging
channels and increase the signaling overhead on S1 and Um interface. In addition, the
overload paging message will be discarded if it is not sent within the retransmissions of
MME, which will cause the issue that the active users within service area cannot be
paged (user out of service). Therefore, paging load determines the maximum scope of
TA, accordingly, the location updating load of cells at the border of TA determines the
minimum scope of TA, which is significantly dependent on the maximum paging
capacity of MME.
The upper limit of paging area (the maximum cells that the paging area can support) is
mainly subject to the bandwidth of paging channel. As the traffic changes in the area, the
scope of TA varies as well. According to the estimation of product specification and
paging capacity, the maximum BTSs that each TA supports is limited. And considering
the following expansion, 20% margin is reserved in planning. At the beginning, the
maximum BTSs can be ensured neither too large nor too small by the TA result of
network topology planning. In the early days of LTE networking, the traffic is not too
heavy and many unknown factors exist, therefore, network always needs expansion and
adjustment while LA adjustment is very common. If the scope of TAC area is too small,
the UE location updating overhead will be too much and the LTE load will be decreased;
if the TAC area is too large, the paging load will be heavy. It is necessary to monitor the
traffic and paging capacity of an area.

If suburban area and urban area are not covered continuously, suburban area
(county) should use an independent TA rather than using the same TA with urban
area.
In TA planning, select the suburban area (country) which is not covered continuously and
then make a TA planning independently. The strategy at the beginning of LTE

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networking is to cover key areas with hot spots, therefore, if suburban and urban areas
are not covered continuously, mobile phone may have timeout in a TA updating (TAU)
cycle updating timer + E-UTRAN Deactivate ISR Timer and fail to implement TA
updating. If guard time (Mobility Reachable Timer + Implicit Detach Timer maintained
in MME) is exceeded, MME implements implicit detach on International Mobile
Subscriber Identity (IMSI) (At this time, MME may delete the context information of
this UE, including TA List, TAI of Last TAU and GUTI). If the UE moves to an urban
area at this time, due to the same TAC area both in urban and suburban areas, some
mobile phones will not implement TA updating correctly which will cause the
phenomenon that signal is valid but "user is out of service". Therefore, in TA planning,
the suburban area (county) usually has an independent TA, namely, different from that of
the urban area. Now the division of TAs is similar to a concentric circle (due to the
capacity factor, the urban area within the inner circle may set up several TAs by
subdividing the inner circle, adding another circle in the inner circle or a mixed method).
In this way, the phenomenon will not happen again. Practice has proved that such
division of TAC areas can not only reduce the issue of "users out of service", but also
significantly improve the call completion rate and paging completion rate. See Figure 1
TAC division.
Figure 1 TAC division

The scope of TA shall be a geographically continuous area to avoid and reduce

networking complementation between BTSs in each TA;
If the division of TA is based on distances, it must be guaranteed that the TA is a
geographically continuous area. In practice, the border of TA can be fine-tuned through
the analysis of TA location updating in traffic statistics and the visual display of Google
Earth.

Principle that paging area cannot cross MME.

According to the agreement, when several MMEs share one Home Subscriber Server
(HSS), TA can be divided across MME, namely, TA is divided by Evolved NodeB
(eNodeB) which belongs to different MMEs. However, in practice, such case rarely
occurs, because this means paging is implemented through two channels under two
MMEs, which is impossible. So "one MME binding one HSS" is widely used. Therefore,

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TAC cannot be divided across MME, namely, TAC can be divided across multiple
eNodeBs which belong to one MME rather than different MMEs. In paging, MME needs
to inquire HSS to obtain TAC which UE belongs to, and then MME can send the paging
message to the corresponding TAC. Therefore, the division principle of TA planning is to
avoid dividing TA across different MMEs.

Use mountains and rivers in the planning area as the border of TA and reduce the
overlap level of different cells in two neighboring TAs to minimize the updating cost
at the border of TA.
Due to the various differences between planning areas and the geographic information
system (GIS) in current network planning tools does not support the identification of
landscape surface features. Therefore, the TA planning shall divide the planning area by
the clear mountains and rivers according to the administrative map and adjust the
planning result.
If there are two or more TAs in a big city with heavy traffic, you can use mountains and
rivers in the urban area as the border of TA and reduce the overlap level of different cells
in two neighboring TAs. If such geographical environment is absent, do not use streets
and places with heavy traffic (for example, mall) as the border of TA. The Border of TA
is usually required to be oblique crossing the street rather than parallel or perpendicular
to the street. At the border area between the urban and the suburban, TA border is usually
planned at the BTSs along the peripheral line of the suburban area rather than the border
area between the urban and the suburban to avoid frequent UE location updating for the
users at the border area.

In the multiple frequency bands which can be used by LTE (required by the
following expansion), TA can be divided in accordance with frequency bands or
geographical positions.
If 2.1G and 2.6G use its own MME separately (such a case rarely exists, because Huawei
MMEs support 10,000-20,000 BTSs), their TAs are definitely different. Therefore, you
shall set parameters to make the mobile station stay in the cell on the same frequency
band so as to reduce the handover and reselection between dual frequency bands.
Besides, when you design signaling channel, you shall pay attention to the system load
caused by UE location updating.
If 2.1G and 2.6G share one MME, it is recommended to share the same TA as long as the
system capacity allows. If paging capacity is limited, you must plan two or more TAs. At
this time, TA can be divided in accordance with frequency bands or geographical
position as follows:

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Figure 2 Dividing TA by frequency band

2.1G Cell

2.1G Cell

2.1G Cell

TA1

2.6G Cell

2.6G Cell

2.6G Cell

2.6G Cell

TA2

Figure 3 Dividing TA by geographical position

2.1G Cell

2.6G Cell

2.1G Cell

2.6G Cell

2.6G Cell

2.1G Cell

2.6G Cell

TA1

2.1G Cell

2.6G Cell

2.6G Cell

TA2

When you divide TA by frequency band, taking account of the frequent UE location
updating caused by the handover and reselection between different frequency bands, you
shall set parameters to make the mobile station stay in the cell on the same frequency
band so as to reduce the handover and reselection between dual frequency bands.
Besides, when you design signaling channel, you shall pay attention to the system load
caused by UE location updating. Dividing TA by geographical position provides solution
to the issue of frequent UE location updating caused by the handover and reselection
between dual frequency bands, but you need to modify the office data of previous
network before expansion. At the same time, at the TA border, UE location updating
caused by the handover and reselection both in the co-frequency band and dual
frequency bands exists, so the signaling traffic is heavy, which requires carefully
designed TA border.
After TA division, you shall adjust the quantity of cells which belongs to eNodeB for
Base Transceiver Station (BTS) to minimize the quantity of TAs under eNodeB
jurisdiction, namely, three at most.

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