Linköping Studies in Science and Technology.

Theses
No. 1454

Coverage Planning and Resource Allocation

in Broadband Cellular Access

- Optimization Models and Algorithms

Lei Chen

Department of Science and Technology

Linköping University, SE-601 74 Norrköping, Sweden

Norrköping 2010
Coverage Planning and Resource Allocation in Broadband Cellular Access - Op-
timization Models and Algorithms
c
Lei Chen, 2010
leich@itn.liu.se

Thesis number: LIU-TEK-LIC-2010:25

ISBN 978-91-7393-279-0
ISSN 0280-7971

Linköping University
Department of Science and Technology
SE-601 74 Norrköping
Tel: +46 11 36 34 96
Fax: +46 11 36 32 70

Printed by LiU-Tryck, Linköping, Sweden, 2010

Abstract

The last two decades have witnessed a booming in the use of cellular com-
munication technologies. Billions of people are now enjoying the benefits of
mobile communications. This thesis deals with planning and optimization of
broadband cellular access network design and operation. The problem types
considered include coverage planning, power optimization, and channel as-
signment. Mathematical modeling and optimization methods have been used
to approach the problems.

Coverage planning is a classical problem in cellular network deployment. A

minimum-power covering problem with overlap constraints between cell pairs
is considered. The objective is to minimize the total power consumption for
coverage, while maintaining a necessary level of overlap to facilitate handover.
For this coverage planning problem, the thesis develops two integer program-
ming models and compares the models’ strength in approaching global opti-
mality. In addition, a tabu search algorithm has been developed for solving the
problem in large-scale networks.

For High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) networks, transmission

power is a crucial factor to performance. Minimizing the power allocated for
coverage enables significant power saving that can be used for HSDPA data
transmission, thus enhancing the HSDPA performance. Exploring this poten-
tial power saving, a mathematical model targeting cell-edge HSDPA perfor-
mance has been developed. In determining the optimal coverage pattern for
maximizing power saving, the model also allows for controlling the degree of
soft handover for Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) Re-
lease 99 services. In addition to the mathematical model, heuristic algorithms
based on local search and repeated local search are developed.

For Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA), which is used

in Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks, inter-cell interference control is a
key performance engineering issue. The aspect is of particular importance
to cell-edge throughput. Frequency reuse schemes for mitigating inter-cell
interference at cell-edge areas have received an increasing amount of research
attention. In the thesis, a generalization of the standard Fractional Frequency
Reuse (FFR) scheme is introduced. The generalization addresses OFDMA
networks with irregular cell layout. Optimization algorithms using local search
have been proposed to find the frequency reuse pattern of generalized FFR that

iii
maximizes the cell-edge area performance.
For the problems considered in the thesis, computational experiments of the
optimization models and algorithms using data sets representing realistic plan-
ning scenarios have been carried out. The experimental results demonstrate
the effectiveness of the proposed solution approaches.

iv
Acknowledgement

This thesis is the result of research carried out within the Department of Sci-
ence and Technology (ITN), Linköping University.
I would like to thank my supervisor, professor Di Yuan, whose excellent guid-
ance and continuous help play a very important role in my research work. I
would like to say that it has been a fantastic experience to work with such an
excellent researcher, who is always encouraging and willing to help.
I would also like to thank all my colleagues at the Division of Communication
and Transport Systems (KTS), especially my roommate Sara, for providing
me with a very friendly and relaxed environment, and all the other friends in
Sweden for helping me to adapt quickly to the Swedish culture. Those years
of living and study with them will be a very meaningful and unforgettable
experience in my life.
I also want to show gratitude to the financial support from CENIIT, Linköping
Institute of Technology, Swedish research council (Vetenskapsrådet), as well
as Marie Curie project IAPP@Ranplan within the European FP7 research pro-
gramme.
Finally, I would like to express my thanks to my family for their love and
understanding for me to study far away from them, and to my friends for their
encouragement and support all the time.

