Chapter Two

Telecommunication
Traffic

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 Lecture outlines
• Introduction.
• Traffic Statistics
• Traffic pattern parameters
• The unit of traffic.
• A Mathematical Model
• Blocking probability and congestion
• Lost call systems
• Queuing systems.
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 Introduction
 The traffic is defined as the occupancy of the server.
 The basic purpose of the traffic engineering is to
determine the conditions under which adequate
service is provided to subscribers while making
economical use of the resources providing the
service.

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 Cont
 Traffic engineering provides the basis for analysis and
design of telecommunication networks or model.
 The developed model is capable to provide best
accessibility and greater utilization of their lines and
trunks also the design is to provide cost effectiveness
of various sizes and configuration of networks.

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 Cont
 It also determines the ability of a telecom network to
carry a given traffic at a particular loss probability.

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 Traffic Statistics
 Calling rate (λ) : This is the average number of requests
for connection that are made per unit time.

λ is also referred as average arrival rate. The average calling

rate is measured in calls per hour.
 Holding time: The average holding time or service time
‘h’ is the average duration of occupancy of a traffic path
by a call.

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 Traffic Statistics
 The reciprocal of the average holding time referred to as
service rate (μ) in calls per hour is given as:

 Distribution of destinations: Number of calls receiving at

a exchange may be destined to its own exchange or
remoted exchange or a foreign exchange.

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 Traffic Statistics
 User behavior: The statistical properties of the switching
system are a function of the behavior of users who
encounter call blocking.
 Average occupancy: If the average number of calls to
and from a terminal during a period T seconds is ‘n’ and
the average holding time is ‘h’ seconds, the average
occupancy of the terminal is given by

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 Traffic Pattern
 An understanding of the nature of telephone traffic and
its distribution with respect to time (traffic load) which is
normally 24 hours is essential.
 It helps in determining the amount of lines required to
serve the subscriber needs. According to the needs of
telephone users, the telephone traffic varies greatly.

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 Traffic Pattern
 The variations are not uniform and varies season
to season, month to month, day to day and hour
to hour.

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 Traffic Pattern Parameters
 Busy hour: Continuous 60 minutes interval for which the
traffic volume or the number of call attempts is greatest.
 Peak busy hour: It is the busy hour each day varies from
day to day, over a number of days.
 Time consistent busy hour: The 1 hour period starting at
the same time each day for which the average traffic
volume or the number of call attempts is greatest over the
days under consideration.

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 Traffic Pattern Parameters

 Call completion rate (CCR): Based on the status of the

called subscriber or the design of switching system the call
attempted may be successful or not. Networks are usually
designed to provide an overall CCR of over 0.70. A
CCR value of 0.75 is considered excellent
 Busy hour call attempts (BHCA): It is an important
parameter in deciding the processing capacity of an
exchange. It is defined as the number of call attempts in a
busy hour.
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 Traffic Pattern Parameters

 Busy hour calling rate (BHCR): It is a useful parameter

in designing a local office to handle the peak hour traffic.
It is defined as the average number of calls originated by a
subscriber during the busy hour.
 Day-to-day hour traffic ratio: It is defined as the ratio of
busy hour calling rate to the average calling rate for that
day. It is normally 6 or 7 for rural areas and over 20 for
city exchanges.

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 Traffic Pattern Parameters

Example 2.1:An exchange serves 2000 subscribers. If the

average BHCA is 10,000 and the CCR is 60%, calculate the
busy hour calling rate(BHCR).
Solution
Average busy hour calls = BHCA × CCR = 6000 calls

 BHCR is useful in sizing the exchange to handle the peak traffic.

In a rural exchange, the busy hour calling rate may be as low as
0.2, whereas in a business city it may be as high as three or more.

