Octa-Cell HSPA+ Enabled UMTS Radio Access Network Planning:

Abstract

This paper is based on the newly advanced cellular technology called Advanced-High Speed Packet Access plus (HSPA+) or just simply HSPA+. It gives a good understanding of the possibility of using multiple carriers while planning radio access network of Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS)/HSPA+ using eight carriers while transmitting in the downlink, and perform a case study in Addis Ababa City with a selected area. The UMTS/HSPA+ radio access network planning involves coverage estimation and capacity evaluation. The coverage estimation is done with consideration of the real environment information at its nominal stage to obtain better estimations. The propagation modeling is done using Cost-Hata model with the inclusion of taking in to consideration the effect of using multiple carriers. The maximum of the site counts, by considering the multicarrier effect, based on coverage and capacity analysis is taken as a final number of required sites. The simulation was performed using Atoll 3.2 Radio Planning and Optimization Software to evaluate both the coverage prediction and MonteCarlo simulation, which is needed for capacity estimation for each service. This simulation software is also used for comparing the effect of octa-cell based system with the system which operates on fewer carriers.