Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Based on ArcGIS
White Paper
October 2009
Copyright © 2009 HNIT-BALTIC. All rights reserved. Cellular Expert and Cellular Expert logo are registered trademarks, @hnit-baltic.lt and www.hnit-baltic.lt are service marks of
HNIT-BALTIC in Lithuania and some other countries. In the United States and in some countries ArcGIS, ArcView, Spatial Analyst, 3D Analyst, ArcSDE are registered trademarks of
Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. The names of other products herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective trademark owners.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ____________________________________________________________ 6
2. System Configuration ____________________________________________________ 8
2.1. License types ______________________________________________________________ 8
2.2. Single-User Environment ____________________________________________________ 8
2.3. Multi-User Environment _____________________________________________________ 8
2.4. Cellular Expert Reader _____________________________________________________ 10
3. Cellular Expert Licenses _________________________________________________ 11
4. Data Management ______________________________________________________ 12
4.1. Network Data Management __________________________________________________ 12
4.1.1. Sites ___________________________________________________________________________12
4.1.2. Customers ______________________________________________________________________13
4.1.3. Constructions ____________________________________________________________________13
4.1.4. Sectors _________________________________________________________________________14
4.1.5. Passive Repeaters ________________________________________________________________14
4.1.6. Cells ___________________________________________________________________________14
4.2. Radio Equipment Data Management __________________________________________ 14
4.2.1. Antenna Editor ___________________________________________________________________15
4.2.2. Antenna Import and Export _________________________________________________________17
4.2.3. Radio Channels __________________________________________________________________18
4.2.4. Modulation Performance ___________________________________________________________18
4.2.5. Carriers ________________________________________________________________________19
4.2.6. Spectrum Density Masks ___________________________________________________________20
4.2.7. Radio Systems ___________________________________________________________________20
4.2.8. Equipment Availability _____________________________________________________________21
4.2.9. Adaptive Modulation_______________________________________________________________21
4.2.10. Feeders ______________________________________________________________________21
4.2.11. Radio components ______________________________________________________________22
5. Radio Path Profiling and Visibility Analysis _________________________________ 24
5.1. Radio Path Profiling________________________________________________________ 24
5.1.1. Profiling calculations ______________________________________________________________24
5.1.2. Obstacle Management _____________________________________________________________25
5.1.3. Multi-path and reflection point analysis ________________________________________________25
5.1.4. Reflection Analysis ________________________________________________________________26
5.1.5. Antenna heights optimizer __________________________________________________________27
5.2. Visibility Analysis _________________________________________________________ 28
6. Transmission Network Design and Analysis ________________________________ 30
6.1. Radio Links Management ___________________________________________________ 30
6.2. Power Budget Analysis _____________________________________________________ 30
6.3. Performance Prediction ____________________________________________________ 31
6.4. Geoclimatic Data __________________________________________________________ 32
6.5. Protection and Diversity ____________________________________________________ 32
6.5.1. Equipment Protection Options _______________________________________________________32
6.5.2. Propagation Diversity Options _______________________________________________________32
6.6. Power Flux Density Calculation ______________________________________________ 33
6.7. Terrain Scattering Analysis _________________________________________________ 34
6.8. Interference Analysis_______________________________________________________ 34
6.9. Automatic Radio Link Frequency Planning_____________________________________ 35
6.10. Radio Link Capacity Planning _______________________________________________ 36
Cellular Expert is more than just a network planning tool. The software is developed on the
world’s leading Geographical Information System (GIS) platform - ArcGIS™, which has been
developed by the industry leader ESRI Inc. ArcGIS allows analyzing data and author
geographic knowledge to examine relationships, test predictions, and ultimately make better
decisions. ArcGIS provides a complete set of tools for modeling geographic information to
support smarter, faster decisions. ArcGIS can be used to discover and characterize geographic
patterns, model and analyze against all sources of geographic data, optimize network and
resource allocation, automate workflows through a visual modeling environment and use
comprehensive spatial modeling and analysis tools to reveal answers in your data. Extensions
for ArcGIS are specialized tools that add more capabilities and allow performing extended tasks
such as spatial analysis, raster geoprocessing, three-dimensional analysis, map publishing and
other tasks.
Cellular Expert supports database versioning. In addition to main database several versions
(e.g. planned Q1, alternative Q1,…) can be created. Depending on task complexity, network
size several workflows can be applied:
Two-Level Tree
Many organizations employ a more structured process that
tracks discrete work units of construction or maintenance.