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 Units of Telephone Traffic
Traffic intensity is measured in two ways. They are Erlangs
and Cent call seconds (CCS).
 Erlangs: A server is said to have 1 erlang of traffic if it is
occupied for the entire period of observation. More simply,
one erlang represents one circuit occupied for one hour.
 It is named after the Danish Mathematician, Agner Krarup
Erlang, who laid the foundation to traffic theory in the work
he did for the Copenhagen telephone company starting 1908.

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 Units of Telephone Traffic
 The traffic intensity is the ratio of the period for which
the server is occupied to the total period of observation
is measured in erlangs.

Example 2.2: In a group of 10 servers, each is occupied for 30 minutes in

an observation interval of two hours. Calculate the traffic carried by the
group.
Solution

Total traffic carried by the group 10*0.25=2.5E

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 Cont
Example 2.3:If a group of 20 trunk carries 10 erlangs and the average
call duration is 3 minutes, calculate (a) average number of calls in
progress (b) total number of calls originating per hour.

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 Units of Telephone Traffic
 Cent call seconds (CCS): It is referred as hundred
call seconds. CCS as a measure of traffic intensity is
valid only in telephone circuits.
 CCS represents a call time product. This is used as a
measure of the amount of traffic expressed in units
of 100 seconds.
 Sometimes call seconds (CS) and call minutes (CM)
are also used as a measure of traffic intensity.

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 Units of Telephone Traffic
 The relation between erlang and CCS is given by

Example 2.4: Consider a group of 1200 subscribers

which generate 600 calls during the busy hour. The
average holding time is 2.2 minutes. What is the
offered traffic in erlangs, CCS and CM.

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 Solution

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 Grade of Service (GOS)

 The overload traffic is rejected and hence is not

carried by the network. The amount of traffic rejected
by the network is an index of the quality of the
service offered by the network.
 This is termed grade of service (GOS) and is defined
as the ratio of lost traffic to offered traffic.
 Offered traffic is the product of the average number
of calls generated by the users and the average
holding time per call

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 Grade of Service (GOS)

Where

 The smaller the value of grade of service, the better is the

service. The recommended value for GOS in India is 0.002
which means that two calls in every 1000 calls or one call
in every 500 calls may be lost.
 In a system, with equal no. of servers and subscribers, GOS
is equal to zero.
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 Grade of Service (GOS)

 GOS is applied to a terminal to terminal connection. But

usually a switching centre is broken into following
components
• An internal call (subscriber to switching office)
• An outgoing call to the trunk network (switching office
to trunk)
• The trunk network (trunk to trunk)
• A terminating call (switching office to subscriber).
 There are two possibilities of call blocking, which are Lost
system and Waiting system.
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 Grade of Service (GOS)

Example 2.5: During a busy hour, 1400 calls were

offered to a group of trunks and 14 calls were lost. The
average call duration has 3 minutes. Find
(a) Traffic offered
(b) Traffic carried
(c) GOS and
(d) The total duration of period of congestion

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 Solution

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 Blocking Probability and Congestion

 The value of the blocking probability is one aspect of the

telephone company’s grade of service.
 The basic difference between GOS and blocking probability
is that GOS is a measure from subscriber point of view
whereas the blocking probability is a measure from the
network or switching point of view.
Based on the number of rejected calls, GOS is calculated,
whereas by observing the busy servers in the switching
system, blocking probability will be calculated.

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 Blocking Probability and Congestion

 The blocking probability, B is defined as the

probability that all the servers in a system are busy.
 Congestion theory deals with the probability that the
offered traffic load exceeds some value. Thus, during
congestion, no new calls can be accepted.
 There are two ways of specifying congestion, which
time congestion and call congestion.

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 Blocking Probability and Congestion

 Time congestion is the percentage of time that all

servers in a group are busy.
 Call congestion is the proportion of calls arising that
do not find a free server.
In general GOS is called call congestion or loss
probability and the blocking probability is called time
congestion.

