what is the format of the data generated by the base stations in the cellular network? Is it stored somewhere? If yes then in which form?

Question

One way to get this detail is to fire the query on Visitor Location Register(VLR) which keeps track of all the active mobiles present in its area at a given time. But frequently triggering this database might hinder the performance of the network system. Is there any other alternative to get total number of active mobile counts data? Can i get this data directly from base stations?

Answer 1

Actually, each cell is not identified by a "unique Base Station", but by it's CGI (e.g. 294-02-100-223). What you can get is the KPI (Key Performance Indicator) TCH Traffic (Half-Rate + Full-Rate) for a certain period of time in Erlangs. That is the average number of used TCH channels. If you multiply this number with the time length of the period, you get the total number of call minutes. There's no way the BTS (Base Transceiver Station) will provide the number (total/average) of mobile users by means of their MSISDN/IMSI/IMEI. You can get only the traffic. The only way to get the total number of active mobile subscribers is by querying the VLR, or via appropriate KPI (my specialty is the access part, not the core).