Norrköping, December 2010

Lei Chen

v
vi
Abbreviations

1G First Generation
2G Second Generation
3G Third Generation
3GPP 3rd Generation Partnership Project
4G Fourth Generation
AMC Adaptive Modulation and Coding
AMPS Advanced Mobile Phone Service
BS Base Station
CAPEX Capital Expenditure
CDMA Code Division Multiple Access
CoMP Coordinated Multi-Pointing Transmission/Reception
D-AMPS Digital AMPS
DC-HSPA Dual-carrier High Speed Packet Access
DCA Dynamic Channel Allocation
DCH Dedicated Channel
E-DCH Enhanced Dedicated Channel
EDGE Enhanced Data rate for GSM Evolution
EUL Enhanced Uplink
FAP Frequency Assignment Problem
FDMA Frequency Division Multiple Access
FFR Fractional Frequency Reuse

vii
FH Frequency Hopping
GPRS General Packet Radio Service
GSM Global System for Mobile Communications
HARQ Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request
HS-DSCH High Speed Downlink Shared Channel
HSCSD High-Speed Circuit Switched Data
HSDPA High Speed Downlink Packet Access
HSUPA High Speed Uplink Packet Access
ITU International Telecommunications Union
LS Local Search
LTE Long Term Evolution
LTE-A LTE Advanced
MI-FAP Minimum Interference Frequency Planning Problem
MIMO Multiple Input and Multiple Output
Min-GBR Minimum Guaranteed Bit Rate
NMT Nordic Mobile Telephone
NP-hard Non-deterministic Polynomial-time hard
OFDMA Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access
OPEX Operational Expenditure
OR Operational Research
PC Power Control
PDC Personal Digital Cellular
PF Proportional Fair
QAM Quadrature Amplitude Modulation
QoS Quality of Service
RAN Radio Access Network

viii
RB Resource Block
RNC Radio Network Controller
RRM Radio Resource Management
SAE System Architecture Evolution
SC-FDMA Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access
SFR Soft Frequency Reuse
SHO Soft Handover
SINR Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise Ratio
SIR Signal Interference Ratio
TACS Total Access Communication System
TD-SCDMA Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access
TDMA Time Division Multiple Access
TS Tabu Search
UE User Equipment
UMTS Universal Mobile Telecommunication Systems
WCDMA Wideband Code Division Multiple Access
WiMAX Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access

ix
x
 Part I

Introduction and Overview

 INTRODUCTION

1 Evolution of Cellular Networks

The concept of cellular communications was introduced by Bell Laborato-

ries in 1947 to increase the communication capacity of mobile phones. In
the 1970s, commercial mobile communications based on cellular technology
began to appear all over the world. Systems deployed in this period are re-
ferred to as the first generation (1G) cellular networks. NTT launched the first
commercial cellular network in the metropolitan area of Tokyo in 1979. Soon
after, commercial cellular systems became available in Europe and America.
Representative systems include the nordic mobile telephone system (NMT) in
Scandinavia, the total access communication system (TACS) in UK, and the
advanced mobile phone service system (AMPS) in America. Being analog-
based, 1G networks suffered from many limitations such as low frequency
utilization, limited service, poor communication quality, high equipment cost,
and low security.

To overcome the limitations and meet the demand of mobile communications,

the second generation (2G) cellular systems were developed. 2G cellular sys-
tems adopted digital transmission that is fundamentally different from the 1G
cellular technology. Besides frequency division multiple access (FDMA) ,
which is also used in 1G networks, 2G networks use more advanced access
technologies such as time division multiple access (TDMA) and code division
multiple access (CDMA) , as well as hierarchical cell structure.

Representative 2G standards include the global system for mobile communica-

tions (GSM), interim standard 136 (IS-136, aka Digital AMPS, or D-AMPS),
IS-95 (aka CDMAone), and the personal digital cellular (PDC) system. Both
GSM and D-AMPS were based on TDMA. GSM was firstly introduced in Eu-
rope to provide a single and unified 2G standard in European countries. Later,
GSM was implemented in many countries in the rest of the world. D-AMPS
evolved from AMPS and was used in America, Israel and some of the Asian
countries. IS-95 systems were based on CDMA, which allowed users to si-
multaneously access the same frequency band using different codes. As the
only commercial CDMA standard of that time, IS-95 had been mostly imple-
mented in North America and Asia. PDC was a TDMA-based standard and
was available in Japan only.