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 A Mathematical Model

 To obtain analytical solutions to teletraffic

problems it is necessary to have a
mathematical model of the traffic offered to
telecommunication system.
 A simple model is based on the following
assumptions
• Pure chance traffic
• Statistical equilibrium

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 Cont

 Pure chance traffic: The assumption of pure

chance traffic means that call arrivals and call
terminations are independent random events.
 Sometimes it is also called as Poissonian
traffic.
 If call arrivals are independent random
events, their occurrence is not affected by
previous calls. Sometimes traffic is called as
memoryless traffic.
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 Cont

 The number of call arrivals in a given time has a

Poisson distribution and is given by:
 x 
P( x)  e
x!
where :
x : is the number of call arrivals in time T
 : is the mean number of call arrivals in T

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 Cont

Holding time
The average holding time or service time h
is the average duration of occupancy of a
traffic path by a call.
Call-holding time is modeled by a negative
exponential distribution and is given by:
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 Cont

P (T  t )  e  t / h
where :
P is the probability of a call lasting longer than t
h is the mean call duration

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 Cont

 Statistical equilibrium: The assumption of Statistical

equilibrium means that the generation of traffic is a
stationary random process i.e., probabilities do not
change during the period being considered.
 Consequently the mean number of calls in progress
remains constant.
 Statistical equilibrium is not obtained immediately before
the busy hour, when the calling rate is increasing nor at
the end of the busy hour, when calling rate is falling.

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 Cont

Example 1: On average one call arrivers every 5

seconds. During a period of 10 seconds, what is
the probability that:
1. No call arrives?
2. One call arrives?
3. Two call arrives?
4. More than two calls arrive?

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 Cont

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 Cont

Example 2 : In a telephone system the average call

duration is 2 minutes. A call has already lasted 4
minutes. What is the probability that:
1. The call will last at least another 4 minutes?
2. The call will end within the next 4 minutes?
These probabilities can be assumed to be independent
of the time which has already elapsed?

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 Modeling of traffic

• To analyze the statistical characteristics of a switching system,

traffic flow and service time, it is necessary to have a
mathematical model of the traffic offered to telecommunication
systems.

• The model is a mathematical expression of physical quantity to

represents the behaviour of the quantity under consideration.

• Also the model provides an analytical solutions to a teletraffic

problems.

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 Modeling of traffic

• As the switching system may be represented in different ways,

different models are possible.

• Depending on the particular system and particular

circumstance, a suitable model can be selected.

• In practice, the facilities of the switching systems are shared by

many users.

• This arrangement may introduce the possibility of call setup

inability due to lack of available facilities.

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 Modeling of traffic
• The service of incoming calls depends on the number of lines. If
number of lines equal to the number of subscribers, there is no
question of traffic analysis. But it is not only uneconomical but not
possible also.

• So, if the incoming calls finds all available lines busy, the call is said to
be blocked. The blocked calls can be handled in two ways.
 Loss system

 Delay system

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 Modeling of traffic

• The type of system by which a blocked call is simply refused and is lost
is called loss system.

• Most notably, traditional analog telephone systems simply block calls

from entering the system, if no line available.

• Modern telephone networks can statistically multiplex calls or even

packetize for lower blocking at the cost of delay.

• In the case of data networks, if dedicated buffer and lines are not
available, they block calls from entering the system.

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 Lost call systems

• In the second type of system, a blocked call remains in the

system and waits for a free line. This type of system is
known as delay system.

• These two types differs in network, way of obtaining

solution for the problem and GOS.

• For loss system, the GOS is probability of blocking.

• For delay system, GOS is the probability of waiting.

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 Cont

Lost call system

 The pure chance traffic implies that call arrivals and

call terminations are independent random events.
 The Statistical equilibrium implies that probabilities
do not change.
 Full availability means that every call that arrives can
be connected to any outgoing trunk which is free.

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 Cont

There are three models of loss systems. They are :

Lost calls cleared (LCC)

Lost calls returned (LCR)
Lost calls held (LCH)

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 Cont

Lost Calls Cleared (LCC) System:

· The LCC model assumes that, the subscriber who does not avail
the service, hangs up the call, and tries later. The next attempt is
assumed as a new call. Hence, the call is said to be cleared.
· This also referred as blocked calls lost assumption.

