GPD Advanced Network Development Centre

FREQUENCY HOPPING
DEPLOYMENT
PROCESS

Review 0.2
December 1998

Abstract:
The present document describes the steps and actions required to deploy Synthesiser
Frequency Hopping in a GSM system.

MOTOROLA CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY

ANDC
 Frequency Hopping Deployment Process

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SIGN-OFF FORM...................................................................................................................................4

HISTORY OF REVISIONS...................................................................................................................5

1. INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................................6

2. PREREQUISITES...............................................................................................................................7
2.1. COVERAGE OPTIMISATION...............................................................................................7
2.2. TOPOLOGY OPTIMISATION..............................................................................................10
2.3. NEW FREQUENCY PLAN DESIGN....................................................................................10
3. DEPLOYMENT STRATEGY.........................................................................................................12
3.1. INITIAL DEPLOYMENT.....................................................................................................12
3.2. HOPPING EXPANSION.......................................................................................................14
4. OPTIMISATION...............................................................................................................................15

5. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS..........................................................................16

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 Frequency Hopping Deployment Process

TABLE OF FIGURES

FIGURE 1: DIAGRAM OF ACTIVITIES FOR FREQUENCY HOPPING DEPLOYMENT.....7

FIGURE 2: COVERAGE PROBLEMS TO BE SOLVED BEFORE FREQUENCY HOPPING

IMPLEMENTATION.............................................................................................................................8

FIGURE 3: MODIFICATION OF ANTENNA DOWN-TILTS IN THE SYSTEM........................9

FIGURE 4: NEW FREQUENCY PLAN FOR SYNTHESISER FREQUENCY HOPPING

NETWORKS..........................................................................................................................................10

FIGURE 5: REPRESENTATIVE AREA SELECTED FOR INITIAL DEPLOYMENT OF

FREQUENCY HOPPING....................................................................................................................12

FIGURE 6: AREA OF INFLUENCE SURROUNDING THE HOPPING AREA........................13

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 Frequency Hopping Deployment Process

SIGN-OFF FORM

Author: Fernando Sancho Signature: Date: 24th Dec. 1998

Revised: Roberto García Signature: Date: 24th Dec. 1998

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 Frequency Hopping Deployment Process

HISTORY OF REVISIONS

Revision Date Author Revised by Changes Description

0.1 23/12/98 Fernando Sancho Roberto García First version

Javier Escamilla

0.2 24/12/98 Fernando Sancho Roberto García Changes in the structure and
explaining comments

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 Frequency Hopping Deployment Process

1. INTRODUCTION

The present document describes the process that must be followed to implement Frequency
Hopping in a system.
These activities are essential prerequisites for a successful performance of a frequency
hopping network and, although could be also helpful in standard fixed frequency networks, they are
more critical when frequency hopping is enabled because of the tight reuses associated to it.
The initial state of the network is assumed to be a system with fixed frequency plan, and the
list of steps will include actions carried out at different stages of the system:
• Preliminary actions before Frequency Hopping implementation
• Frequency Hopping activation
• Optimisation and monitoring phases after the deployment
This document will propose a method of deployment, and describes the list of steps with
some aspects to be considered. Additional information and details required to carry out some of the
mentioned activities can be found in the following available documents:
[1] “Network optimisation based on CTP” by ANDC
[2] “Frequency hopping for capacity and quality improvement” by ANDC
[3] “Capacity enhancement with SFH 1x1” by ANDC

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 Frequency Hopping Deployment Process

2. PREREQUISITES

Frequency hopping provides important improvements to the performance of a GSM system

as a consequence of the two key effects:
• Increased immunity to fading: Consequence of frequency diversity achieved with
frequency hopping, taking advantage of the frequency selective nature of the fading.
• Interference averaging: Achieved because the set of calls interfering with the
wanted call may be continually changing. Calls tend to experience and "average"
quality rather than extremes of good and bad quality.
These two advantages permit to improve the quality in the systems and give the possibility
of increasing the capacity.
In spite of the successful results achieved in the SFH implementations showing its
robustness and utility in all kind of scenarios, it is true that the characteristics of the network will
determine in a certain degree the importance of the results. In particular, there are some
characteristics and aspects that the system must have in order to be able to reach all the benefits with
frequency hopping implementation.
Keeping in mind this objective, the first steps will permit to prepare the network and put it
on the best conditions for frequency hopping to make its best in terms of quality and capacity
improvements. Following these preliminary phases, the process of implementation, analysis and
optimisation need to be done correctly in order not to impact the performance of the system during
the process.
Figure 1 shows a diagram with the standard activities that will be required during the FH
deployment process.