The primary service in 2G networks was voice communication. To meet the

emerging demand for data communication, a number of upgrades were in-
troduced to 2G systems as low-cost, intermediate solutions for data services,

3
INTRODUCTION

while developing the third generation (3G) systems. The intermediate steps in
the transition from 2G to 3G were called 2.5G and 2.75G. One such step was
high-speed circuit switched data (HSCSD) for GSM. HSCSD was easy to im-
plement and required low cost in deployment. However, since it was still based
on circuit switching, it suffered from inefficient frequency utilization. An-
other technology was the general packet radio service (GPRS) . Using packet
switching, GPRS had better frequency utilization in handling best-effort data
communication. GPRS utilizes dynamically free TDMA channels in GSM sys-
tems, and can provide a speed of up to 114 kbps. Later, with the introduction
of 8PSK encoding, GPRS evolved to enhanced data rate for GSM evolution
(EDGE) , aka enhanced GPRS. EDGE increased the data rate to 384kbps and
was backward-compatible. At the same time, within the CDMA family of stan-
dards, IS-95 evolved to the CDMA2000 1 times radio transmission technology
(CDMA2000 1xRTT), which supported a data rate of 153kpbs.

Soon after the commercialization of 2G networks, development of 3G cel-

lular communication systems started. The goal of 3G was to provide high
data rate and multimedia data services for mobile Internet. Three major fami-
lies of specifications, namely CDMA2000, wideband CDMA (WCDMA), and
time division synchronous CDMA (TD-SCDMA) were accepted as 3G stan-
dards by the international telecommunications union (ITU). CDMA2000 was
developed from IS-95 and mostly used in North America and South Korea.
WCDMA, aka universal mobile telecommunication systems (UMTS) was de-
veloped from GSM, with efforts in Europe and Japan. Since GSM dominated
the 2G commercial markets, the evolution path GSM-GPRS-EDGE-WCDMA
was very natural. At present, WCDMA is the most widely implemented 3G
technology. TD-SCDMA was China’s 3G standard, proposed by Datang Tele-
com and was mostly used in China.

Since the first release by 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP), referred
to as release 99 (R99), WCDMA has evolved rapidly. In 2002, Release 5
(R5) was finalized to include high speed downlink packet access (HSDPA). In
2005, Release 6 (R6) became available, supporting high speed data services
on the uplink by introducing enhanced uplink (EUL), aka high speed uplink
packet access (HSUPA). In 2007, Release 7 (R7) introduced evolved high-
speed packet access, aka HSPA+, to support higher order modulation, e.g.,
64QAM and multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) technology. In Re-
lease 8 (R8), which was finalized in 2008, developments of two standards were
specified, HSPA+ and long term evolution (LTE). HSPA+ was enhanced by a
dual-carrier HSPA (DC-HSPA) which doubled the throughput by combining

4
 INTRODUCTION

two WCDMA radio channels. HSPA+ was a backward-compatible standard,

allowing operators that have heavily invested in WCDMA to offer new fea-
tures to their subscribers with legacy UMTS terminals. At the same time,
the first release of LTE was specified in R8. LTE represented a new evolu-
tion path. The LTE standards adopted orthogonal frequency division multiple
access (OFDMA) for downlink and single carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) for up-
link, to provide higher peak data rate and flexible bandwidth usage. Additional
features, such as femto-cell, were introduced in Release 9 (R9) in 2009.

The ultimate goal of LTE is to pave the way for the fourth generation (4G)
systems. Peak data rate of LTE targets 100 Mbps at downlink and 50 Mbps
at uplink with a 20 MHz bandwidth and 2×1 MIMO antenna. In comparison
to R6, average user throughput of LTE is expected to be 3-4 times higher at
downlink, and 2-3 times higher at uplink. In LTE, spectrum utilization is scal-
able over blocks of 5, 10, 15, and 20 MHz. Blocks smaller than 5 MHz are
also supported. As LTE is not supposed to be backward-compatible, it enjoys
the freedom of implementing the latest transmission technologies. Besides the
new air interface, advanced antenna solutions such as MIMO, beam-forming
are also utilized. A flat all IP core network, namely system architecture evo-
lution (SAE) , is designed to replace the GPRS core network and to support
high throughput with low latency in the radio access network (RAN). Despite
the economic crisis in 2008 and 2009, trials of LTE networks have not been
interrupted. The first commercial LTE service was provided by TeliaSonera in
Stockholm and Oslo in 2009. The network delivers a downlink speed between
20 Mbps and 80 Mbps.

