Opinion/Experience about GeoLocation Tools 3G/4G

[HAMMOUCH]

Hello,

I am trying to conduct a study on the GeoLocation solution traffic and I need opinion on the different solutions presented on the market. is there some one who already tried the following solutions:

-NewField
-Actix
-Arieso
-Intucell
-Ultima Mentor
-Reverb
-Groundhog
-...

Cordialy

Thanks

[tyberry]

I like the thread - I also need to understand the merits of these tools and how good they are, what are the use cases they are best for and also what are the data sources, are they real-time and can they actually scale. Everyone of them says yes we can do real-time etc..but can they really do real-time and scale?

hope people provide some really good answers..!!

KR,

[tyberry]

Hi,

I saw this excellent report which would be useful for you and me - may be some one has it on this forum???

Mobile Network Optimization:
http://www.abiresearch.com/research/...-optimization/

The part I like is this:

KEY INDUSTRY PLAYERS

• 6.1. Mobile Network Operators
• 6.2. Mobile Network Infrastructure Vendors
• 6.3. Optimization Services Vendors
• 6.4. UE Client Vendors
• 6.5. RF Test Equipment Vendors
• 6.6. Network Test Equipment Vendors
• 6.7. Protocol Analyzers
• 6.8. Network Planning Vendors
• 6.9. Backhaul Optimization
• 6.10. Network Offloading Vendors
• 6.11. Routing/Transport Monitoring/Optimization Vendors
• 6.12. DPI Bandwidth Management Vendors
• 6.13. Video Optimization and Web Optimization Vendors
• 6.14. Content Delivery Network Vendors
• 6.15. Policy Vendors
• 6.16. OSS Vendors
• 6.17. Network Monitoring Vendors
• 6.18. SON Vendors

[tyberry]

If I get it I will let you know...it costs $4,200 :-(

[HAMMOUCH]

Thanks a lot tyberry

[hartono]

My company conducted trials on several geolocation vendors last year. IMHO

Intucell has SON such as auto nbr optimization, but doesn't really have geolocation. Seems to be limited to UMTS so far. Their best show case is at&t. Cisco acquired Intucell with high premium, which was a big news earlier this year. With Cisco global sales channel I expect Intucell to be very aggressive in SON selling. Reverb is a competitor to Intucell and I don't recall their geoloc function either.

AriesoGEO has good interface. Claimed to be able to handle CHR, but turned out that AriesoGEO could not handle CHR. Vodafone background allowed them to have good reference from Vodafone. Encouraged users to purchase their RF consultancy service to use the product. Recently merged by JDSU.

Groundhog CovMo has good geoloc accuracy and functionality. CovMo and Ultima Mentor ranked the best in our accuracy test. MIT background probably helped. Seems less strong in marketing.

Schema has good ACO functions. Seems less active in recent couples years after being sold to TEOCO for cheap. Some Schema people changed job to Intucell after the merger.

ActixOne's drive test post-processing is good, but its geolocation is not at the same level as dedicated geoloc players. Cellsite's product portfolio seems very similar to Actix's while not as strong as Actix.

My 2 cents.

[tyberry]

Hi Hartono,

What was analysis in the end? Did you go with Geo-analysis tool and SON or with either?

How about Newfield Wireless? I believe they are in some of the tier1s specifically working in the LTE space. What issues have you seen with these solution, Do they really scale for real-time? I'm curious to understand as existing legacy Dbase platform probably wont scale with this amount data volume, velocity etc..especially if these tools are continuously used as real-time for performance troubleshooting. Whats your opinion on this...?

Also seems like no tool can do everything, they seem to be good at one thing and weak in the other areas

[hartono]

We went for geoloc. IMHO SON is overrated. In LTE, NEM should take care of SON, not the 3rd party companies.

Groundhog won the RFP from our company. Delivery done several months ago. Since then the system has been running in near-real-time covering our network nation-wide without difficulty. I am no database expert and have no experience in the scalability from other vendors though.

I might be just me, but I have never heard of Newfield Wireless doing geoloc until last year. Only knew them as a mainly consultancy company for several years. When I was involved in the RFP and evaluation process, NFW was not on the short list so I had no chance to look into their solution.

