A flexible approach to mobile telephone traffic mass measurements and analysis

The present article describes the design principles and the main features of a traffic mass measurement and analysis system that has been developed at the TSP Lab and is already in everyday use at a large GSM network operator since 1999 for 24 hears a day, 7 days a week. On one hand, it can collect a large amount of signaling and call data and, on the other hand, it provides a near real time tracing of mobile calls and their detailed online analysis. The system is based on a new soft testing principle and distributed computing. Therefore if has been able to cope with the large increase in traffic to be handled as well as with the continuous demand for new services.