FIXED SYSTEM FREQUENCY HOPPING SYSTEM

Database
Performance
Optimisation
Monitoring
(HO & PC)

Cell Frequency Advanced Frequency

Coverage Hopping Features Hopping
Optimisation Implementation Introduction Optimisation

Design BCCH
and Hopping
Plans
Figure 1: Diagram of activities for frequency hopping deployment

A set of actions need to be performed before the configuration of frequency hopping in the
cells, in order to ensure good performance and ensure successful performance of the system.

2.1. COVERAGE OPTIMISATION

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 Frequency Hopping Deployment Process
In high traffic areas, such as big cities, the quality and capacity of the system are limited by
the interference caused by frequency reuse. In a system, the Carrier to Interference ratio (C/I) may
vary a lot among calls. The interference level changes depending on whether the frequency is being
used by another call in some nearby cell and also according to the distance with the interference
source, its level, etc.
For planning purposes, the maximum capacity of a system is calculated based on a given
percentage of calls subject to a noticeable quality degradation due to interference.
In a conventional fixed plan system, a call potentially receives interference from a small
number of calls whereas the number of potential interfering cells in a system with frequency hopping
is higher. The principle based on which capacity can be increased with Frequency Hopping is to
spread the interference among many calls of a potential interfering cell instead of a single one as in a
conventional fixed system and to reuse the frequencies more closely. This situation of tighter reuse
patterns and more potential interfering cells leads to an interference environment where the
performance of the system is determined by the possibilities to keep interference under control.
Standard frequency reuses implemented with frequency hopping are one-site reuse (normally referred
as 1x3) or one-cell reuse (normally referred as 1x1).
Apart from the software features such as Power Control, Discontinuous Transmission, etc.
that help in this kind of scenario, the topology of the network and the design play an important role.
It is very important to control and restrict the coverage of the cells to the useful zone where the cell
effectively is the server. Radiation introduced in points where the cell is not required to serve
represent interference, that is more harmful as the frequency reuse becomes tighter.
The most usual problems that affect the coverage on the network and degrade the quality
provided to the subscriber need to be solved before frequency hopping implementation, otherwise
they will be more noticeable and the performance will be negatively impacted. The most important
situations that should be addressed are shown in figure 2.

Overshooting Communication

Interference

Hole
Overlap

Figure 2: Coverage problems to be solved before frequency hopping implementation

• Coverage holes: Places with no coverage or low level coverage, where there is no
dominant server are potential spots of bad quality. In an environment with tight reuse
pattern, and hence higher noise (interference) level, a clear dominant server cell needs
to be identified everywhere. This points need to be identified and new sites can be
required to provide extra coverage.
• Excessive Overlap: Cells covering an area bigger than the zone where they are
dominant and serving, are radiating useless power to areas where other cells are serving.
When the same frequencies are reused in all the sites (1x3 reuse) or even in all the cells
(1x1 pattern), this unnecessary overlap is directly translated into interference.
• Cell Over-shooting: Particularly harmful are the situations where the signal of a
cell reaches areas far away from the site with high level, causing downlink interference,
and receiving uplink interference from mobiles far away. In the cases where the level is

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 Frequency Hopping Deployment Process
high enough to make this cell be the server, mobiles transmit high power introducing
very high uplink interference in the surrounding cells.
• Umbrella Cells: Some particular sites placed in high areas, hills, etc. in the fist
stages of the network evolution, to make big coverage areas have become umbrella cells
as the network density has increased. They are creating areas with total overlap between
cells, and taking part of the traffic that should be carried by lower and closer sites. The
level of interference caused by this kind of cells is very high, especially harmful in the
uplink path because these cells receive the signal from a big amount of mobiles.
Excluding possible requirements of new sites or cells, all the situations described will be
addressed with an appropriate analysis of the antennae systems. Basically, characteristics as antenna
beam-width, down-tilt, height, etc. need to be reviewed to adjust them to the current state of the
network (most of the times re-engineering tasks are not carried out in the existing sites when new
ones are put in service).
Lowering some high sites will eliminate umbrella cells and reduce interference in some
cases, but the most important and easiest activity is the down-tilt adjustment on the antennae in order
to tailor the coverage to the useful area (changes of antenna type can also be required in some cases).
Figure 3 shows an schema of the benefit that will be achieved by recalculating the antenna tilts.

