Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Frequency Planning: This Is A Technical Document Detailing A Typical Approach To Frequency Planning Process
Frequency Planning: This Is A Technical Document Detailing A Typical Approach To Frequency Planning Process
Frequency Planning
Abstract This is a technical document detailing a typical approach to Frequency Planning Process.
Page 1 of 10
Frequency Planning
Page 2 of 10
Frequency Planning
Frequency Planning
(1.0) Introduction:
The Cellular concept is a system with many low power transmitters, each providing coverage to only a small portion of the service area. Each base station is allocated a portion of the total number of channels available to the entire system, and nearby base station are assigned different group of channels so that the interference between base stations is minimised. The channels assignment in case of GSM900, E-GSM900 and DCS1800 (or GSM1800) is as shown in Figure-(1.1) below,
GSM900 DOWNLINK
Guard Band
E-GSM900 DOWNLINK
1880
DCS1800 UPLINK
DCS1800 DOWNLINK
Fig.- (1.1) Channels Assignment As shown the Uplink and Downlink band are separated by 20 MHz of guard band in case of GSM and DCS and 10 MHz in case of E-GSM. The channel separation between Uplink and Downlink is 45 MHz in case of GSM and E-GSM and is 95MHz in case of DCS network. Each channel(carrier) in GSM system is of 200 KHz bandwidth, which are designated by Absolute Radio Frequency Channel Number (ARFCN). If we call Fl(n) the frequency value of the carrier ARFCN n in the lower band(Uplink), and Fu(n) the corresponding frequency value in the upper band (Downlink), we have: 1 Fu(n) 0 Fu(n) 975 512 124 124
Fl(n) = 890 + 0.2*n Fl(n) = 890 + 0.2*n Fl(n) = 890 + 0.2*(n-1024) Fl(n) = 1710.2 + 0.2*(n-512)
n n
DCS 1800
n 1023 n 885
Fu(n) = Fl(n) + 95
Page 3 of 10
Frequency Planning
Hence we have 124 channels in GSM900, 174 channels in E-GSM900 and 374 channels in DCS1800.
Page 4 of 10
Frequency Planning
or 24 x 0.2 MHz = 4.8 MHz that is about 19% of total spectrum available. Figure 1.2 illustrates the frequency reuse for cluster size of 4, where cells labelled with the same letter use the same group of channels.
B1 B3 D1 B1 D1 D3 D2 C3 A1 A3 A2 D1 D3 D2 C3 C2 B3 B2 C1 A3 A2 C2 B1 D3 D2 A1 C3 C2 D3 D2 C3 C2 B3 B2 C1 A3 A2 D1 B3 B2 C1 A3 A2 D1 B3 B2 C1 D3 D2 A1 C3 C2 D3 B1 D2 A1 C3 C2 B1 A1 A3 A2 D1 B3 B2 C1 B1
B2 C1
Page 5 of 10
Frequency Planning
i R r i
D j
Fig.- (1.3) Re-use distance calculation. Where i and j are non-negative numbers. To find the nearest co-channel neighbour of a particular cell, one must do the following: (1) move i cells along any chain of hexagons and then (2) turn 60 degrees counter-clockwise and move j cells. This is illustrated in the figure above for i = 1 & j = 2 for a cluster size of 7. By increasing the ratio of D/R, the spatial separation between co-channel cells relative to the coverage distance of a cell is increased. Thus interference is reduced due to improved isolation from the co-channel cells. The relation between the re-use distance ratio D/R and the co-channel interference ratio C/I is as below, (D/R)
= 6 (C/I)
(Note: C/I is in dB and should be converted to numeric values for calculation) Here, is the propagation index or attenuation constant with values ranging between 2 to 4.
For the network planning purpose it is recommended that a value of C/Ic 9 dB and the first adjacent channel C/Ia -9 dB. This implies that the first adjacent channel should not be used in the same sector cell or the same base station.
