General RSSI trouble shooting procedure

RSSI is the total wideband received power within the entire channel
bandwidth measured in the RBS (including both intra- and inter-cell
interference). RSSI does not distinguish between own, other, or any other
unwanted internal or external interference. A good RSSI reading should be in
the range of -95 to -108 dB and any reading outside this range is considered
high or low RSSI.

There are several reasons for high RSSI issue. Amongst the possible different
sources of problems, the following examples may be used as a reference:

1. Normal behavior due to traffic growth

The actual noise floor for an unloaded WCDMA system is about -106dBm.
And if a 2nd carrier sector is for EUL/HS traffic, the RSSI could become about
-9X dBm due to high UL interference caused by EUL/HS traffic.

2. RBS Internal Causes

NOTE: The first recommended step consists on verify the possibility of an
internal RBS interference.

2.1 RBS Internal Interference

In order to eliminate possible interference created internally to the RBS,

the RF jumper ports can be connected to a spectrum analyzer or a dummy
load. If the RSSI values of the site returns to normal, it means interference is
generated external to the RBS

2.2 Damaged Diplexers

A faulty diplexer can cause unwanted interference on the uplink.

One of the first possible interference sources can be a damage external

Diplexer, when it exists.
This situation occurs especially when theres a need to share the feeder
cables and its specially used in most of the indoor projects.

2.4 Faulty Antenna/TMA/ASC

A fauty TMA or ASC or an Antenna can also be a source of interference. TMAs

are usually replaced, while Antennae dont typically fail. Troubleshooting can
commence using dummy loads and/or a spectrum analyzer to isolated the
source of interference. So remember to check the construction quality of the
antenna system

2.5 Bad cable and connectors

And Cable and connectors connection problems also could cause high RSSI
issue.
Check all the RF cables and make sure everything is connected correctly and
all cables are tight with no loose connections.

2.6 RBS Incorrect parameter settings

A. When using a RX-AIT or/and a TMA, it is important to ensure the
configurations are set correctly in the RBS.
B. Other wrong parameters (For example : Power setting, Neighbors
definitions).

3. External Interference
If the point 2 above in general dont show problems on the RF plumbing and
the equipment on the antenna line, it can be thought that the problem is
caused by external interference and to prove that it will need some one to go
out there with Spectrum Analyzer to identify the source of the external
interference.

For this purpose it is necessary the use of a Yagi antenna, placing it as close
as possible from the interfered sectors antenna and pointing it in the same
direction as the sectors antenna.
The presence of an external interfering source should than be noticed on the
spectrum analyzer with either an increase in terms of the thermal noise
(wideband interferer), or with the presence of a unknown signal that overlaps
Vodafones UL frequency.
Note that the Yagi antenna is generally very sensitive and directive, which
means that even small variations on its pointing direction will lead to very
discrepant results.

Another recommended procedure is to check not only the cell with the high
RSSI value, but also all the nearby cells that are pointing towards the same
direction.
If the external interferer is some kind of point-to-point radio link, it will most
likely jeopardize other cells that are aligned in the same direction, even
though these variations sometimes are not so noticeable given that these
radio links are very directive.

3.1 GSM Interference

Narrow band GSM interference is easily identified by the fact that the
reported UL RSSI follows a similar pattern to the GSM traffic profile

3.2 External interference

The external interference cases are usually related with external sources like
repeaters, unauthorized radio mini-links or damaged UEs.

4. Logs and traces request

If high RSSI problem is still there after above investigation, please collect the
following traces logs.

te e rec_sig param trace4 sccRcSectorC*

Perform the below procedure completely for a sector (with or without the
issue with high RSSI) and after that do the same for the other type of sector.

- lock the cell in the sector (in RNC) (will trigger Cell Deletion Request to RBS
via the NBAP interface)
- acc Sector=x uninitSector
- acc Sector=x initSector
- unlock the cell in the sector (in RNC) (will trigger Cell Setup Request to RBS
via NBAP)

After the trace procedure shall also RBS Dcgm be taken and RNC Dcgm as
well (at least to get traffic statistics from ROP files included in the RNC Dcgm)