A Project Report

On

Design and Planning

of RAN

By:

1. Siddharth Mehta (727)

2. Sourav Mukherjee (732)
3. Zeal Vyas (760)

Department of
Electronics and
Telecommunication Engineering
Mukesh Patel School of Technology Management
and Engineering
Vile Parle (West), Mumbai – 400056
-1-
 NMIMS University
20010-2011

Department of
Electronics and Telecommunication
Engineering
Certificate

This is to certify that the following students:

1. Siddharth Mehta (727)

2. Sourav Mukherjee (732)
3. Zeal Vyas (760)
have submitted their Project report entitled:

Design and Planning of RAN

As part their curriculum for

Xth trimester, B.Tech Course
during the academic year 2010-2011

Internal Guide:________________ H.O.D:__________________

(Mr. Preeti Jani) (Mr. K.D.Desai)

External:______________________
-2-
 Acknowledgement

It is indeed a moment of great pleasure and immense

satisfaction for us to express our profound gratitude to all
the people who contributed in making our project a rich
experience.

We wish to thank Prof. Preeti Jani, dept. Electronics and

Telecommunication Engineering, Mukesh Patel School
of Technology Management and Engineering for her
careful
supervision, critical suggestions and encouragement that
has
been a source of immense help.

-3-
 Contents

1. Preface

2. Project Objectives

3. GSM Architecture

4. Problem Statement

5. Tools Used

6. Future Plans and Risks

7. Bibliography

-4-
Preface

This record is concerned about our industrial project during the first
trimester of the 4th year.

In the course of B.Tech, from NMIMS University, it is required to

undergo for an industrial project, which shall be performed throughout the
year.

We have taken up a project in Global Netco Rural Limited (GNRL), a

company of the global giants GTL, located at Mhape, Navi Mumbai. During
the course of our first trimester, we have studied the GSM architecture &
designing and planning the RAN. We have gone through various case
studies and have come up with the problems faced while designing and
planning the RAN and our future approach towards solving them in the
coming trimesters.

-5-
 Project Objectives

Our main aim of

• To understand the GSM architecture.

• To understand sequential execution of network planning and optimization.
• To have a complete exposure of practical steps followed in RAN.
• To get acquainted with network designing through on-air drive tests.

GSM Architecture
GSM stands for "Global System for Mobile Communications". This refers to
a digital cellular phone technology that is primarily based on a specified
standard for how data is sent over a wireless network.

GSM was taken over in 1989 by the ETSI (European Telecommunications

Standards Institute) and they finalized the GSM standard in 1990.

GSM cellular phones use a combination of Time and Frequency Division

Multiple Access.

GSM Components:-

• Mobile station (MS)

• Based Station Subsystem (BSS)
• Network Subsystem (NS)
• Home Location Register (HLR)
• The visitor location register (VLR)
• Authentication Center (AC)

-6-
 • Equipment Identity Register (EIR)

GSM Architecture

Mobile Station

• The MS is the subscriber end of the network and consist of the GSM
device (Cell phone) and the SIM (Subscriber Entity Module) Each
mobile has a global unique IMEI (International Mobile Equipment
Identity) and each SIM has IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber
Identity), which is used to identify and authorized the subscriber for
various services.

-7-
 • The SIM card may be protected against unauthorized number using a
PIN( Personal Identity Number)

Base Station Substation (BSS)

• Mobile network consist of many BTS(Base Transceiver Stations) each

of which from a cell covering a certain geographical area.
• The BTS are the ones responsible for directly communicating with
the mobile devices.
• Several BTS are controlled together by a BSC (Base Station
Controller).
• The BSC provides connectivity to the network subsystem

Network Subsystem

• The MSC (mobile services switching center) is the central component

of the network subsystem.
• It communicates with all the BTSs and is responsible proving all the
functionalities to mobile devices like registrations, authentications,
call routing, etc.
• A network also usually has GMSC (Gateway MSC) to communicate
with the external (landline) networks like ISDN, PSTN, etc.
• Many register are also maintained which contained information
necessary for smooth functioning of the network.

Home Location Register (HLR)

• The HLR represents a centralized database that has the permanent

data fill about the mobile subscribers in a large service area.
• It stores information about the current location of all subscribers of
the network.
• This information is necessary for routing all calls/messages to their
intended destination.

-8-
 • The HLR is kept updated with the current location of all its mobile
subscribers including those who may have roamed to another
network operator within or outside the country.

The HLR maintains the following subscriber data on a permanent basis:

• International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI)

• Service subscription information
• Service restriction
• Supplementary services (Subscribed to)
• Mobile terminal characteristics
• Billing/accounting information

Visitor location register (VLR)

A VLR covers one or more cells and store information about the
subscribers currently under its area of influence

Authentication Center (AC)

The AC stores and validates the users’ PIN. The AC for GSM contains the
security modules for the authentication keys (Ki) and the authentication
and cipher key generation algorithms A3 and A8 respectively

Equipment Identity Register (EIR)

• The EIR maintains information to authenticate terminal equipment so

that fraudulent, stolen or non-type approved terminals can be
identified and denied services

GSM Specifications

• Carrier Separation - 200 kHz

• Duplex Distance - 45 MHz
• No. of RF Carriers - 124
• Access Method - TDMA/FDMA
• Modulation Method - GMSK
• Transmission Rate - 270.833 Kbps
• Speech Coding -Full rate 13 Kbps
-9-
 Half rate 6.5 Kbps

Problems faced during the design of

RAN

CELL PLANNING/DESIGN (BTS SITES)

PROBLEMS FACED DUE TO INPUTS FURNISHED BY OPERATOR

Cell planning/design can be executed with the inputs furnished by Operator in terms of Populations based
on districts/towns/villages where the network coverage is required

• In case of the population

The numbers of the BTS sites designed based on population database may not fulfill the exact purpose. i.e.
The complete cell/site may not be covered in terms of coverage and the capacity if the database for the
population is not updated. Generally the population database gets updated every after 10 years.