To meet the future demand of mobile broadband, the research on LTE-advanced

(LTE-A), which represents a 4G standard, is also underway. LTE-A specifica-
tions will be part of Release 10 (R10). LTE-A will include more advanced
technologies like clustering SC-FDMA, relaying, coordinated multi-pointing
transmission/reception (CoMP), higher order MIMO transmission, etc., to take
the peak data rate up to 1 Gbps for low mobility scenarios.

The above discussion applies to the development of standards in 3GPP. Be-

sides LTE, worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) , spec-
ified in IEEE 802.16 series of standards, is also evolving towards fulfilling
the requirement of 4G systems. An illustration of the evolution of cellu-
lar networks is given in Fig. 1. More detailed discussions can be found in
[1, 15, 26, 27, 28, 42, 58].

5
INTRODUCTION

1Gbps

LTE-Advanced(R10),
WiMax, 4G
…

326Mbps

HSDPA(R5),

ut
HSUPA(R6),

hp
HSPA+(R7,R8,…),
ug LTE(R8,…), 3.5/3.75/3.9G
ro
…
Th

2Mbps

UMTS R99, WCDMA FDD/TDD,

CDMA2000, TD-SCDMA,… 3G
1Mbps

GPRS, EDGE, 2.5/2.75G

CDMA 1xRTT,…

9.6kbps
GSM,IS-95,
D-AMPS,… 2G

AMPS,NMT,
speech … 1G

1979 1991 1999 2000 2002 2010

Figure 1: Evolution of cellular technology.

2 Cellular Network Planning and Optimization

Network planning and optimization play a key role in reducing the capital ex-
penditure (CAPEX) and operational expenditure (OPEX) for deploying and
expanding cellular systems. Typically, radio network planning begins with a
definition and dimensioning stage, which includes traffic estimation, service
definition, coverage and capacity requirements, etc. It is traditionally consid-
ered as a static process. Some of the main tasks are site selection for base
station location, location area and routing area planning, and radio resource
management (RRM) strategies. Besides fulfilling the initial requirements such
as coverage and capacity, radio resource has to be acquired in a way that the
cost is minimized. Optimization is a long-term process before and after the
launch of a network. The process applies various methods to maximize the
system performance by optimally configuring the network and utilizing its re-
sources. Traditionally, a large amount of manual tuning has been used in the
optimization process. Nowadays, advanced optimization tools have been de-
veloped to automatically optimize the parameters for maximizing system per-
formance, making the optimization process much more efficient.

6
 INTRODUCTION

Analog-based 1G cellular networks did not pose much requirement to plan-

ning and optimization. Having low capacity requirement, the key problem is
to provide a satisfied degree of coverage. With the success of 2G networks
and the increasing amount of voice and data demand, cellular systems have
become more and more complex. New radio access technologies also intro-
duce new challenges to the planning and optimization processes. In the fol-
lowing, we outline some representative planning and optimization problems
in cellular networks. More detailed discussions can be found in, for example,
[40, 47, 48, 51].

2.1 Base Station Location

A very fundamental planning task in cellular networks is the base station (BS)
location. To deal with the increasing user demand, more and more base sta-
tions are needed to provide satisfactory services. A resulting optimization
problem is to determine how many and where base stations should be located
in order to meet coverage and capacity requirements. An illustration of the
problem is shown in Fig. 2. In the figure, the red spots require BS installed
while the blue spots do not.

Figure 2: An illustration of base station location.

In general, the base station location problem is NP-hard [7, 46] in problem
complexity. For 2G networks, to a large extend, the task can be regarded as a
type of set covering problem, the performance is mainly coverage-driven and
mostly depends on the propagation model. In this case, BSs are located among
the candidate locations so that signal strength is high enough for the areas to

7
INTRODUCTION

be covered. For 3G networks with WCDMA, this is however not enough as the
single-to-interference ratio (SIR) needs to be taken into account. Besides the
location of BS, coverage itself is heavily influenced by the traffic distribution.
Thus, BS location in UMTS networks has to consider power control which in
its turn is tightly connected to traffic distribution. In the past years, BS location
has been extensively studied for both 2G and 3G networks [5, 6, 20, 35, 46,
59, 61, 64]. Both mathematical modeling and heuristic algorithms have been
proposed for problem solution.

