ETSI TR 102 529 V1.1.1 (2009-03)

Speech and Multimedia Transmission Quality (STQ); SMS Testing Guidelines; Measurement Methodologies and Quality Aspects

DTR/STQ-00098m

General Information

• Status: Published
• Publication Date: 03-Mar-2009
• Technical Committee: STQ MOBILE - STQ Mobile
• Current Stage: 12 - Completion
• Due Date: 12-Jan-2009
• Completion Date: 04-Mar-2009

Standards Content (Sample)

ETSI TR 102 529 V1.1.1 (2009-03)
Technical Report


Speech and Multimedia Transmission Quality (STQ);
SMS Testing Guidelines;
Measurement Methodologies and Quality Aspects

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2 ETSI TR 102 529 V1.1.1 (2009-03)



Reference
DTR/STQ-00098m
Keywords
SMS, testing, scheduling
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© European Telecommunications Standards Institute 2009.
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3 ETSI TR 102 529 V1.1.1 (2009-03)
Contents
Intellectual Property Rights . 4
Foreword . 4
1 Scope . 5
2 References . 5
2.1 Normative references . 5
2.2 Informative references . 5
3 Abbreviations . 5
4 General aspects of SMS functionality . 6
4.1 Maximum character lengths . 6
4.2 Concatenated short messages . 6
4.3 SMSC queuing per destination/user . 7
4.4 SMSC retry mechanism . 7
4.5 Alerting mechanism . 7
4.6 Triggering of the delivery procedure caused by the alerting mechanism . 8
4.7 SMSC behaviour at arrival of a new SM directed to the same destination/user . 9
5 SMS Testing guidelines. 9
5.1 Settings for SMS test and correlation between subsequent tests . 9
5.2 Exemplary testing model - using one receiving terminal . 10
5.2.1 Effects of timeouts . 11
5.2.2 Measurement flows . 11
5.3 Exemplary testing model - using two or more receiving terminals . 12
5.4 Testing methods for concatenated SMs . 13
History . 14

ETSI

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4 ETSI TR 102 529 V1.1.1 (2009-03)
Intellectual Property Rights
IPRs essential or potentially essential to the present document may have been declared to ETSI. The information
pertaining to these essential IPRs, if any, is publicly available for ETSI members and non-members, and can be found
in ETSI SR 000 314: "Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs); Essential, or potentially Essential, IPRs notified to ETSI in
respect of ETSI standards", which is available from the ETSI Secretariat. Latest updates are available on the ETSI Web
server (http://webapp.etsi.org/IPR/home.asp).
Pursuant to the ETSI IPR Policy, no investigation, including IPR searches, has been carried out by ETSI. No guarantee
can be given as to the existence of other IPRs not referenced in ETSI SR 000 314 (or the updates on the ETSI Web
server) which are, or may be, or may become, essential to the present document.
Foreword
This Technical Report (TR) has been produced by ETSI Technical Committee Speech and multimedia Transmission
Quality (STQ).
ETSI

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5 ETSI TR 102 529 V1.1.1 (2009-03)
1 Scope
The goal of the present document is to point out all the aspects impacting SMS service measurement results, providing
many different approaches for SMS testing.
2 References
References are either specific (identified by date of publication and/or edition number or version number) or
non-specific.
• For a specific reference, subsequent revisions do not apply.
• Non-specific reference may be made only to a complete document or a part thereof and only in the following
cases:
- if it is accepted that it will be possible to use all future changes of the referenced document for the
purposes of the referring document;
- for informative references.
Referenced documents which are not found to be publicly available in the expected location might be found at
http://docbox.etsi.org/Reference.
NOTE: While any hyperlinks included in this clause were valid at the time of publication ETSI cannot guarantee
their long term validity.
2.1 Normative references
The following referenced documents are indispensable for the application of the present document. For dated
references, only the edition cited applies. For non-specific references, the latest edition of the referenced document
(including any amendments) applies.
Not applicable.
2.2 Informative references
The following referenced documents are not essential to the use of the present document but they assist the user with
regard to a particular subject area. For non-specific references, the latest version of the referenced document (including
any amendments) applies.
[i.1] ETSI TS 102 250 (all parts): "Speech Processing, Transmission and Quality Aspects (STQ); QoS
aspects for popular services in GSM and 3G networks".
[i.2] ETSI TS 123 040: "Digital cellular telecommunications system (Phase 2+); Universal Mobile
Telecommunications System (UMTS); Technical realization of Short Message Service (SMS)
(3GPP TS 23.040)".
3 Abbreviations
For the purposes of the present document, the following abbreviations apply:
HLR Home Location Register
MNRF Mobile Not Reachable Flag
MO Mobile Originated
MS Mobile Station
MWDL Message Waiting Data List
ETSI

