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Long Term Evolution Network Planning and Performance Measurement

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 Recent Advances in Image, Audio and Signal Processing

Long Term Evolution Network Planning and Performance Measurement

I. EL-FEGHI
University of Tripoli
Facility of Engineering
Tripoli, Libya
idrise@ee.edu.ly
ZAKARIA SULIMAN ZUBI A.JAMIL H. ALGABROUN
Computer Science Department University of Tripoli University of Tripoli
Faculty of Science Facility of Engineering Facility of Engineering
Sirte University, Sirte, Libya Tripoli, Libya Tripoli, Libya
zszubi@su.edu.ly a.jameel.m@gmail.com, hazgab@yahoo.com

Abstract:- Data communication is growing rapidly, to keep pace with the increasing demands being placed on mo-
bile radio systems, an improved standard was created by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) referred
to as Long Term Evolution (LTE) that provides higher throughputs and lower latencies. LTE brings many technical
benefits to cellular networks and improves the spectral efficiency in 3G networks, allowing carriers to provide
more data and voice services over a given bandwidth. In this work, a detailed LTE radio network dimensioning
procedure including frequency, coverage and capacity analysis has been performed in order to prepare a radio
planning guideline considering possible network implementation in the city of Tripoli/Libya. At the end, the link
level of the LTE network is simulated for both scenarios Uplink and Downlink, to get a closer view to the impact of
the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) on Bit Error Rate (BER) and Block Error Rate (BLER).

Keywords: Long term Evolution, throughputs, latencies, coverage and capacity, SNR, Block Error Rate(BLER)

1. Introduction
LTE is a set of enhancements to the Universal Mobile
Telecommunications System (UMTS) which was in-
troduced in 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)
Release 8. The main advantages with LTE are high
throughput, low latency, plug and play, FDD and TDD
in the same platform, an improved end-user experience
and a simple architecture resulting in low operating
costs. LTE downlink transmission scheme is based on
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access
(OFDMA) which converts the wide-band frequency
selective channel into a set of many at fading sub-
channels. The LTE specification provides downlink
peak rates of at least 100 Mbps, an uplink of at least 50
Mbps and RAN round-trip times of less than 10ms.
LTE supports scalable carrier bandwidths, from 1.4
MHz to 20 MHz and supports both frequency division
duplexing (FDD) and time division duplexing (TDD).
LTE will also support seamless passing to cell towers
with older network technology such as GSM,
CDMAOne, W-CDMA (UMTS), and CDMA2000. The
next step for LTE evolution is LTE Advanced and is
currently being standardized in 3GPP Release 10
[1][2][3].
Radio network planning is a very vital step for
a wireless communication technology. As standardiza-
tion work of LTE is approaching the end line, it's high
time to go for efficient radio network planning guide-
line for LTE. For the same reason, along with the fact
that LTE radio network planning work just like other
cellular technologies, initial stage planning is normally
guided by various industries and vendors at their own
discretion. They aren't likely to disclose their advance-
ments and findings. That makes the job even more
challenging. Whenever new cellular technology is con-
sidered for mass deployment hundreds of its RF pa-
rameters go through tuning process with a view to find
out optimum value. But this phase is time consuming
and very costly. So, before commercial deployment if
extensive simulation can be run this tuning phase can
be facilitated in numerous ways. Cost can also be
greatly minimized. That is the benefit of running simu-
lation before mass commercial deployment. In Libya,
LTE is expected to be commercially launched in Q2 of
2014. All these aim at proper radio network planning of
LTE. So, looking for optimizing the vital parameters in
the least possible time is a very challenging issue which
will obviously help network operators in a greater ex-
tent.
The ultimate objective of this work is to come
up with the detailed radio network planning guideline
with respect to Tripoli city. With this mission ahead, in
this paper a step by step method was followed starting
from gathering preplanning information which went up
to coverage and capacity analysis. For this, the link
level simulation had to be performed and link budget
had to be prepared. All these have been presented here.

