A CELL PLANNING SCHEME FOR WCDMA SYSTEMS USING GENETIC ALGORITHM

AND PERFORMANCE SIMULATION PLATFORM

Hsin-Piao Lin', Rong-Terng Juang', Shiann-Shiuu Jeng', and Chen-Wan Tsung

Institute of Computer and Communication, National Taipei University of Technology. No. 1, Sec. 3, Chung-Hsiao E. Road
Taipei, Taiwan, hplin@en.ntut.edu.tw, s1669013@ntut.edu.tw
Department of Electrical Engineering, National Dong Hwa University, ssjeng@mail.ndhu.edu.tw

Abstract - This paper presents a cell planning scheme using
genetic algorithm with the help of propagation model and
digitized building information to achieve the acceptable
solutions based on suffering from less impact of background
noise for the WCDMA systems. Among these solutions, the
best one is selected by a performance simulation platform
with a RAKE receiver, which evaluates the BER
performance with delay profiles obtained from ray-tracing
simulator. The required coverage and maximum throughput
can be achieved with the optimum solution for base station
number, locations, antennas heights, and transmitting power.
Thus, an easy and efficient cell planning for WCDMA
systems in the initial stage of system development could be
delivered.
Keywords - Cells planning, genetic algorithm, delay profile.
I. INTRODUCTION
Third generation (3G) mobile communication systems
brought up many attentions in these few years. Among the
proposed radio transmission technologies, Wideband code
division multiple access (WCDMA) scheme has emerged as
the most widely adopted 3G air interface technology.
However, CDMA is characterized as an interference-limited
system, i.e. the higher interference power level decreases the
system coverage and data throughput. The analysis in [ 1-21
show that capacity per cell is sensitive to the cell coverage
and interference. To utilize radio resource efficiently, i.e.
maximizing the coverage and throughput with minimum
economy cost, a robust cell planning algorithm must be
developed. In this field, genetic algorithm (GA), developed
by Holland 1131, is often applied to optimize the system
parameters. GA is a nature-inspired algorithmic technique
basing on the principles of natural evolution and widely
used to solve optimisation problems [4-51. Numerous
attempts have been proposed to optimize network
performances in terms of capacity, coverage, quality of
service, etc., using GAS [6-91. However, little attention has
given to the wideband channel characteristics, i.e. delay
spread, in the studies of cell planning. Due to the difference
in time delay of the multi-path waves, the channel usually
suffers with power fading and inter-symbol interference (ISI)
[lo-111. Serious IS1 could result in bit transmission error
and degrade transmission quality. Nevertheless, proper
utilization of the multi-path components yields benefits in
wideband channels. For example, RAKE receiver gathers
multi-path components up to a higher signal power to
improve BER (bit error rate) performance [12].
This paper proposes a methodology for system development
of WCDMA to mitigate the impact of the background noise
on system performance and utilize multi-path waves to
improvement bit transmission. A simple GA is used to
achieve the acceptable solutions to the cell planning. In the
work, Walfisch-Ikegami propagation model [ 13-14] is
employed for predicting signal levels. Walfisch-Ikegami
model has been verified as an accurate model for predicting
propagation path loss in urban area with smaller cells [15].
Among the acceptable solutions, a performance simulation
platform with a RAKE receive is used to evaluate the BER
performance due to power delay profile. Thus, the required
coverage and maximum throughput of WCDMA system can
be achieved with the optimum solution of less base station
number, better locations, and reduce transmitting power.
11. CELL PLANNING SCHEME
A. Cell Planning Using Genetic Algorithm
The proposed planning scheme mitigates the performance
impact from background noise using a simple GA. The
procedure begins by contemplating the definition of the
required signal to noise ratio (SNR). The uplink case is
explained in the first place and the SNR is given by [ 161
w Py'
SNR, =-.- (1)
vlR, P, + I:"
where W is the chip rate, 3.84Mcps, V, is the activity factor
of userj at physical layer, 0.67 for speech and 1.0 for data,
R, is the bit rate of user j , P'"' is the received power from
userj, P, is the background noise level including thermal
noise and noise from any man-made transmitters within
other communication systems, and I:" , the co-channel
interference related to user j , is the interference power
coming from other links operating at the same frequency
band within the same system. The total received power
Itoralcan be expressed as the summation of the background
noise level, co-channel interference, and the received power

0-7803-8523-3/04/$20.00 02004 IEEE.