Page 6 of 10
Frequency Planning
(4.1) Example:
As an illustration let us consider that we require to design a system with C/I of 12 dB and we have from field drive test results the value of as 3.5, inserting these values in equation (D/R)
= 6 (C/I) we have,
(D/R)3.5 = 6 x 10.78 = 64.75 3.5 Log(D/R) = Log(64.75) = 1.81 (D/R) = Antilog(1.81/3.5) This gives (D/R) = 3.29. With this we can back calculate the required cluster size from equation D/R = (3 N)1/2 as, N = (3.29)2 / 3 = 3.61 Hence a cluster size of 4 will satisfy our required C/I criteria rather if we back calculate for Cluster of size 4 then we get C/I of 19dB.
TCH
BCCH
TCH
Macro Cell
Micro Cell
The re-use may differ for both the groups, as little or no compromise is made for BCCH frequency interference whereas certain compromise could be made for TCH frequency interference. Typically a cluster size of 4 or 7 is considered for BCCH re-use whereas a cluster size of 3 or 4 is used for TCH re-use. The number of channels in each group depends on the spectrum allocated and C/I criteria for re-use in each case.
(5.1) Example:
Page 7 of 10
Frequency Planning
As an example consider C/I criteria of 12 dB for BCCH then the cluster size of 4 gives the better result whereas if the C/I criteria is 9 dB for TCH, gives the cluster size of 3. The figure (1.1) illustrates the case 4 x 3 re-use pattern for BCCH and the figure (1.4) below illustrates the case of 3 x 3 re-use pattern for TCH,
A1 A3 C1 C3 C2 B3 A1 A3 A2 C3 A2 C3 B1 B2 A3 C1 C2 A3 C1 C2 B3 A1 A2 C3
A1 A2 C3 B1 B2 A3 C1 C2 A3 C1 C2 B3 A1 A2 C3
A1 A2 B1 B2 C1 C2
BCCH TCH
For DCS1800 planning with cluster size of 7 the frequency grouping is as follows, In case of DCS1800 where a large band of spectrum is available the BCCH and TCH re-use can be kept the same.
Set BCCH TCH1 TCH2 A1 1 22 43 B1 2 23 44 C1 3 24 45 D1 4 25 46 E1 5 26 47 F1 6 27 48 G1 7 28 49 A2 8 29 50 B2 9 30 51 C2 10 31 52 D2 11 32 53 E2 12 33 54 F2 13 34 55 G2 14 35 56 A3 15 36 57 B3 16 37 58 C3 17 38 59 D3 18 39 60 E3 19 40 61 F3 20 41 62 G3 21 42 63
(6.1) Example:
Assume a network with 100 base stations each having three sectors. The BCCH and TCH share the same re-use plan 4 x 3. Which means we have cluster of 4 base stations, and in all we have 100/4 = 25 clusters. Assume NCC code allocated is 6, which gives us clusters starting from number 61 to 67. Hence seven clusters form a group and hence we have 25/7 that is 3 groups of 7 clusters plus additional 4 clusters which form part of the 4 th group. The
Page 8 of 10
Frequency Planning
reuse of these 7 clusters group for BSIC numbered from 61 to 67 is shown in the figure (1.5) below,
Fig.-(1.5) BSIC 7 re-use cluster plan. It should be noted that since BSIC are defined at cell (sector) level, hence there are every possible chances that the three sectors within the same site can have different BSIC. The reason being as BSIC is used for cell identification hence cells with same BCCH frequency but different BSIC can be easily discriminated by the MS.
Page 9 of 10
Frequency Planning
Short term fading is different on different frequencies, The interference level is different on different frequencies. The results of frequency hopping are improvement in the received quality in fading situation and interference averaging. (8.1) Frequency Hopping Techniques: The hopping techniques can be broadly classified into two main categories. They are, Base band Hopping Synthesised Hopping As Frequency Hopping is a subject in it self, a separate document will be written concentrating on Frequency Hopping Techniques in near future.
Page 10 of 10