Figure 3: Modification of antenna down-tilts in the system

The objectives of this coverage adjustment plan are the following ones:
• Reduce the global interference level in the system and permit tighter reuse patterns.
• Improve the in-building penetration, focusing the power radiated in a limited and
well-defined area. The coverage in these scenarios will improve at the same time that the
quality.
• Avoid undesired over-shooting effects.
• Balance the carried traffic between neighbour cells because the area to be covered
between them is divided with the same weight per cell.
A methodology to optimise the coverage of the cells, pointing out all the problems listed
below and suggesting a method to correct them, has been developed based on CTP tool. A
detailed description of the process is included in the document reference [1].

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 Frequency Hopping Deployment Process
2.2. TOPOLOGY OPTIMISATION

As a consequence of the redesign of the network structure, by adding new sites, reducing the
height of some antennae, changing the antenna type, down-tilting them, etc. it is necessary to check
two particular aspects:
• When the antennae are down-tilted and the coverage is limited and concentrated in
a determined area, the power transmitted by the BTS can be increased to the maximum
value because the energy is focussed to the useful coverage area. The path-balance of
the cells, particularly the ones modified in the coverage optimisation phase, needs to be
checked in order to decide the power adjustment required to have the cells well
balanced.
• The redefinition of the coverage areas will require modifications in the neighbour
topology. The neighbour lists of the cells need to be optimised in order to exclude
neighbours that are useless after the coverage optimisation.
Call trace data analysis with CTP tool and neighbour statistics will supply the information
required to carry out these activities.

2.3. NEW FREQUENCY PLAN DESIGN

One of the most important tasks required to deploy frequency hopping is to redesign a new
frequency plan. The implementation of frequency hopping requires particular aspects to be
considered whilst doing the frequency plan. Figure 4 describes the methodology involved.

n channels m channels

TCH BCCH

A A
C C
B B D
FE
I G
H J
L
K

Figure 4: New frequency plan for synthesiser frequency hopping networks

For the case of synthesiser frequency hopping, the first action is to separate the spectrum
available for the frequency plan into two different sub-bands that will be dedicated independently for
BCCHs and hopping groups. The different behaviour of the fixed frequencies and the frequency
hopping justifies this distribution:
• The frequency reuse used for hopping and non-hopping carriers is different, being
tighter the hopping pattern. The frequency planning is easier having different groups of
frequencies to implement the two reuse patterns.
• Features very useful for hopping like power control and discontinuous transmission
are not available on BCCH carriers, so the frequencies used for BCCH will be
permanently on the air with maximum power. The interference that these carriers can

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 Frequency Hopping Deployment Process
introduce in the system will seriously affect the hopping performance in case that the
same frequencies are reused for hopping and non-hopping.
According to the number of frequencies dedicated for the plan and the reuse pattern to be
implemented, the frequency plans for BCCH carriers and hopping is designed:
• BCCH carriers will typically follow a 4x3 or 5x3 pattern. It is advisable to have a
quite clean BCCH plan, so particularities of the network will be considered to estimate
the minimum number of frequencies to be dedicated for this purpose (a good
compromise solution needs to be adopted considering the amount of spectrum
available).
• Frequency hopping carriers will be planned with the different hopping groups
defined, according to the hopping reuse pattern. The frequency band dedicated for
hopping will be distributed in 3 groups (1x3 pattern) or used as a unique group (1x1
pattern). The last step is to assign a hopping group to every cell in the system trying to
configure the selected hopping pattern (this task will be conditioned by the irregularities
of the network). Adaptive (non-regular) frequency hopping plans are a possible
alternative still under study.
The frequency hopping plan is made on a per cell (hopping carriers only) basis, meaning
that all the hopping carriers use the same group of frequencies. An important point in frequency
hopping planning is the differentiation among all the hopping carriers, which is based on the MAIO
parameter. An additional step is required to design a MAIO plan for the hopping configuration, and a
hopping sequence for the cell or site. Further information about detailed frequency hopping planning
can be found in the references [2] and [3].
For base band hopping systems other different distributions of the spectrum can be valid
because it is quite similar to a fixed frequency plan.

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 Frequency Hopping Deployment Process

3. DEPLOYMENT STRATEGY

This chapter refers to the real implementation of frequency hopping in the network: The
BCCH and hopping plans previously designed are implemented in the system.
Normally the vast deployment of frequency hopping is initiated in a representative area and
after performance evaluation and introduction of possible corrections over standard parameters if
required, this initial zone is expanded. Some indications about this initial implementation and further
expansion will be given next.
At the deployment stage, the following aspects need to have been covered:
• Definition of the objectives expected with frequency hopping implementation.
• Definition of evaluation criteria to assess the quality and performance of the
hopping system.
• Benchmarking of the reference system (configuration before hopping
implementation).
• Preparation of the new databases with the changes required by the hopping system.