2560
from user j , i.e. Z,o,al= P,, +I;) +<“I . By defining environment, will survive in evolution process, but
otherwise eliminated. After the elimination by the natural
P,’”’= L, .I,--, , the load factor L, of one link has the form
environment, the survivals mates with each other and bear
1 their offspring. The offspring inherit their parents’ genes,
L, = (2)
W which are the same as their parents or even better. The best
A I

( E , I N o ) , .RI ‘ V , gene could be obtained bv iterating the evolution mocess.

where ( E , /No),is the SNR of link j . For 1V users with the
same traffic type in the cell, the system loading 7 is

&L, ,il (3)

The received power excluding the background noise level
may be expressed as
Ir& - P#F = 11 . (4)
In the analysis of uplink coverage, a clompound traffic
pattern is set as a mixed of 80% speech users (12.2kpbs user
data rate), 15% of 144kpbs and 5% of 384.kpbs data users.
The minimum SNR requirements for the traffic pattern are
assumed as 5dB, 1.5dB and l.OdB, respectively. According
to (2), the averaged load factor, E,, is 0.01 85 if the SNR of
every link reaches the minimum requirement. Using (4), the
total received power, Z,e,a,, could be obtained if the system
loading and the background noise level are given. If the user
traffic type is also specified, the minimum received power
-
from user j is determined by P”’= L, .I,o,d. Because 9‘“’is
the production of the mobile transmitting power multiplying
the path gain, the maximum allowed path loss could be
evaluated once the mobile transmitting power is set. Given
the mobile transmitting power as OSW, Fig. 1 shows the
relationship between the background noise levels and the
maximum allowed uplink path loss underes different system
loadings, 50%, 60% and 70%. The figure indicates that the
cell coverage range will be larger at a loweir noise level.
The analysis of the downlink data throughput is based on a
similar principle as the uplink case. The base station (BS)
transmitting power is lW, a compound traffic pattern the
same to uplink case is adopted, and 4 different maximum
allowed path losses, 130dB, 135dB, 14Od13 and 145dB, are
set. Different maximum allowed path loss results in different
cell coverage range. If the BS transmitting power, the
maximum allowed path loss and user traffic pattern are
specified, the total received power I,,, is solved by
Ira#!= P”‘/q. If the background noise level is also given,
the system loading 17 could be obtained according to (4). As
a result, the system data throughput is yield by the
production of the average data rate multiplying the system
loading. Figure 2 shows the relationship between the
background noise levels and maximurn downlink data
throughput. This figure exhibits that the system data
throughput will be higher at a lower noise level.
Based on the performance evaluation, a simple GA is used
to achieve the acceptable solutions to the cell planning. The
individuals with better gene, which leads to be fitter for the
Fig. 1. The maximum allowed path loss at different
background noise power levels for different system loadings
in the
Fig. 2. The maximum data throughput at different
background noise power levels for different path loss (Lmax)
in the downlink WCDMA system.
The GA used here is a binary version and much likely as in
[6]. The GA is intended to find a solution to achieve a
specified system coverage and a maximum data throughput,
where the performance is impacted by less background
noise and the number of BSs used is minimized. Figure 3 is
the flowchart of the proposed cell planning. First, the
possible locations for setting BSs are selected according to
the digitized building information. Then, the performance of
each possible BS is evaluated basing on the principles above.
The maximum uplink allowed path loss is determined under
the conditions 1) 0.5W mobile transmitting power 2) 75%
system loading and 3) the presence of uplink background
noise in the cell. The cell range is calculated using Walfisch-
Ikegami model, and the data throughput is evaluated under
the conditions 1) specified transmitting power 2) the cell’s
maximum uplink allowed path loss and 3) the presence of
downlink background noise in the cell. Having got the
possible BS locations and its corresponding cell
performance, the GA resolves what combination of these
possible BSs accompanying their own parameters would be
acceptable solutions.

