Improved Multiple-Scenario Radio Network Dimensioning for WCDMA

In wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA) cellular systems, the coverage radius of a cell depends on its current capacity level. As a result, existing WCDMA radio network dimensioning approaches require that coverage and capacity planning be carried out jointly in an iterative manner in order to obtain the minimum site count needed while fulfilling both coverage and capacity requirements. This requires relatively long computational time, particularly when there are many scenarios or what-if cases to be considered. To overcome this problem, we propose an alternative radio network dimensioning approach where coverage planning and capacity planning can be carried out separately to reduce computational time. Besides, a portion of the values calculated in the initial iteration is preserved in a lookup graph, allowing future what-if analysis to be accomplished rapidly. Simulation results show that, unlike the existing approach, the planning and what-if analysis times of the proposed dimensioning approach are independent of the number of scenarios considered. Lastly, we present a few case studies and show that the proposed dimensioning method can give the same prediction accuracy as the existing method.