2.2 Frequency Planning

Along with BS location, another vital issue in 2G GSM networks is to deal

with the frequency assignment problem (FAP) . To avoid interference in GSM
networks, neighboring cells should use different frequencies, see Fig. 3 for an
illustration.

Figure 3: An illustration of frequency assignment.

Due to the high site density and the scarcity of the spectrum resource, fre-
quency allocation has to be carefully planned so that high spectral efficiency
and low interference can be achieved. Many optimization methods and algo-
rithms have been proposed for FAP in GSM networks [3, 4, 10, 17, 18, 21,
25, 37, 50]. Planning strategies for more advanced frequency use, such as fre-
quency hopping (FH) [2, 52] and dynamic channel allocation (DCA) [55, 56],
have also been proposed.
In WCDMA networks, the frequency reuse factor is one, so FAP is not present.
For the new radio interface OFDMA adopted in LTE networks, frequency op-

8
 INTRODUCTION

timization becomes again a key issue. LTE is designed to scale well in the
spectrum availability. The spectrum is divided into a large number of sub-
carriers which are orthogonal to each other. This enables a higher flexibility in
respect to resource allocation. With OFDMA, intra-cell interference does not
exist because of the orthogonality, but inter-cell interference may become the
performance-limiting factor, especially for cell-edge users with poor radio sig-
nal condition. Sub-carrier allocation has to be done carefully to mitigate inter-
cell interference. To this end, fractional frequency reuse (FFR) [19, 43, 60] and
soft frequency reuse (SFR) [31] schemes have been proposed. With the evo-
lution from 3G to 4G networks, inter-cell interference mitigation is attracting
more and more research attention.

2.3 Radio Resource Management (RRM)

RRM is fundamental in cellular networks. Many optimization problems in-

volving allocation strategies of various types of resource appear in RRM. The
aforementioned FAP can be regarded as part of RRM, since frequency is a
highly valuable resource in cellular networks. Another key resource type is
transmission power. Transmission power plays an important role in interfer-
ence management, energy consumption, as well as service quality. Thus power
control (PC) mechanisms have been considered. PC can be located at user
equipment (UE), BS, or radio network controller (RNC). It is a key compo-
nent in IS-95 CDMA systems because of the near-far effect. GSM networks
also has PC mechanism, although the need for PC is not as high as IS-95.
For 3G and 4G systems, more advanced PC mechanisms have been explored.
Rather than considering a fixed SIR as in 2G systems, the achievable SIR
varies, and is usually jointly controlled and optimized in the PC mechanism
in 3G systems. Furthermore, PC algorithms also need to closely cooperate
with other RRM procedures (e.g. scheduling) to maximize the network perfor-
mance. Due to the rapid growth of cellular networks, extensive research has
been done on PC algorithms with fixed SIR and variable SIR, opportunistic
PC, PC based on game theory, joint PC and beamforming, joint PC and BS
location, etc. A survey can be found in [14].
In addition to PC, scheduling is an important component of RRM since packet
switching became supported in cellular networks. Scheduling means usually
to allocate resource among users along the time dimension, to maximize tar-
get metrics (e.g. throughput, quality of service (QoS), fairness, etc). Typical

9
INTRODUCTION

scheduling strategies include round robin (RR), maximum throughput, propor-

tional fair (PF), minimum guaranteed bit rate scheduling (min-GBR), mini-
mum bit rate scheduling with proportional fairness (min-GBR+PF), as well as
maximum delay scheduling. For UMTS R99, which is based on a dedicated
channel (DCH), scheduling is done at RNC. HSDPA introduces a high speed
downlink shared channel (HS-DSCH). Instead of placing the packet scheduler
at RNC, HSDPA utilizes a fast scheduler at Node B, giving Node B the abil-
ity to rapidly adapt to the channel conditions of the users. Similar to HSDPA,
HSUPA introduces an enhanced DCH (E-DCH) for uplink which also supports
fast scheduling. At present, HSPA is the most widely used cellular technology
for mobile broadband, and a vast amount of literature has been devoted to its
scheduling algorithms and RRM strategies [8, 9, 12, 23, 24, 29, 30, 33, 36, 53,
63].