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 because the downlink framework is similar to that of the
uplink. Figure 4 shows the uplink channel architecture of the
W-CDMA system, where J channels composed of K data
channels and J-K control channels are respectively
multiplexed into I/Q channel for DPCH at each mobile.
Each channel in DPCH owns its data rate, and DPCH must
provide at least one channel to transmit the control signal,
such as the pilot signal, the power control command, and so
on. For these channels, the channelization codes, Orthogonal
Variable Spreading Factors (OVSF) ranging from 4 to 256
for the multi-rate signal scheme, make their own bit streams
with various data rates multiplexed and transmitted
simultaneously at the same carrier. To ensure the received
quality of each channel, a set of weights pi is designed to

Fig. 3. Flowchart of the proposed cell planning scheme.

The BS location, height and transmitting power are encoded
in chromosome encoding, and the cell performance of each
chromosome combination is referred to the results
calculated at previous step. Then, fitness function evaluates
the fitness quantities of each chromosome. The fitness Assume the length of the spreading code as N c chips per
function, considering the efficiencies of signal coverage and slot and the cycle of OVSF sequence for thej-th channel as
data transmission, of chromosome i is designed as (9, ST, the number of the transmitted bits per slot for thej-th
channel is N , = Nc I S F , where N , is the total number of the
transmitted bit in a slot, given by
where C is the percentage of the covered area, TlmX'
is the
average data throughput, is the average transmitting
power of used BSs, Tm, is the throughputs with respect to The transmitted signal at the mobile unit is expressed in the
lowpass equivalent complex form as
the measured minimum noise power level, C, is the desired
coverage, B is the number of used BSs, and 0 is x ( t ) = Ts=,d ( s , t ) @ c ( s , r ) (7)
percentage of overlapped area. The survivals, the where s is the slot index, d(s,t) and c(s,t) are the
chromosomes with higher fitness quantities, are selected for
waveform before complex scrambling and the complex
mating in Selectiolz and generate offspring in Crossover.
scrambling sequence waveform, respectively, and 0 denotes
The last operation is mutation for introducing the traits not
complex spreading, defined as
in the population. The iteration is forced to stop to output an
acceptable solution after certain iterations. Acceptable ( a + j b ) B ( c + j d ) = ( a c - b d ) + j ( b c + ad) (8)
solutions are collected by repeating the process above. The waveform before complex scrambling is given by
d(s, t ) = d, (s,t ) + j . d, (s,t ) (9)
B. Platjorm for Simulation of BER Perfarmance where d , (s,r) and d , ( s . t ) , the I-channel waveform and the
The received power level is a major issue for cell planning Q-channel waveform before scrambling, respectively, have
of narrow-bend systems. However, power delay profile the form
could not be ignored for wideband systems. Here, a platform
with RAKE receivers is used to verify the BER performance
considering power delay profile. The simulation involves
modulation framework of uplink Dedicated Physical
CHannel (DPCH) of 3GPP FDD mode only [16-171,

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where b,(.) is the bit stream and Cp" is the channelization evolution by the GA. In this paper, uniform crossover
code with OVSF for the j-th channel. The complex method was used, and the desired coverage, the survival rate,
scrambling sequence waveform in (1 1) is expressed as and the mutation probability were set as 90%, 50%, and 0.15,
respectively. Each generation composed of 500
C(S,t)=~C'~~~~bI~p(t-[(S-l)N; +ZpJ (12) chromosomes, and the iteration was stopped to output the
I=O
solution after 100 iterations. Figure 5 shows three selected
where T, is the chip duration, p ( t ) is the pulse shaping solutions, involving 3 BSs with omni-directional antennas
function, and C'""bi"is the complex scrambling code, (e) for each solution. The parameters of the solutions are
=cscramble c;mmbk ~ j c r b i e
summarized in Table 1.
(13)
where C T and
b k Cswmble
are binary random spreading codes Table 1 Summary of selected solutions
with elements taken from the set {+l,-1} with equal
probability.

