Coverage planning for optimizing HSDPA performance and controlling R99 soft handover

Abstract

Abstract-Coverage planning is an important engineering task in deploying UMTS networks implementing both high speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) and Release 99 (R99) services. Coverage planning amounts to determining the cell coverage pattern by means of setting the common pilot channel (CPICH) power of the cells. A conventional strategy is to uniformly allocate a proportion of the total power to CPICH. In this paper, we develop mathematical modeling and optimization approaches to bring the benefit of power saving enabled by optimizing nonuniform CPICH to enhance HSDPA performance, while preserving a desired degree of soft handover (SHO) for R99. The study focuses on HSDPA performance at cell edges, where data throughput is typically low. An integer linear programming model is developed for the resulting optimization problem. The model admits optimal or near-optimal planning solutions for relatively small networks. Solution algorithms based on local search and repeated local search are developed. These algorithms are able to perform the optimization for large-scale networks time-efficiently. Experimental results for both synthesized networks as well as instances originating from real planning scenarios demonstrate the benefit of our optimization approach.

Evaluation of the impact of mobility on typical KPIs used for the assessment of QoS in mobile networks: An analysis based on drive-test measurements

“…To date, both the scientific community and network operators mainly focus their studies on issues regarding the design and management of radio mobile networks as described in [2], [3], [4].…”