  Smartphone users and application behaviors add high pressure to apply smart
techniques that stabilize the network capacity and consequently improve the
end-user experience. The massive increase in smartphone penetration engenders
signalling load, which exceeds the network capacity in terms of signaling. The
signalling load leads to network congestion, degradation in the network KPIs.
The classical way to tackle the signalling is by network expansion. However,
this approach is not efficient in terms of capital expenditure (CAPEX) and also
in terms of efficient utilization of the network resources. More specifically,
the signaling domain becomes overloaded while the data domain are
underutilized. In this paper, two UMTS air-interface features; Cell-PCH (paging
channel) and enhanced fast dormancy (E-FD) are analyzed to mitigate the
signalling load. Practical performance analysis is conducted based on results
from commercial UMTS networks. The deployment of these features offers major
improvement in network KPIs and significant relief in the signaling load. It is
concluded that these two features in addition to several optimization
techniques, discussed in this paper, provide solution to the smartphone
signaling load and efficiently utilize the available network and spectrum
resources while providing users with better always-on connectivity and improved
battery consumption.