111. AN EXAMPLE OF DEPLOYING WCDMA CELLS

This section explores a little further into the proposed cell
planning scheme by taking a practical example. The selected
area, shown in Fig 5, is the vicinity of NTUT (National
Taipei University of Technology) campus in Taipei. It is an
area of 2.5kms by 1.6kms square digitized building map
with blocks representing buildings of different heights. The The asterisks in Fig. 5 denote mobile locations selected
average building height is 18.2 meters and the standard randomly, and the corresponding delay spreads were
deviation is 13.6 meters. Background noise measurements simulated using ray-tracing technique in SignalPro (a set of
were performed using a spectrum analyzer, ADVENTEST planning tools for wireless communication systems by EDX
U364 Engineering). Note that the delay spreads in downlink are
equivalent to uplink case and were applied to the simulation
platform to evaluate the performance of each solution. The
simulation follows the uplink physical channel in 3GPP
FDD mode, where the chip rate is 3.84 Mcps, the operating
frequency is at 2 GHz, the frame length is lOms, and each
frame is divided into 15 slots. The spreading modulation
scheme is the dual channel QPSK. Each mobile unit has a
dedicated physical data channel (DPDCH) delivering the
traffic data and a dedicated physical control channel
(DPCCH) delivering the control data. These two channels
were multiplexed into VQ channel, respectively. For data
spreading, OVSF and long or short random scrambling code
following the 3GPP specification were adopted. In the
simulation, spreading factor of OVSF was chosen as 64, and
the channel codec, such as the convolution codec or Turbo
codec, was omitted to increase the efficiency. Figure 6 and 7
show the block diagram of the simulation.
122kbps Ilkbpi 40 2 kbbor 40 2 kbm 60 kbes
Fig. 5. A cell planning examiple.
Four kinds of BS transmitting powers were available, 1W,
l S W , 2W and 2SW, while the mobile transmission power
was OSW. The traffic pattern was assumled as a compound
with a mixed of 80% speech users, 15% of 144kpbs and 5%
of 384kpbs data users. First, the possible locations for
setting BSs were selected according to the digitized building
information. One of the selection criterions is that the BS
antenna height must higher then average building height and
lower than 43 meters. The second step was the evaluation of
each BS's coverage and throughputs, impacted by the Fig. 6. Block diagram of the W-CDMA transmitter.
background noise. Finally, the characteristics of these
possible BSs were encoded as chrornosornes and started the

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13 kbpr 40 2 khpbpr 4 0 2 khpr 60 khpr
Fig. 7. Block diagram of the W-CDMA receiver.
RAKE receiver combines delayed signal components to
gather higher signal power. Without utilizing the RAKE
receiver, Fig. 8 reveals the BER performance of the three
selected solutions, where solution 2 is the best and solution
1 is the worst. This is because the users received less
multipath components in solution 2. On the other hand,
because the users in solution 3 received more mutipaths with
higher amplitudes, it performs best when RAKE receiver
with four fingures is used, as shown in Fig. 9. As the
simulation results show that the BER performance ranges
between lo‘* and without rake receiver. However, by
utilizing the rake receiver in the base station, the BER
performance can decrease to 10” or
Fig. 8. Performance comparison between the three solutions
(without RAKE receiver).
Fig. 9. Performance comparison between the three solutions
(with RAKE receiver).
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IV. CONCLUSIONS
The proposed scheme involves a simple GA with the help of
propagation model and digitized building information to
achieve the acceptable solutions, suffering from less impact
of background noise, to the cell planning of the WCDMA
systems. Afterward a system simulation platform with a
RAKE receiver evaluates the BER performance due to
power delay profiles and select the best one. Consequently,
the required coverage and maximum throughputs could be
achieved with minimum cost. Moreover, a selected example
is examined to further explore the proposed scheme. Thus,
an easy and efficient cell planning scheme for WCDMA
systems in the initial stage of system development could be
delivered.
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