These work units typically span a time interval of days,
weeks, or months and represent tasks such as adding new
phone service.
When a work order or project is initiated, a version is created.
One or several people work on this version until the design or construction is complete. At that
point, reconciliation or posting are done to merge the work order features into the main
database, and then the work order version can be removed.
Multilevel Tree
Some organizations’ projects have a higher level of structure
and can be subdivided into functional or geographic parts.
For larger projects with departments and teams, a multilevel
version tree is an effective way to organize work flow. The
teams that are working on each aspect of the project have
their own version, with which they can maintain a private
view of their designs and then post the designs when
constructed.
Cyclical
Many projects go through a prescribed or regulated set of
stages that require engineering, administrative, or legal
approval before proceeding to the next stage.
A version represents each stage of this process. A cyclical
workflow can capture the design at each stage, and when
the last stage is reached and finished, the design can be
posted directly to the default version, which represents the
nominal state of the database.
Extended History
For some projects, it is desirable to preserve a version that
reflects a historic state of a project.
You can define a historic version on a project version, and
when the project version is posted to its parent version, the
historic version remains as a snapshot in time.
4.1.1. Sites
The Site represents geographical location of a radio base station. It is identified by the unique site ID and
contains information about geographical coordinates, ground altitude, base height and other attributes.
4.1.2. Customers
Customers, represent locations of individual subscribers in the point-to-multipoint networks. In addition to site
parameters, it may contain customer’s address and phone number information. Usually customer locations
represent antenna mountings on the rooftops of buildings.
4.1.3. Constructions
Some sites may have several constructions, where radio transceivers are mounted. They are identified by IDs
of construction and site. The construction may have altitude and base height which differ from the
corresponding site's height.
4.1.4. Sectors
Sector represents radio transmitting and/or receiving equipment mounted on the corresponding site or
construction. It is identified by IDs of site and sector and may be prescribed a construction ID, if available.
Sector's attributes contain information about antenna type, orientation and height above ground, cell name,
feeder loss and other parameters depending on the type of the equipment. Depending on the nature of the radio
service, sectors may be divided into two types: cellular and transmission sectors. The cellular sectors are
equipped with broad-beam antennas used in point-to-area or point-to-multipoint communications. The
transmission sectors usually have unidirectional parabolic antennas and operate at a fixed set of frequencies.
On the contrary, the cellular sectors are usually equipped with broadband transceivers and employ TDMA or
CDMA access technology.
4.1.6. Cells
Cells are used for frequency reuse planning in cellular networks. They denote carriers list and other common
radio channel parameters for a given sector. The concept of cell is extended to transmission networks to
describe frequency plans for the fixed radio links. Each cell has a carriers list defining the frequency plan
within the cell. Based on the number of different channels contained by the cell, all cells are divided into
single-channel and multi-channel cells. Single-channel cell may contain carriers which belong to a single
channel. The name of such a cell coincides with the name of the corresponding channel. The links within such
a cell may use only carriers of a single channel, but they can be switched to another single-channel cell. As a
rule, single-channel cells are used to build links for point-to-point transmission networks. Multi-channel cells
may contain unlimited number of different channels. Such a cell allows switching link channels within the
predefined carriers list. Carriers list is created by allocating channel group to a set of different cells. Such cells
are typical in cellular mobile or access networks. To differentiate between single- and multi-channel cells, a
channel multiplicity parameter is defined. It is zero for single-channel cells and represents a number of
different channels for multi-channel cells.
There are two different types of editor dialogs for parabolic and sector antennas. The
differences are in the number of radiation patterns. The parabolic antennas may have four (HH,
VV, HV, VH, for dual polarization) or two (HH, HV, for horizontal, or VV, VH, for vertical
polarization) radiation patterns.
In case of sector antennas, there are always two polarization patterns: vertical and horizontal.
Antenna Import
Antenna patterns can be exported from Cellular Expert database to Planet, NSMA and Andrew
formats.
Antenna Export
Radio channel editor contains a list of various parameters pertaining to digital radio channel:
Min, Max and Center frequency
Carrier's width
Bit rate
Block size
Mean number of errors per burst
Dispersive fade margin
Modulation type
The parameters can be changed directly or with the help of edit and select buttons:
4.2.5. Carriers
Carrier editor enables the user to define channel frequency plan. It can automatically generate
carriers list for simplex or duplex channel based on the following predefined parameters:
Lowest and highest frequencies
Channel and duplex spacings
Number of carriers.
