Automated optimization of key WCDMA parameters

This paper validates the feasibility of automated optimization of key wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA) radio resource management parameters using control methods. The parameters are regularly adjusted in order to improve performance. The parameters examined in this study include the total cell transmission power target, the received total interference target, the downlink radio link power maximums, the handover windows and the pilot channel powers. The control was based on expert-defined rules, which applied specific trade-off policies and statistics of poor quality calls, blocking, packet queuing, power and interference levels and terminal measurements to qualify the parameter values. The approach was validated using a dynamic WCDMA system simulator with a deployment of macro and micro cells on a city region. Results on automated optimization of single parameters on cell level and results on simultaneous multi-parameter optimization on cell-cluster level are presented in this paper. The use of the automated parameter optimization methods was shown to result in a significant increase of capacity in comparison to the default parameter settings. Copyright # 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.