RF measurement and analysis of 2G GSM network performance case study: Yogyakarta Indonesia

The development of telecommunication is very rapid. Although it reach the fourth generation, GSM is still have the most subscribers. To improve the performance of the GSM system, the system must be optimized periodically. The first stage of optimization process is measuring the RF parameters in the GSM system. The process of measurement is called drive test. The objective of drive test is to get the data from network. In the GSM network, The data include Received signal level (RxLev), Received Signal quality (RxQual), SQI (Speech Quality Index), The equipments in this research are GPS, mobile phone, notebook, and drive test software. This paper will discuss step by step in the RF measurement in 2G GSM network. The location of research are in Yogyakarta Indonesia. We take the sample in urban area, sub urban area, and rural area. The result of measurement as below: the average value of Rx Lev, respectively -80.78 dBm, -76.70 dBm, and -69.68 dBm for rural, sub urban, and urban. The average of Rx Quals are 1.68, 0.84, and 1.05, and the average of SQI values are 23.65, 23.73, and 24.43 for rural, sub urban, and urban. So by these results, the generaly, the performance of GSM services is good. But for few areas, they have bad service, so operator should improve and give solution for these areas like increase the transmission power and antenna position.