With OFDMA, the flexibility in radio resource allocation grows. The down-
link resource grid in LTE consists of resource blocks (RBs), each consists of
12 sub-carriers and 7 OFDM symbols. Depending on the available bandwidth,
up to 100 RBs (with a bandwidth of 20 MHz) can be allocated. Power is
jointly allocated with RBs. Moreover, information can be transmitted and
combined by multiple antennas, which add one more dimension of freedom.
Thus resource allocation in LTE involves several dimensions. Because of the
flexibility, the performance of scheduling algorithms is crucial in OFDMA-
based networks. Numerous articles investigated resource allocation strategies
for OFDMA [13, 22, 32, 34, 45, 57, 62, 67, 68], and more specifically for LTE
[11, 16, 38, 39, 41, 44, 49, 54, 65, 66].

Additional functionalities, such as admission control and load control, are also
needed in RRM. It is worth mentioning the RRM components are not indepen-
dent of each other, and the overall performance is a joint effect of the various
RRM functionalities.

3 The Present Thesis

This thesis consists of three research papers in coverage planning in cellular

networks, power optimization in HSPA networks, and sub-carrier allocation
in LTE networks, respectively. The objectives and contributions of the thesis
work along with a summary of future research are give below.

10
 INTRODUCTION

3.1 Objectives

The main objective of the thesis is to investigate some optimization problems

arising in coverage planning and resource allocation of cellular networks. Two
types of resource parameters are considered. The first is the transmission
power that determines coverage, where coverage is defined in terms of re-
ceiving sufficiently well the signal announcing network presence. The second
resource parameter is the frequency band to be allocated in LTE networks.
The planning objectives in the optimization problems range from the power
consumption for coverage, the power requirement for achieving performance
threshold for HSDPA service, to LTE network capacity in terms of cell-edge
throughput.
For the planning problems, the research targets developing optimization mod-
els and time-efficient methods that are capable of delivering high-quality solu-
tions. The research is also aimed to use realistic planning scenarios to demon-
strate the benefit of the optimization approaches.

3.2 Thesis Summary and Contribution

Three papers are included in this thesis. Paper I deals with a coverage planning
problem with overlap constraint for cellular networks. Paper II develops op-
timization approaches for enhancing HSDPA performance for networks with
co-existing HSDPA and R99 services. Paper III generalizes FFR and devel-
ops optimization algorithms for its application in large scale OFDMA-based
networks with irregular cell structures.
The papers are co-authored with Di Yuan. The author of this thesis has con-
tributed to the papers by major involvement in the research planning, the mod-
eling and simulation work, the analysis of the results, along with taking a sig-
nificant part in authoring the papers.

Paper I: Solving a minimum-power covering problem with overlap con-

straint for cellular network design
This paper deals with coverage planning in cellular network design. Given
the locations of BSs, the problem amounts to determining cell coverage at
minimum cost in terms of power usage. Minimum-power coverage tends to

11
INTRODUCTION

make cell size as small as possible; such a solution may have negative impact
on handover performance. To tackle this issue, the objective is to perform
power minimization with the requirement of having sufficient overlap between
cells.
Two integer linear models are presented. The strength of their respective con-
tinuous relaxations as well as the numerical performance of the two models
are thoroughly investigated. For large-scale networks, a tabu search (TS) al-
gorithm is developed. The algorithm is able to obtain close-to-optimal results
within short computation time. Simulation results are reported for both syn-
thesized networks and networks originating from real planning scenarios.
The paper has been published in European Journal of Operational Research.