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 Recent Advances in Image, Audio and Signal Processing
Prior to that, a brief description of radio network plan-
ning methodology has been given.
2. Radio Network Planning Process
Radio Network Planning contains number of phases: 1)
Site survey-which includes collection of pre-planning
information that will be used in the Link Budget prepa-
ration and Coverage and Capacity planning calcula-
tions. 2) Frequency and spectrum planning- in this
phase a variety of parameters' values will be chosen,
and according to these parameters the rest of the calcu-
lation is processed. 3) Link Budget and Coverage plan-
ning, and 4) Capacity planning- these two steps involve
propagation model tuning, defining thresholds from
Link budget, creating detailed radio plan based on the
thresholds, checking network capacity against more
detailed traffic estimates, and configuration planning.
2.1 Site Survey
The city of Tripoli is located in the North West of the
country on the coasted area and centered by longitude
line of 13°11’9"E and at latitude line of 32°54’8"N,
with population of 2,2 00,000 and having an average
building height of 20 meters. The area of Tripoli is
517.6 km2. In this network design, Tripoli has been
divided into four main sections according to the popu-
lation distribution over the city. These sections are
dense urban, urban, suburban, and rural areas. Dense
urban is 30.4 km2, Urban is 116.4 km2, and Suburban
is 370.8 km2. (Source : HUAWEI ICT Company –
Libya Branch Office, Date: Jan/2013).
Figure 1 – The division of Tripoli, Dense urban is
the red area, Urban is the yellow area, Suburban is
the green area
2.2 Frequency and Spectrum Planning
In this section, the spectrum is managed; the available
frequency band is chosen to be the frequency band for
LTE network, the bandwidth, duplex mode, SFR, and
Cyclic Prefix are specified also:
• Frequency band of 1800 MHz is used.
• System bandwidth is 20 MHz.
ISBN: 978-960-474-350-6
• The duplex mode is FDD.
• Soft frequency reuse of (SFR 1*3*1) is used.
• Cyclic prefix is chosen to be normal.
2.3 Link Budget and Coverage Planning
The link budget calculations estimate the maximum
allowed signal attenuation, called path loss, between
the mobile and the base station antenna. The maximum
path loss allows the maximum cell range to be esti-
mated with a suitable propagation model, such as
Cost231–Hata model. The cell range gives the number
of base station sites required to cover the target geo-
graphical area. The link budget calculation can also be
used to compare the relative coverage of the different
systems.
2.3.1 Procedure
Link budget and coverage planning is calculated for
each scenario separately, for both cases "UL & DL".
The procedure steps are [4]:
• Step 1: Calculate the Max Allowed Path Loss
(MAPL) for DL and UL.
• Step 2: Calculate the DL and UL cell radiuses
by the propagation model equation and the
MAPL.
• Step 3: Determine the appropriate cell radius
by balancing the DL and UL radiuses.
• Step 4: Calculate the site coverage area and
the required sites number.
2.4 Capacity Planning
With a rough estimation of the cell size and sites count,
verification of coverage analysis is carried out for the
required capacity. It is verified whether with the given
sites density, the system can carry the specified load or
new sites have to be added. Theoretical capacity of the
network is limited by the number of eNBs installed in
the network. Cell capacity in LTE is impacted by sev-
eral factors, which includes interference level, packet
scheduler implementation and supported modulation
and coding schemes [4][5]. Link Budget (Coverage
Planning) gives the maximum allowed path loss and
the maximum range of the cell, whereas takes into ac-
count the interference by providing a suitable model.
LTE also exhibits soft capacity like its predecessor 3G
systems. Therefore, the increase in interference and
noise by increasing the number of users will decrease
the cell coverage forcing the cell radius to become
smaller.
The evaluation of capacity needs the following two
tasks to be completed [4]:
172
 Recent Advances in Image, Audio and Signal Processing