• In case of Districts/Towns/Village

Operators furnish the data in terms of districts/towns/villages where the network connectivity is required.
While designing the cell/site using the said data, the first constraint is to find out the lat/long for the given
towns/villages. It has been experienced that the town/village name gets repeated in given district or outside
the district. As a result the number of BTS sites may not match to cover the desired area. It has also been
observed that the lat/long captured through Digital Map for the particular location may not match when
compared with Drive test report for the same location

- 10 -
In addition to this the type of the clutter furnished by Operator is not updated with reference to Digital Map as
the digital map may be of latest version or updated. This may create the discrepancies in designing the number
of BTS sites required.

PROBLEMS FACED DUE TO CLUTTER LOSSES

By feeding the relevant input data in the Network planning tools like Planet, Asset or Atoll, the
clutters have been designed. However the same design needs to be modified based on the CW/Drive test
carried out by field team. The clutter losses are found due to signal losses observed in case of height of the
building, tress or any obstacles to RF signal. The clutter losses directly proportional to nos. of sites.

TRANSMISSION PLANNING/DESIGN (MICROWAVE SITES)

The Transmission planning/design can be carried out based on the cell planning/design.

During the transmission planning following types of the problems are observed.

• Line of Sight (LOS) feasibility

Based on the cell design and using the planning tool like Path loss & Link budget .the numbers of
Microwave sites have been designed. Based on the design the Line of sight survey needs to be carried out.
The nos of sites need to be modified based on the site survey reports. It has been observed for few sites, the
LOS feasibility may not be possible due to different types of obstacles observed. In such scenario the
connectivity path (routes) needs to be changed or additional sites are planned to be deployed. This may
increase the cost of Capex for operator.

• Frequency Assignment
Every Operator has been assigned the Microwave frequency band (e.g. 15 GHz to 18 GHz) by WPC
(Wireless planning commission) agency of Indian governments. Based on the frequency band it has been
experienced that the distance between two sites is more than the distance derived through link budget. In such
scenario the system availability issue may be observed. This may require either the change of frequency band
or the nos. of sites needs to be increased to maintain the system availability.

• Network Interference Analysis

- 11 -
 The Microwave sites have been designed based on the frequency band assigned to each Operator. The
interference has been observed due to neighbor sites or network of other Operator. In such scenario the
Microwave sites have been designed/planned using the different polarization of Antennas or change in the RF
power.

PLANNING/DESIGN OF BASE STATION CONTROLLER (BSC)

The BSC is the central node within a RAN/BSS and co-ordinates the actions of Base Stations (BTS).
The BSC controls a major part of the radio network. Its most important task is to ensure the highest possible
utilization of the radio resources. The BSC rack is designed/configured based on the nos. of BTS sites, the
routes & nos.of the Microwave sites (E1s), sectors & erlangs (Units of voice traffic measurements).The
location for the BSC site is decided only after the design for BTS sites & Microwave sites are frozen. The
relevant configuration may be required to change based on the deployment of additional sites in the circles as
BSC generally is designed to work at its 80% load condition.

TOOLS USED
We are going to use the following tools/software to determine the parameters of the
design of the network and how we can improve and solve the problems at hand.

 Atoll 2.8 - Radio planning and optimisation software:

GIS features :
• Digital Elevation Models

• Clutter data (type and height)

• 3D building data (vector/raster)

• Traffic data

• Scanned maps

• Vector data

• Population data

• Climate data

Drive test data:

- 12 -
 • Import, display and analysis of drive test data
• Call events display and analysis
• Automatic propagation model tuning using drive test data
• Pathloss matrix adjustment using prediction/drive test
interpolation

 NS2- Network Simulator is a discrete event simulator targeted at networking

research. Ns provides substantial support for simulation of TCP, routing, and
multicast protocols over wired and wireless networks

Future Plans
Using the above tools and some others in due course we will try to Minimizing the
effects of the problems stated above and provide an effective solution by simulating the whole
or part of the network using these softwares to give us optimum and practical result, which
can be implemented.

We will be taking up a case study of an operator using a similar network system and try
to study and understand the design and planning of that network.

This will help us design and implement our own network or suggest modifications to
the network so as to minimize the problems which are faced in a RAN design as stated above
and to give an improved and a working and practical design of the network which can be use
commercially by the company with higher efficiency due to the elimination of the problems
faced in the design.

Risk Involved
Like any project, there are a few risks involved in this project. They are as follows:

1. Simulation tools might not be adequate enough to run the entire simulation of the
complete network or some part of it. This might be because the software might
not fully support the exact demands of our project.

- 13 -
 2. There might be lack of the available recourses, software tools or any hardware
requirement which would be needed to get accurate results.

3. Time constrain to finish the project. Completing this project in a year might not
be possible due to the length of the project or due to the some problems in
designing of the network.

4. We might not be able to get our desired output. This might happen if even after
our simulation and case study, we are not able to come to a conclusive and
concrete solution to solve the problems faced in designing the network, as
mentioned above and to get an effective RAN design.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. www.en.wikipedia.org
2. www.google.com
3. Internal notes and journals related to the project from GTL.

- 14 -