3G Radio Network Planning

Managing Cell Breathing

Presented by

Peter Gould
Consulting Services Director
Multiple Access Communications Limited
Peter.Gould@macltd.com
IIR Cell Planning Technical Forum, Berkeley Court Hotel, Dublin
5 July 2001
www.macltd.com

Contents

What is cell breathing?

Load balancing.
Using cell overlap to avoid coverage holes.
Call admission control.
Call blocking.
3G radio network planning tools.
Network planning example.

What is Cell Breathing?

In CDMA systems all mobiles can use the
same carrier frequency at the same time.
This means that there will be interference
between users in the same cell and in
neighbouring cells.
The CDMA spreading and despreading
processes allow this interference to be
suppressed to some degree.

What is Cell Breathing?

The level of suppression is termed the system
processing gain.
The processing gain can be defined as
Processing Gain =

CDMA Chip Rate

Bit Period
=
User Data Rate
Chip Period

The processing gain will vary according to the

service.

What is Cell Breathing?

As the loading within a cell is increased, the
BS receiver noise floor appears to rise.
The mobiles must transmit additional power
to overcome the increased interference.
As a result the maximum path loss that can
be tolerated within a cell is decreased and the
cell effectively shrinks.

Load Balancing
Cell breathing provides a degree of load
balancing.
As a cell becomes more heavily loaded it
becomes smaller.
This has the effect of shedding users around
the cell boundary to more lightly loaded
neighbouring cells.

Load Balancing
Lightly Loaded
Central Cell

Heavily Loaded
Central Cell

Mobiles on the cell perimeter are

shed to neighbouring cells

Planning the Cell

Overlap
However, it is important to plan for sufficient
cell overlap to ensure that coverage holes do
not develop.
Coverage Hole

Call Admission Control

The extent of cell breathing can be limited
through the use of call admission control
(CAC).
The CAC mechanism is used to decide when
a new call can be accepted.
Schemes that are based on the measured
noise rise can be used to set the minimum
cell size.

Call Admission Control

Cell Noise Rise (dB)

Any new calls will be blocked once the

interference reaches a certain level.
30
CAC will block calls
once the noise rise
reaches 6dB (75%
load)

25
20
15
10
5
0
0

20

40
60
Number of Users

80

100

Network Planning
From this we can see that it is important to
consider both network coverage and call
blocking when planning a CDMA network.
Detailed network planning requires a
specialised CDMA planning tool.
These tools use traffic information and
propagation predictions to determine the
coverage of the CDMA network.

3G Network Planning
Tools
Propagation
Prediction
Engine

Traffic
Data

Graphical
User
Interface

3G Post
Processing
Tool

Service
Information

3G Network Planning
Tools
Most 3G network planning tools utilise the
power control loop method.
Analytical techniques can also be used, but
these are slow when the traffic load is high.
It is important for the tool to consider call
blocking as well as network coverage.
The tools can also be used to predict the softhandover regions.

Planning Example
Using MAC Ltds NP WorkPlace
Planning Tool and MACcdma Analysis
Tool

www.macltd.com

Received Signal
Strength Prediction
3G CDMA network
consisting of five rooftop
macrocellular BSs
Three-sectored
rooftop macrocell

Two-sectored
rooftop macrocell

Service Profile

Service Type

Bit Rate
Service
(kb/s) Penetration

Source
Activity

Symmetry
(UL/DL)

Speech

12.2

0.8

0.5

1.000

Medium-rate
data

144

0.15

0.8

0.026

High-rate data

384

0.05

0.8

0.026

Mobile Transmit Power

CDMA post-processing
tool is used to determine
the mobile transmit power
at each point within the
network

Speech Service

Mobile Transmit Power

The mobile transmit power
will depend on the service
that the subscriber is trying
to access.

384kb/s Data Service

Call Blocking
As we have seen it is also
important to consider call
blocking as well as
coverage.

Downlink Ec/Io
The quality of the downlink
pilot signal should also be
analysed.

Traffic Map
As the network subscriber
base grows traffic peaks
and ridges may occur.
This will have an impact on
the mobile transmit power
and the call blocking.

MS Transmit Power
Speech Service non-uniform traffic
Speech Service uniform traffic

Call Blocking
384kb/s Data Service non-uniform traffic
Speech Service non-uniform traffic

Adding Microcells
Microcells can be added to
Received Signal Strength for Microcells Only
the network to accommodate
the traffic peaks.
This will decrease the
required mobile transmit
power in this area.

MS Transmit Power
With Microcells
Without Microcells

Call Blocking
The addition of the
microcells will also decrease
the blocking for the speech
service.
However, we must also
consider the blocking for the
data services.

Speech Service

Call Blocking
384 kb/s Data
144 kb/s Data

Call Blocking for 4

Increase in Traffic
384 kb/s Data
Speech

Conclusions
Careful planning is required to ensure that
cell breathing does not generate coverage
holes in a CDMA network.
Good traffic forecasts are required.
Call admission control can be used to limit
the extent of cell breathing.
However this will lead to call blocking.
Therefore it is important to consider call
blocking in the network planning process.