Paper II: Coverage planning for optimizing HSDPA performance and

controlling R99 soft handover
This paper deals with a coverage planning problem for the currently common
network deployment scenario of having co-existing HSDPA and R99 services.
By utilizing the power saving resulted from power minimization in coverage
planning, the throughput of HSDPA can be improved. The focus is to bring
up the HSDPA performance at cell edge, for which improved data throughput
is more perceived in comparison to cell center. At the same time, the level of
soft handover (SHO) for R99 is taken into account in determining the coverage
pattern.
An integer linear model is developed for the problem. The model can be used
to find global optimum for small-sized networks. For large-scale planning sce-
narios, a heuristic algorithm is developed. The algorithm is based on local
search and repeated local search. Performance benchmarking on small test
networks shows that the algorithm gives close-to-optimality results. In addi-
tion, simulation results from the model and the use of the heuristic algorithm
demonstrate significant power saving and HSDPA performance improvement
in comparison to the reference solution.
The paper has been accepted for publication in Telecommunication Systems.
Parts of the paper have been published in the following conferences:
• L. Chen and D. Yuan. Automated planning of CPICH power for en-
hancing HSDPA performance at cell edges with preserved control of

12
 INTRODUCTION

R99 soft handover. In Proc. of IEEE International Conference on Com-

munications (ICC ’08), pages 2936-2940, 2008.
• L. Chen and D. Yuan. Achieving higher HSDPA performance and pre-
serving R99 soft handover control by large scale optimization in CPICH
coverage planning. In Proc. of IEEE Wireless Telecommunications Sym-
posium (WTS ’09), 2009.

Paper III: Generalizing and optimizing fractional frequency reuse in broad-

band cellular radio access networks
This paper deals with inter-cell interference mitigation in OFDMA-based net-
works. With OFDMA, inter-cell interference is the main performance-limiting
factor for cell-edge users due to their high level of sensitivity to interference.
FFR is one of the schemes used for inter-cell interference mitigation by fre-
quency separation. Standard FFR uses a fixed number of sub-bands and a
fixed reuse factor. This works well for a regular, hexagonal cell layout. How-
ever, for networks with irregular cell patterns, standard FFR can not be directly
applied, and the performance is far from being optimal.
In the paper, the standard FFR is generalized to enable a high flexibility in the
total number of OFDMA sub-bands and the number of sub-bands allocated
in the cells’ edge areas. Two power assignment strategies are considered in
sub-band allocation. Solution algorithms using local search are developed to
optimize the sub-band allocation for generalized FFR. Performance evalua-
tions are conducted for large-scale networks with realistic radio propagation
conditions. The results demonstrate the applicability and benefit of applying
and optimizing generalized FFR in performance engineering of OFDMA net-
works.
Parts of the paper have been published in the following conferences:
• L. Chen and D. Yuan. Soft frequency reuse in large networks with ir-
regular cell pattern: how much gain to expect? In Proc. of the IEEE
20th International Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications
Symposium (PIMRC ’09), pages 1467-1471, 2009.
• L. Chen and D. Yuan. Generalized frequency reuse schemes for OFDMA
networks: optimization and comparison. In Proc. of IEEE Vehicular
Technology Conference (VTC ’10-Spring), 2010.

13
INTRODUCTION

• L. Chen and D. Yuan. Generalizing FFR by flexible sub-band allocation

in OFDMA networks with irregular cell layout. In Proc. of IEEE Wire-
less Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC ’10) Work-
shops, 2010.

3.3 Future Research

Cellular network planning and optimization form a complex engineering pro-

cess, involving many resource types, network elements, and decision variables.
The constant evolution of radio access technologies offers new opportunities
to efficient radio resource utilization, and at the same time poses challenges to
the planning and optimization process. To master the complexity, the planning
and optimization algorithms have to become more advanced, efficient, and
automatic. The latter means that the optimization process should become an
integrated part of the network, and the work of manual tuning must be reduced
as much as possible.
The work presented in the thesis contributes to dealing with some planning and
optimization problems in cellular networks. The development of optimization
tools integrating the models and algorithms for the problems will be a natural
follow-up to the thesis work. There are several additional potential lines for fu-
ture research. First, there are many problems that are beyond the scope of the
thesis, but highly relevant to the research field. One example is modeling and
solving the problem of optimally locating BSs of OFDMA networks. Second,
network optimization problems accounting for recent technological advances
such as MIMO, relay stations, and heterogeneous radio networks, warrant thor-
ough research. Third, approaches that effectively integrate optimization and
system-level simulation give rise to a very interesting topic for automated net-
work planning. Fourth, within the network self-optimization paradigm, the
development and implementation of distributed algorithms for resource allo-
cation in broadband mobile access open up new research horizons.

14
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21