Author: Esa Rinnetmäki

Name of the Thesis: Testing methods for signaling application parts of the GPRS backbone

Date: 26. 10. 1999
Number of pages: 62

Department: Department of Electrical and Communications Engineering

Professorship: Telecommunications Engineering (S-72)

Supervisor: Professor Sven-Gustav Haggman

Instructor: M.Sc. Jorma Romo

The present GSM data services are relatively slow, the connecting time long and Intemet using opportunity poor. To improve data transfer GPRS can be installed in the GSM network. Old and new data transfer techniques and services have been compared in this thesis.

Testing methods are a wide concept, including testing means, tools, software and so on. A planning model has been developed to meet to the testing needs of the network elements. This gives a set of requirements for testing methods. Before the selection of the testing method the meaning of testing, testing strategy and means were investigated.

Signalling application parts are used for controlling and maintaining the network. Test planning in this work is concentrated on this area. Needs and range of testing are examined in the treatment of GPRS testing. Testing procedures, test configurations and practical testing are included in this part. Testing of the mobile-originated short message transfer procedure has been chosen for modelling example. MAP protocol is one of the parts which controls this procedure, and that is why this procedure has been chosen for this thesis.

The purpose is to find suitable testing tools. There are many analyzers and instruments for testing but there are not so many devices which fulfill all the requirements. Such devices have been chosen for comparison, and later one of these will be selected for practical testing.

This thesis contains important information for testing planning of GPRS network. The final result of this work can be taken as a guidance for test plannin and practical testing.