Cellular Network Planning
and Optimization
Part I: Introduction
Jyri Hämäläinen,
Communications and Networking Department,
TKK, 17.1.2007
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Outline
Preliminaries
Selection of technology examples
Spectrum
Way forward
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Preliminaries
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Cellular radio system
Bandwidth is a scarce resource which needs to
be divide among the users
In practice all multiple access schemes
introduce co-channel interference which limits
the spatial reuse of the resources.
Cellular radio concept (Bell Labs, 1943)
Service area of single base station is denoted as a cell
Same frequency can be reused in
spatially separates cells
FDMA/TDMA
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Objectives of radio network planning
1)To obtain sufficient coverage over the entire
service area to ensure that high quality voice
services and data services with low error rates
can be offered to the subscribers.
2)To offer the subscriber traffic network capacity
with sufficiently low blocking and call dropping
rate.
3)To enable an economical network
implementation when the service is established
and a controlled network expansion during the
life cycle of the network
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Network planning from operator perspective
For an operator good network planning =
Less money spend to infrastructure
More satisfied customers (good service quality)
Less need for adjustments
For an operator network optimization =
Better return for investment
Less need for costly hardware updates
Less need for new sites (which are very expensive)
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Viewpoints
Spectrum and network are valuable assets for
cellular operators
Recall that there are also virtual operators i.e.
operators that neither have spectrum nor network
How do you select your operator?
Price is usually the driver
Connectivity is an issue only in rare cases
Availability and quality of voice services is quite good –
exclude dense urban areas during peak traffic times .
Operator’s brand is also important
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Services
Services
Voice is still dominating
Data services gaining momentum due to introduction of
3G