· The first person to account fully and accurately for the effect of
cleared calls in the calculation of blocking probabilities was A.K.
Erlang in 1917.

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 Cont

• For a lost-call system having N trunks, when offered

traffic A, the first Erlang distribution is given by:
Ak
P(k )  N
 Ak 
k!  
k  0  k! 

where :
k: is the number of occupied trunks
P(k): is the probability of k occupied trunks

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 Cont

• The above probability distribution is called the truncated

Poisson distribution or Erlang’s loss distribution.

• In particular when k = N, the probability of loss is given by:

AN
P( N )  B ( N , A)  N
 Ak 
N !  
k  0  k! 

• The above formula is referred to as the Erlang’s-B formula or

Erlang’s loss formula.
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 Example

A group of 5 trunks is offered 2 E of traffic. Find

a. The grade of service

b. The probability that only one trunk is busy

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 Example

c. The probability that only one trunk is free

d. The probability that at least one trunk is free

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 Delay system

• The delay system places the call or message arrivals in a

queue if it finds all N servers (or lines) occupied.

• This system delays non-serviceable requests until the

necessary facilities become available.

• These systems are variously referred to as delay system,

waiting-call systems and queuing systems.

• The delay systems are analyzed using queuing theory which

is sometimes known as waiting line theory.
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 Delay system…

• This delay system have wide applications outside the

telecommunications.

• Some of the more common applications are data processing,

supermarket check out counters, aircraft landings, inventory
control and various forms of services.

• Consider that there are k calls (in service and waiting) in the
system and N lines to serve the calls.

• If k ≤ N, k lines are occupied and no calls are waiting.

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 Delay system….

• If k > N, all N lines are occupied and k-N calls waiting.

• Hence a delay operation allows for greater utilization of

servers than does a loss system.

• Even though arrivals to the system are random, the

servers see a somewhat regular arrival pattern.

• A queuing model for the Erlang delay system is shown

in the figure below.
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 Delay system….

Queuing model

• The basic purpose of the investigation of delay system is to

determine the probability distribution of waiting times.

• From this, the average waiting time TW as random variable can

be easily determined.
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 Delay system…

• The waiting times are dependent on the following

factors :
1. Number of sources

2. Number of servers

3. Intensity and probabilistic nature of the offered traffic

4. Distribution of service times

5. Service discipline of the queue

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 Delay system…

• The probability of an arriving call not having an immediate

access to a channel (or being delayed) is given by Erlang C
Formula.
AN
P[delay  0]  C ( N , A) 
A N 1 Ak
A  N !(1  )
N

N k  0 k!

• It is typically easiest to find the value from Erlang C chart or

table.
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 Delay system…

• The marginal (overall) probability that a call will be

delayed and experience a delay greater than t is then:
 NA 
 t
h
P (delay  t )  P (delay  0)e  

• The average waiting time for all arrivals can be

determined by:
h C ( N , A)h
TW  P(delay  0) 
NA NA

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 Delay system…

Example-:

A message switching network is to be designed for 90% utilization of its

transmission link. Assuming a single server, exponentially distributed
message lengths and an arrivals rate of 10 messages per min, determine:
a. the average waiting time

b. the probability that the waiting time exceeds 3 minutes

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 Delay system…

Solution: Given :   90%  0.9 and   10 messages / min

a. P( delay  0)    0.9  A
The average service time :
P (delay  0) 0.9
h   0.09
 10
Average waiting time :
P (delay  0) h 0.9 * 0.09
TW    0.81
NA 1  0.9

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 Delay system…

b. Probability of the waiting time exceeding 3 minutes :

 NA 
 t
h
P (t  3)  P (t  0)e  

 1 0.9 
 *3
 0.09 
 0.9e  0.032
Thus, 3.2% of the message experience queing delay of
more than 3 minutes.

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