After these parameters are entered, carrier table can be automatically generated. Each row in
the table represents carrier frequency of the corresponding transceiver.
Carrier previewer displays the carriers list representation on the frequency axis.
Carrier Editor
Equipment Availability
4.2.10. Feeders
Feeder editor dialog allows entering waveguide data:
Type
Size
Cellular Expert White Paper 21
Length
Attenuation
Several frequency bands are supported only in transmission link planning module. For cellular
networks, attenuation is defined by first frequency band in the table.
Feeder Editor
The main parameter used in cellular network analysis is insertion loss given in dB, which is
added to miscellaneous losses of a sector.
Clearance:
o Clearance, m
o Clearance distance, km
o Normalized clearance, %
o Normalized clearance distance, km
Losses:
o Free space loss, dB
o Dual slope free space loss, dB
o Rain attenuation, dB
o Gaseous absorption, dB
o Sub-Path diffraction, dB
o Correction for multipath effects, dB
o Correction for multipath and focusing, dB
o Total loss, dB
Reflections:
o Received signal, dB
o Reflection distance, m
o Delay, ns
o Grazing angle, rad
o Divergence factor
o Terrain roughness, m
o Inclination, mrad
Multi-path Analysis
Visibility Analysis
Advanced Visibility Analysis tool has the capability to define constant transmitter and receiver
heights or obtain them from defined layers, use real r effective earth radius, calculate Fresnel
visibility clearance and normalized clearance, calculate the number of visible sites for the
analyzed area and the required receiver height to achieve visibility.
Terrain Scattering
Clutter
Clutter
Radio tower
Obstacle
LOS
OLOS
OOLOS
CLOS
COLOS
The connection of drive test data points to serving cells can be visualized on the map.
Live data from switch can imported in text file or dBase table and automatically linked to
particular cells. Live traffic data spreading can be done using weighted raster of clutters, the
Best Server raster and live traffic data.
Using Traffic raster and current or planned raster of Best Server, traffic load for each
Sector/Cell/Site can be estimated.
8.4. Monte Carlo Traffic Simulation for UMTS, HSDPA and LTE
Monte Carlo Traffic Simulation tool is used for cell capacity prediction. It supports UMTS, HSDPA and
LTE networks. The simulation is based on statistical analysis of randomly generated mobile users.
Buffer 1
Buffer 3
LTE simulation takes into account MIMO antenna and OFDMA modulation gains. Proportionally fair
scheduling takes advantage of high SNR regions to maximize capacity.
NTx NRx
Tx Rx
re
Downlink and uplink direction analysis is available. The WiMAX Parameters calculator supports
OFDMA(802.16-2004) and SOFDMA (802.16e) multiplexing technologies.
Cellular Expert allows you to overlay 3D antenna pattern and prediction results such as field
strength, best server or interference prediction on 3D terrain. This feature is very useful for
planning in dense urban areas with high resolution data.
Network equipment data Parabolic and Sector antennas, Feeders, Combiners, other components
Modulation performance tables
Carriers list, Radios, Spectrum masks
Propagation Modeling
HATA Basic algorithm: Okumura - Hata
Model type: Point-to-multipoint
Frequency: ~ 150 MHz - 2 GHz
Distance: up to 100 km
Hata Model Parameters:
Standard (ETR 364, COST 231,ITU-R P.529)
Macro Model
9999 Model (Ericsson)
Effective Antenna Height methods:
Absolute, Profile, Average, Relative, Slope
Walfish-Ikegami Basic algorithm: COST 231 Model (ETR 364, COST 231)
Model type: Point-to-area (multipoint)
Frequency: about 800 MHz - 2 GHz
Distance: up to 5 km
Drive Test Analysis Import formats: Ericsson TEMS, Motorola iFTA, NEMO, ASCII files
Drive test post-processing:
Statistical analysis
Filtering
Averaging
Drive test decomposition
Prediction update with drive test data
Measurements to Serving cell connection
Drive test data player
Memory/RAM:
1 GB minimum
If using the ArcSDE Personal Edition for Microsoft SQL Server Express software, 2 GB of
RAM is required.
Display Properties:
Color depth: Greater than 256 color
Screen Resolution: 1024 x 768 recommended or higher at Normal size (96dpi)
HNIT-BALTIC, UAB
S. Konarskio 28A
LT-03127 Vilnius
Lithuania
Phone: +370 5 2150575
Fax: +370 5 2150576
E-mail: cellexp@hnit-baltic.lt
www.cellular-expert.com