Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Peter Gould
Consulting Services Director
Multiple Access Communications Limited
Peter.Gould@macltd.com
IIR Cell Planning Technical Forum, Berkeley Court Hotel, Dublin
5 July 2001
www.macltd.com
Contents
Load Balancing
Cell breathing provides a degree of load
balancing.
As a cell becomes more heavily loaded it
becomes smaller.
This has the effect of shedding users around
the cell boundary to more lightly loaded
neighbouring cells.
Load Balancing
Lightly Loaded
Central Cell
Heavily Loaded
Central Cell
25
20
15
10
5
0
0
20
40
60
Number of Users
80
100
Network Planning
From this we can see that it is important to
consider both network coverage and call
blocking when planning a CDMA network.
Detailed network planning requires a
specialised CDMA planning tool.
These tools use traffic information and
propagation predictions to determine the
coverage of the CDMA network.
3G Network Planning
Tools
Propagation
Prediction
Engine
Traffic
Data
Graphical
User
Interface
3G Post
Processing
Tool
Service
Information
3G Network Planning
Tools
Most 3G network planning tools utilise the
power control loop method.
Analytical techniques can also be used, but
these are slow when the traffic load is high.
It is important for the tool to consider call
blocking as well as network coverage.
The tools can also be used to predict the softhandover regions.
Planning Example
Using MAC Ltds NP WorkPlace
Planning Tool and MACcdma Analysis
Tool
www.macltd.com
Received Signal
Strength Prediction
3G CDMA network
consisting of five rooftop
macrocellular BSs
Three-sectored
rooftop macrocell
Two-sectored
rooftop macrocell
Service Profile
Service Type
Bit Rate
Service
(kb/s) Penetration
Source
Activity
Symmetry
(UL/DL)
Speech
12.2
0.8
0.5
1.000
Medium-rate
data
144
0.15
0.8
0.026
High-rate data
384
0.05
0.8
0.026
Speech Service
Call Blocking
As we have seen it is also
important to consider call
blocking as well as
coverage.
Downlink Ec/Io
The quality of the downlink
pilot signal should also be
analysed.
Traffic Map
As the network subscriber
base grows traffic peaks
and ridges may occur.
This will have an impact on
the mobile transmit power
and the call blocking.
MS Transmit Power
Speech Service non-uniform traffic
Speech Service uniform traffic
Call Blocking
384kb/s Data Service non-uniform traffic
Speech Service non-uniform traffic
Adding Microcells
Microcells can be added to
Received Signal Strength for Microcells Only
the network to accommodate
the traffic peaks.
This will decrease the
required mobile transmit
power in this area.
MS Transmit Power
With Microcells
Without Microcells
Call Blocking
The addition of the
microcells will also decrease
the blocking for the speech
service.
However, we must also
consider the blocking for the
data services.
Speech Service
Call Blocking
384 kb/s Data
144 kb/s Data
Conclusions
Careful planning is required to ensure that
cell breathing does not generate coverage
holes in a CDMA network.
Good traffic forecasts are required.
Call admission control can be used to limit
the extent of cell breathing.
However this will lead to call blocking.
Therefore it is important to consider call
blocking in the network planning process.