What is Pilot Channel Pollution?

Pilot pollution is referred to a situation where a mobile device receiv es several pilot signals with strong reception levels but none of them is do minant enough that the mobile device can track it. This is nothing but poor rece ption due to signal interference. [1] Pilot coverage from neighboring Base stations should overlap in fringe areas to accommodate hand-off. However, the overlap should not be excessive or have a large number of BS in the same overlap. Each Base station that has significant power in the overlap area will raise Io, decrease Ec/Io & capa city or quality will suffer. This phenomenon is nothing but pilot pollution[14] Impact of Pilot Pollution on Handovers: We all know that soft handovers not only enable seamless handover from a cell to another, but also introduce gain for network performance. [4] The overall pe rformance of Soft handover events can be analyzed by comparing the averag e level of the strongest measured pilot signal to average level of the best pi lot to Active set. If there is no difference, it can be concluded that soft ha nd overs are working perfectly considering 1st pilot in active set. In heavil y pilot polluted areas: Soft handover algorithm is incapable of making decisions , as many pilots are entering/leaving Soft handover window. In a research done on the impact of Pilot pollution on soft handoff performance [6] : Pilot polluti on in WCDMA radio network was analyzed with simulations and measurements. It was pointed out that pilot pollution can be reduced by using tighter antenna downti lting. By analyzing pollution free and pilot polluted areas separately it was o bserved that soft handovers perform better when there is only a limit ed amount of pilot signals hearable, providing also better network performan ce in pollution free areas. Ec/I0 (received energy per chip to noise energy rat io) of the pilot signal is used to indicate the quality of the radio channel bet ween UE (user equipment) and the particular cell Soft handoff algorithm uses Ec/I0 of each pilot to decide on which cell a user e quipment is connected to. The large number of transmissions from different BTSs increases the total interference thereby reducing the Ec/Io and increasing the area thereby creating an area with a high rate of dropped calls and unsuccessful call attempts.[11] Identifying coverage area affected by Pilot pollution: The first step to ensure the decline in pilot pollution is to identify the over lap sectors through Power tests for Mobile stations. The power tests are not jus t for power-accuracy measurements but also for power functional test as to perfo rm basic call processing. Following are the common test methods in practice: ? Open Loop Power control test ? Access probe power tests ? Closed loop power ra nge ? Gated output power Cell layout and base station planning: Every cell layout has boundaries between cells and at some point those cel l boundaries come together in triple-points. So avoiding two-cell or three coverage zones will be impossible as these are omnipresent. A typical two o r three cell region layout is shown below The zones with four or more equal cells should be avoided as in th ese zones, each CDMA channel is interfering with too many carriers and a us er terminal is offered too many choices. We call such an area as valley , i.e. an area with pilot pollution problems. A ring of six cells would create a severe va

lley. The pilot pollution problem is not that the pilots are equal; it is the several radio signal paths are nearly equal. The valley is a zone of difficult CDMA cap acity performance, a problem area even if there is no single point where all c ompeting base stations are equal in the radio path gain. Sector boundaries are a lso a contributor to pilot pollution. Once the cells are laid out to minimize fo ur-cell valleys, the sectors should be oriented so that their boundaries do not cross the triple points and valleys. [14] In laying out cells for CDMA, we want to maintain the local character of the h exagonal cell grid. It is not so important that distant cells follow the local pattern. Thus, the cell grid can be modified to follow the contours of geograph y or subscriber demand as long as small clusters of cells follow a local grid pa ttern. This is called as warped grid and is shown below: Cause behind low CDMA capacity in Pilot Pollution Pilot pollution hampers the performance and reduces the capacity of the s ystem both by draining excess power from the BTS and by increasing the interfere nce. It s mostly assumed or derived from the explanation of pilot pollution that primar y reason for the low capacity of CDMA systems is the presence of too many equall y strong pilot signals. Whereas with research, it has been discovered that it is the comparative radio paths which is causing the capacity loss. The sector boundaries also contribute to the Pilot pollution. Once the cells are laid out to minimize the four cell valleys, the sectors should be oriented so t hat their boundaries do not cross triple points and valleys. The Forward overhead transmissions are also sometimes described as pilo t pollution as the coverage of control channels must greater then compared to the traffic channels. Effect of Pilot Pollution on the CDMA capacity Pilot polluted areas can probably never be totally avoided in the net work, but by decent radio network planning, the amount of pilot polluted ar eas can be minimized [5] The following could be broadly defined as the negative implications of Pilot pollution: ? Dropped Calls ? Poor or Hard Handoff ? Lo w efficiency. ? Poor network planning Possible remedies to this problem: Pilot pollution can be cured by many alternatives like: balancing the links, by adjusting the pilot power, by increasing the transmission slope through the antenna downtilt and by narrowing the antenna beam between two sectors. In case there is no dominant one of the sites can be altered to provide a dominant pilot channel. ? Systematically adjusting sector power allocations: This is done i n two a) Identifying areas of sector overlap b) For each area, adjusting power allocation in one or more of the overlapping sectors so as to create a dominant sector and to reduce the total noise from oth er sectors. The invention is particularly advantageous in a hybrid EV-DO/1xRTT system. ? Res olving the problem for an in house installation: This means that more than 2 p ilot channel with similar Ec/Io exist inside the coverage. Now, we can adjust donor antenna to make sure the Ec/Io of primary pilot channel is at least 8dB b etter than secondary channel. Make sure the donor antenna is installed lower tha n 8F. [2] ? Solution in terms of RF engineering: The pilot pollution can be red uced by making one channel dominant enough to be in sync with mobile all the tim

e in the coverage area. This can be achieved with the help of directed cell beams, sectored cells and antenna tilts. ? Cell Splitting: This agai n is a popular remedy for minimizing pilot pollution. In a four-to- one cell spl itting, we create four cell zones. With small cell grid having holes in it, the splitting grows a CDMA system with very few high pilot pollution cell zones left with [3] ? Antenna Downtilt: Antenna downtilt is typically used to decrease the amount of inter-cell interference in the network by c ontrolling cell coverage areas. The downtilting reduces the radio signa l path gain further from the base station by moving the high-gain, narrow beam vertical lobe of the antenna away from those areas. Downtilting also increa ses the path signal gain nearer the base station because that high gain vertical lobe is now serving user equipments closer in. Below show is an illustration fo r this measure. Recommendation: Practical implementation to solute pilot pollution To ensure pilot pollution can be effectively managed, a cell plan must be genera ted in which only one dominant pilot is present. There are many methods that ca n control pilot power, but this report will highlight one solution for a detai led study. The user equipment requires a sufficient Ec/Io to lock in to, or remain active in the system. A user equipment may not be able to initiate a ne twork connection in an area with a low Ec/Io which is typically caused by low pi lot ERP or excessive pathloss. Pilot pollution contributes to the forward link i nterference.[6] Since the Io is often the same as total overhead power from all the neighboring base stations, reducing their collective power reduces this kin d of interference. The pilot can be thought of as a beacon, which aside from it s radio technique utilities such as a phase reference, is responsible for the fo llowing: a) Adding cells to the active set in a handover scenario b) Providing a channel estimate at the user equipment s receiver c) Setting the maximum cover age of the cell Reducing the pilot strength in an isolated cell (that is, a cel l on the periphery of the UMTS coverage area) will cause a reduction in that cell s coverage area. As shown in the figure below if there is more than on e cell providing contiguous coverage and the pilot power is reduced, th is will create the effect of moving the periphery of the cell towards the o ther cell. However if the pilot power is increased, this will have the opposite effect of reducing the periphery of the cell and therefore has a marked effect o n coverage. [6]