From a reference in Germany I contacted for evaluation, I have the impression that the first major commercial LTE geoloc deal covering nation-wide deployment was likely in Germany, not USA. Arieso and Groundhog were finalists of the LTE RFP and Groundhog won.

Yes no tool can do everything. I am trying to be as objective as I can, but in case anything I said is wrong feel free to correct me.

[tyberry]

Hi Hartono,

Very useful post and thoughts. I'm also looking at it from an analytics perspective - so looking at an analytics application potentially real-time but also with historical reporting, anomaly detection, predictive analytics and thinking about building a closed-loop feedback mechanism which can interface with RAN Vendors to enable SON associated changes to the network. For example - change load balancing characteristics based on traffic and congestion. I think some of these features are very useful if they can automatically happen to make the RAN network more resilient and shape the network capacity accordingly.

Presumably your a super-user of such RNO/RNP applications? what would thoughts be on this proposition? Would it resonate with Tier 1 carriers?

What SON use cases do you think will be most useful for carriers to implement out of this list?

3GPP release 9
Mobility robustness and handover optimization
RACH optimization
load balancing optimzation**
inter-cell interface coordination

3GPP release 10
coverage and capacity optimization**
enhanced ICIC
cell outage detection and compensation**
self-healing functions
minimize drive test
energy savings

3GPP release 11
automated network mgmt
Troubleshooting
multi-layer, multi RAT heterogeneous networks..

Note: ** these are the ones I think will be useful for carriers over time. We're going to see more and more adoption of small cells given the demands for bandwidth hungry applications so the more automation that can happen will be most beneficial for carriers.

At least this is thinking. Another interesting challenge will be Backhaul :-)

regards,

[TelcoConsultant]

First, thanks for opening the thread guys...

My thoughts in bullets:

- Geolocation and SON is usually comes together but not necessarily. Intucell is playing to be a SON provider, not Geolocation, and Arieso is vice-versa.

- The confusion is mostly based on the source data: the user traces (GPEH, PCHR etc...) User traces will give your PRACH & AS for the most common Geolocation input, and with a smart algorithm you can detect the whereabouts. Meanwhile you will definitely need same data to self-optimize the network.

- @tyberry: I believe Minimizing Drive Test (MDT) is from R8, and all the other features fall under this umbrella. I dont think complete SON is soon but load balancing and coverage is already possible: just hook to NodeB, measure the quality and congestion to play with power & e-tilt and test to start from beginning. It is pretty simple, and if you play within certain limits it is low-risk but still you can sell this as "mighty SON" with a huge advertisement and make a half-a-billion sale to a "I was an IP network vendor but now I wanna play in telco playground too because it look amazing" company...

- Geolocation: it still has a long way to go but smaller cell footprints in dense areas make even the oldest algorithms more accurate everyday.

- Vendors: I never used myself but what I heard is Arieso seems quite good in Geolocation-only tools whereas Ultima-Mentor is giving a reasonable compromise PM+RNO+Geolocation. But still, this is not a comprehensive comparison. @HAMMOUCH, can you please be more specific. What is the purpose this comparison, the names you mention are not in the same game. Intucell & Arieso is doing only specific parts whereas Actix and Schema(or Teoco or whatever) is claiming to do PM & SQM & CEM and everything. These products are processing additional data just to support their PM solutions, not for pure geolocation.

- @hartono: Spending 5+yrs in tool development as an architect, I honestly see no reason why one product can not do all of it. It seems to me quite possible, of course hard but possible. But there is two main problems: 1. The old products/companies are not flexible to extend to these new gadgets The management does not see the value to invest in traces/new algorithms or even if they are happy to invest the product is like an old diesel machine which is quite hard to integrate such a new feature. 2.New companies are usually concentrated on this specific areas and most of them are looking for a big buyer. Intucell and Arieso did it, I am expecting IBM, E******* and HP to go for new mergers and every small company is looking to be the next one.

I have some other thoughts but need to get back to work now. I will be happy to discuss further. Finetopix is an amazing source for RNO guys but hard to find ppl who are interested in different aspects of telco industry. PM, SQM, CEM... The game is changing, very rapidly. Lets follow it up...

KR