Planning of UMTS Cellular Networks for Data Services Based on HSDPA

This paper addresses the planning of UMTS cellular radio networks, for data services when implementing HSDPA, enabling the evaluation of the network performance in different scenarios. An algorithm was developed to allocate carriers, either exclusively for Release’99 or HSDPA, or to be shared between the two, taking multi-service users spatially distributed in a non-uniform way. A simulator was developed to implement the algorithm, corresponding to an average behaviour of the network. Several parameters are taken to evaluate network performance, like blocking and delay probabilities, as well as the average reduction in user bit rate. It is observed that the indoor penetration attenuation is a predominate factor in HSDPA, since when it increases from 11 to 25 dB, the percentage of uncovered users can reach 51 %, for a radio network initially designed to provide outdoor coverage. Index Terms — UMTS, HSDPA, Radio Network Planning,