3.1. INITIAL DEPLOYMENT

As mentioned before, the fist contact with frequency hopping is normally the
implementation in a test scenario configured by a representative area within the network. This initial
deployment will allow to customise hopping parameters to the specific characteristics of the network.
Figure 5 represents the situation.

Figure 5: Representative area selected for initial deployment of frequency hopping

The main requirement for this area is to be representative of the whole system (city, region,
etc.) in order to have the possibility to extrapolate the results to the entire network. The intention is to
reproduce the same situation at low scale, so the characteristics of the selected area must be the same
as the ones of the system. Some valuable indications can be:

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 Frequency Hopping Deployment Process
• The size of the area must be big enough to reach meaningful conclusions,
considering that the border of the area must be excluded from the conclusions because
of the interaction with the rest of the system. 15 to 20 sites are a reasonable and
representative size.
• The configuration of the sites in this area must be the standard one used in the
network, and the traffic load should be similar to the average carried by the system.
• This area must be as much isolated as possible, to avoid the interference in the
borders between the hopping area and the surrounding non-hopping zones.
It is very important to pay some attention to the area surrounding the selected zone (see
Figure 6), in order to minimise the interaction between them. Normally the negative influence will be
noticeable from the external zone (without hopping) towards the hopping area, so particular
considerations are advisable to be taken into account.
The external interference affecting the test area and originated by the surrounding sites must
be avoided or at least minimised. Two main action points can be considered:
1. The BCCH plan in the isolation area must follow the same plan used for the
hopping area, to avoid that any hopping frequency be interfered by an external BCCH
carrier.
2. The frequencies used for non-hopping TCH in the external cells pointing at the
hopping area should not reuse any frequency of the hopping band. In case this is not
possible, at least the frequency should not be included in the hopping sequence used in
the cell that receives direct interference from outside.

Figure 6: Area of influence surrounding the hopping area

As mentioned in previous chapters, the scenario configured by frequency hopping is ruled by

the interference, so any action taken to reduce the interference level is advisable. Power control is a
feature that must be used with frequency hopping, and that must be set quite aggressive in order to
power down both BTS and mobile to the minimum power required. It is quite common to optimise
this mechanism in the hopping system.
The reference documents [2] and [3] detail more optimisation actions to be done at the time
of frequency hopping implementation.

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3.2. HOPPING EXPANSION

After the first implementation of frequency hopping in a selected area, the experience and
knowledge acquired will be used to expand the area and deploy the hopping in bigger areas.
As the size of the area with hopping becomes bigger, the gains and benefits will be higher,
because the border effects will be minimised. The normal process is to expand the hopping area with
homogeneous configuration to defined geographical areas (cities, regions, etc.).
Apart from the benefits in terms of quality and performance achieved with the expansion of
hopping, it is important the reduction in planning work, because the whole area uses the same
pattern, so there is no co-existence of different patterns.

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4. OPTIMISATION

The process described for introduction of frequency hopping, provided that it is correctly
done, guarantees a good performance of the system with significant improvements in quality and
advantages for capacity.
In spite of that, any irregularity in the network will introduce a disturbance in the hopping
scheme, so impacting in a certain degree the performance. At this point, optimisation tasks can be
required to improve the quality. The most common modifications introduced at this point are:
• Frequency changes on BCCH carriers.
• Modifications of the hopping groups by increasing the number of frequencies in the
list.
• Changes in the assignment of the hopping groups to the cells.
• Modifications in the quality thresholds for handovers and power control.
Higher improvement of the performance can be achieved by enabling specific features
designed for frequency hopping systems:
• Separate RxQual thresholds for hopping and non-hopping carriers
• Priority per carrier.
• Specific SDCCH placement
These activities are described more in detail in references [1], [2] and [3].

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5. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The process described in this document is the result of a vast experience obtained from
different frequency hopping networks. The activities that normally are required in a hopping system
have been put sequentially in the right order to achieve a quicker and secure deployment of this
technique in a live network.
Coverage optimisation can be considered the most critical and important task. Uncontrolled
radiation causes an important increase in the interference of the system that degrades the quality and
limits the capacity increase possibilities. To have the interference under control through down-tilt
optimisation and antenna changes is a guarantee for success of the frequency hopping system.
The other important aspect is the frequency planning. A clean and well-done frequency plan
will determine directly the quality of the system.
It is strongly recommended to follow the steps described, specially the prerequisites to
accomplish before the deployment, in order to get the maximum benefit of this powerful technique.

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