The Maximum RSRP Achievable in a Design Polygon

I. BACKGROUND
The Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP) quantifies the signal level of the Reference
Signal in LTE. Under the AT&T LTE Design Guidelines, a minimum of 95% of the LTE
Design Polygon must meet the RSRP target of -113dBm (Indoor), weighted based on
clutter type.
Metric Green Target Yellow Target Red Target
RSRP ( - 113 dBm)
Indoor
95% 92% < 92%

II. PROBLEM

There are cases where the LTE Design Polygon provided by AT&T either 1) includes
many coverage holes; and/or 2) the polygon is a bit too stretched along the edges,
making it impossible to achieve the 95% service area KPI target.

UMTS Baseline RSRP (-113dBm Indoor) Plot *












* The UMTS Baseline Project is the initial LTE Atoll Project with all transmitters configured to AT&Ts existing
UMTS network.
edges too
stretched
coverage
holes
III. DESIGN PROCESS

The LTE Design Engineer optimizes the UMTS Baseline Project and selects the best
possible antenna types, tilts, heights and azimuths per transmitter to achieve the RSRP
target. The design process takes time both with manual optimization and using tools like
ACP and Capesso. Changes are made per transmitter and statistics are continuously
calculated to check the current status of the optimized design, until the RSRP target is
achieved.


IV. LESSON LEARNED

During the design process, the engineer should already have an idea whether the 95%
target is achievable or not. If the engineer is finding it difficult to achieve the RSRP
target, and before further design optimization is attempted, which takes time, a simple
procedure is suggested below to find out the maximum achievable RSRP in a design
polygon, without proposing New Site Builds, NSBs.

Set the antenna types for all transmitters inside the focus zone to whatever the market-
preferred antenna is, then, run 3 scenarios with all the antenna tilts for all transmitters
set to 0, 1, and 2.

As an example, the following results are derived:
Metric Target
UMTS
Baseline
Optimized
Network
View
All Tilts
Set to 0
All Tilts
Set to 1
All Tilts
Set to 2
RSRP ( - 113 dBm)
Indoor
95% 86.79% 88.75% 89.72% 90.02% 89.70%

The maximum RSRP achieved in this case is only 90.02% with all the antennas set to 1-
degree electrical tilt, and this is still way below the green target of 95% or even the
yellow target of 92%.

Present the results to the AT&T market as proof that there is nothing you can do using a
constrained design to meet the RSRP targets, then have the market decide whether they
want to go into an unconstrained design by proposing NSBs.

V. CONCLUSION
A simple solution in finding out the maximum RSRP achievable in a design polygon was
presented. Doing this procedure before attempting further design changes and looping
into various statistics calculations will help save time and process.