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6 ETSI TR 102 529 V1.1.1 (2009-03)
QoS Quality of Service
SM Short Message
SMS Short Message Service
SMSC Short Message Service Center
UDH User Data Header
UDHI UDH Information
VLR Visitor Location Register
4 General aspects of SMS functionality
4.1 Maximum character lengths
The SMS service is designed to send up to 140 bytes of user data with a single SM. From a customer's point of view,
this leads to different amounts of available characters available to compose text messages, based on the encoding used.
Table 1 provides an overview of the different available character sets including the maximum possible message lengths
for a single SM.
NOTE 1: Even if not all the available data is used from a customer perspective, e.g. if the actual text used for
testing is less than 160 characters, the size of the user data element will stay constant.
NOTE 2: Content integrity of single SMs is ensured by mechanisms on lower protocol layers of GSM and UMTS
networks. Thus, there is - from an E2E testing perspective - no need to implement content integrity
checking mechanisms on top of the SMS service.
Table 1: Overview of the different available character sets including the maximum
possible message lengths for a single SM
Character set Encoding Maximum message length
Default GSM alphabet 7-bit 160 characters
ANSI (e.g. Cyrillic) 8-bit 140 characters
Unicode (e.g. Arabic, Asian) 16-bit (UCS2) 70 characters

4.2 Concatenated short messages
In order to transfer text messages not fitting into a single SM, the text message can be split into multiple SMs
containing a so called UDH (User-Data-Header), which will lower the amount of available user data. The UDH is in
general used to transfer additional information related to the user data of the SM and will vary in size. Please refer to
TS 123 040 [i.2] for a list of allowed UDH information elements (UDHI) defining possible ways to use the UDH.
According to TS 123 040 [i.2], the UDH contains for each SM of a concatenated SM the indication that this single SM
is part of a concatenated SM and will also provide information about the position of the SM within the long message.
Thus, fewer characters can be transferred per single SM if this single SM is part of a concatenated SM. Table 2 provides
an overview of the maximum available characters of a single SM when using UDH to concatenate SM in order to form
and send longer messages.
Table 2: Overview of the maximum available characters of a single SM when using UDH
to concatenate SM in order to form and send longer messages
Character set Encoding Maximum message length using
UDH for concatenation of SM
Default GSM alphabet 7-bit 153 (160-7) characters
ANSI (e.g. Cyrillic) 8-bit 134 (140-6) characters
Unicode (e.g. Arabic, Asian) 16-bit (UCS2) 67 ((140-6)/2) characters

NOTE: For further details on SMS, please refer to TS 123 040 [i.2].
ETSI

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7 ETSI TR 102 529 V1.1.1 (2009-03)
4.3 SMSC queuing per destination/user
The SMSC platform maintains a single queue for every destination, storing the SMs in its memory buffers.
Consequently, a newly arrived SM is added to the queue of the destination user. This queuing method limits the SMSC
to deliver SMs to the same destination based on arrival order.
This queuing method causes the following behaviour:
• Before accepting an incoming SM, the queue length is verified and the message is accepted only if the queue
for the specific recipient has not reached the maximum allowed length.
• An incoming SM could trigger the delivery mechanism of all the queued SMs for the same destination.
4.4 SMSC retry mechanism
In order to increase SMS reliability, SMSC platforms usually implement a mechanism to autonomously trigger the
delivery procedure of an SM. This feature is usually called "retry mechanism" and the applied temporal plan is defined
as a "retry scheme". Usually, many delivery trials are foreseen within a retry scheme to achieve the foreseen goal of
improving the perceived QoS of the Short Message Service, while reducing time between SM submission and delivery
to its destination and increasing the delivery success rate.
The applied "retry scheme" is implementation-dependent and established based on the network operator's plans. The
time interval between two subsequent delivery attempts can vary from minutes to many hours. To avoid wasting
network resources while optimizing the SMS delivery process, the retry scheme usually starts with time intervals of few
minutes for the first attempts, gradually increasing up to many hours for subsequent trials.
The retry mechanism also aims at ensuring SM delivery in case of fault of the following "alerting mechanism".
4.5 Alerting mechanism
If an SMS delivery is unsuccessful for a multitude of causes (terminal switched off, subscriber not reachable, etc.), the
SM is stored in the SMSC for a subsequent delivery attempt.
In order to trigger the new delivery procedure, different mechanisms can be utilized. The first is the above-mentioned
retry mechanism, while the alternative is an alerting mechanism started by the HLR.
In the following part of this clause, a detailed overview of the alerting mechanism will be provided.
While delivering an SM to the foreseen destination, considering an MS as the receiving party, a submission failure can
happen due to unavailability of the destination. For example, the terminal of the receiving party could be switched off or
could not be reachable due to poor radio signal power. In this case, the SMSC, as a consequence of the failed delivery
attempt, informs the HLR that the requested user is not reachable, setting the "Mobile Not Reachable Flag" (MNRF) for
that user. Furthermore, it adds its identifier to the Waiting Data List; this action, performed by the SMSC, has to be
interpreted by the HLR as "there is at least one waiting SM for this user stored in the buffers of this SMSC".
The steps of the above-mentioned procedure are represented in the following scheme.
ETSI

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8 ETSI TR 102 529 V1.1.1 (2009-03)
S MS Delivery P rocedure – Unsuccessful Delivery
HL R flags:
- MNR F (Mobile Not R eachable F lag)
1) AC K Mobile Term. (user error Absent S ubscriber)
- MWDL (Message Waiting Data List)
2) Mobile Not R eachable F lag
SMS-C
3) Message Waiting Data List
HL R
3 2 1
S ubs criber registered in VL R b
...