Wireless 2000: Schema Offers a New View on Network Optimization

No man is an island. You prove this every day, as each decision you make ripples out to affect countless others. The statement also holds true for groups of people attempting to work as one. As convenient as it would be if each department within a carrier organization could work in isolation, such is not the case. What seems a benign marketing campaign can cause the engineering team severe headaches and give the accounting department nightmares. This is the concept that Yuval Davidor president of Herzlia, Israel-based Schema is trying to convey, and he believes his platform can help soothe these troubled waters.

The company's telecom resource management (TRM) solutions for wireless networks is an integrated family of products and services that allow carriers to optimize and manage network resources by increasing capacity, improving service quality/decreasing churn, and maximizing capital efficiency.

"The idea is to bring all the different departments to a meeting point around the table," said Yuval Davidor, Schema president. He cited AT&T Wireless' One Rate plan as a classic example of departments not being on the same page. He said if they had worked together, they could have run tests and done "what if" scenarios and avoided some of the capacity problems and customer discontent.

Bury Conflict
There are always conflicting interests that work against optimization: If you try to reduce churn by giving away free minutes or lowering prices, you run the potential of creating capacity problems. On the other hand, if you don't offer attractive buckets of minutes to limit growth and usage, you run the risk of losing customers. The same goes with controlling capital efficiency. If you try to reduce capital expenditures by slowing build-out, you may pay for that decision in lower quality of service (QoS) and higher customer churn.

With its products, Schema has tried to take much of the dissension out of the picture. The tools offer an integrated approach and go beyond frequency planning to add an optimization engine and sophisticated data mining platform. The solution leverages information that usually is not considered and uses mathematical algorithms to solve complex optimization problems.

Tap Unused Data
For example, many companies have switch data and drive test data that is not used to its potential. Improved reuse patterns hide within the switch logs, and problematic reuses can be cross-examined with drive test, massive switch-log processing and other field data, to achieve correct effects on capacity and QoS for additional collocated radios.

Although Schema has other TRM solutions in development, its first launch is its Falcom family, which stands for Fast Adaptive Learning Channel Optimization Modules. The tools' auto-analysis and planning capabilities allow carriers to conduct "what-if" exercises to determine the best use of spectrum and network resources.

Detailed Analysis
"The Falcom is not a tool, service or module," Davidor said. "It's a platform that allows for enterprise-wide improvements." The Falcom Planner is the optimization brain. It generates optimal channel allocation plans for wireless networks, and it is designed to provide each sector with the proper number of channels and to minimize the effect on QoS. It uses the impact matrices generated by the Builder product, as well as user-defined limitations and requirements and allows related services, such as "what-if" analysis.

The Builder tool allows carriers to create multi-layered impact matrix data based on several sources and information residing on the network's switch. The tool takes all of the information from computer-generated propagation predictions, drive test logs, switch logs, location identification of locations where high QoS is critical, and network constraints and creates for each source a layer of what is happening in the network, "like a stack of pancakes," Davidor said. Then the tool interprets the different layers, compressing the stack into one layer. The Builder's output is a true image of the network in all operational respects—network configuration, service quality, RF quality, and so forth, Davidor said.

Solution Tests
Several companies have been testing the platform, including Bell Atlantic Mobile, Cellcom Greenbay, Cellcom Israel, and Motorola's Perephone. Bell Atlantic Mobile (BAM) recently selected the Falcom TRM solution to optimize its spectrum use as it converts its network to CDMA. It plans to install the product in five of its metropolitan regions over the next six months.

By Ellen Jensen, Managing Editor, Wireless Networks Online