 Being able to estimate the cell throughput corre- TABLE 1 – Input parameters for each scenario
sponding to the settings used to derive the cell ra-
dius. Morphol- Dense urban Urban Suburban
 Analyzing the traffic inputs provided by the opera- ogy
tor to derive the traffic demands, which includes Ch. type UL DL UL DL UL DL
the number of subscribers, the traffic mix and data Ch. Mod- ETU 3 ETU 60 ETU 120
about the geographical spread of subscribers in the el
deployment area. MIMO 1× 2× 1× 2× 1× 2×
2 2 2 2 2 2
2.4.1 Procedure Cell Edge 256 1024 256 1024 256 1024
Capacity planning procedure is as follows: Rate
• Step 1: calculate the total average throughput (kbps)
per subscriber (UL+DL). MCS QPS QPS QPS QPS QPS QPS
• Step 2: calculate the average throughput per K K K K K K
subscriber for both UL &DL. 3/4 1/2 3/4 1/2 3/4 1/2
• Step 3: calculate the peak and average
throughput per site for both UL &DL.
• Step 4: determine the maximum number of In order to calculate the MAPL; the EIRP, MRRSS,
subscribers per site by calculating the number Extra Gain, and Extra Margin and Loss must be calcu-
of subscribers for both UL &DL and taking the lated first as follows:
lowest one. EIRP = Max Tx Power + Total Tx Gain - Total Tx Loss
• Step 5: calculate total sites number required MRRSS = Rx Sensitivity – Total Rx Gain + Total Rx
for each scenario. Loss
Extra Gain=Hard Handoff Gain+ MIMO Gain + Other
Gain
3. Radio Planning Analysis and Results for Extra Margin & Loss = Shadow Fading Margin +
Tripoli City Penetration Loss + Other Loss.
Tripoli is the capital of Libya and it is considered an The results are shown in the table 2.
overpopulated city compared to the rest of most of the
country. Efficient radio network planning is obviously a TABLE 2 – EIRP, MRRSS, Extra Gain, and Extra
big challenge here with the optimal utilization of lim- Margin and Loss results.
ited resources. In this part of the work, coverage analy-
sis along with link budget preparation and capacity Morphol- Dense urban Urban Suburban
analysis have been performed. Calculations have been ogy
made specifically for Tripoli city. As a result, it can be Channel UL DL UL DL UL DL
included for a complete Tripoli city radio network type
planning, the simulations with a planning tool like EIRP per 6.19 29.1 6.19 28.6 6.19 28.6
Atoll. But this part is here now considered to be the Sub (dBm) 8 8 8
potential future work. MRRSS - - - - - -
(dBm) 145.1 123. 141. 121. 140. 122.
3.1 Link Budget and Coverage Planning Analy- 8 3 2 3 9 1
sis Extra Gain 12 9 12 9 12 9
Maximum Allowed Path Loss (MAPL) has different (dB)
values for dense urban, urban and suburban (UL & Extra 28.43 38.2 23.0 32.8 13.8 23.5
DL). So the calculation must be done to every condi- Margin &
tion and scenario apart, and from these results the cell 5 4 3 1 9
Loss (dB)
radius can be calculated for each case. At the end, the
minimum cell radius from UL& DL cell radiuses is
chosen for each scenario. There are three different cell Then the MAPL is calculated by this equation:
radiuses, each scenario has its own cell radius. MAPL=EIRP - MRRSS + Extra Gain - Extra Margin
The basic input parameters are as shown in table 1. & Loss

ISBN: 978-960-474-350-6 173

 Recent Advances in Image, Audio and Signal Processing

MAPL values for each scenario are shown in table 3.

3.2 Capacity Planning Analysis
Three types of service packages are provided, golden
service package, silver service package, and bronze
service package, each service has its own quality –the
month service package, the DL and UL peak data rates,
TABLE 3 – MAPL values for each scenario and the package percentage- all of these characteristics
are shown in table 5.
Morphology Dense urban Urban Suburban
Ch. type UL DL UL DL UL DL
The traffic ratio of the UL and DL in terms of the total
MAPL (dB) 122.9 124.0 124.4 127.0 133.3 137.0
traffic is chosen to be 20% for UL and 80% for DL.
Using Cost231-Hata model equations, the maximum The number of subscribers must be specified in order to
distance between the terminal and the base station is continue the analysis, the subscribers number for Dens
calculated, which is the cell radius. Urban is considered to be 500,000, for Urban 300,000,
and for Sub Urban 200,000, so that the total number of
Total = L – α(HSS) + Cm subscribers is 1,000,000.

L = 46.3 + 33.9× log( f ) + 13.82× log(HBS ) + (44.9 -

6.55 log(HSS )) × log(d)
TABLE 5 – The different provided services
α(Hss) = 3.2[log (11.75 )Hss]^2 - 4.97 For Urban
areas Data Month DL UL Package
card service peak peak percent-
α(Hss) = [1.1log (f) - 0.7]Hss - [1.56log(f) - 0.8] For package package rate rate age
Suburban or Rural areas Type (GB) kb/s kb/s
Gold 20 2048 1024 10%
The resulted cell radiuses after the balancing are shown Sliver 15 2048 512 50%
in Table 4. Bronze 10 1024 256 40%

TABLE 4 – Cell Radius values for each scenario Firstly the total average throughput per subscriber must
be calculated in order to calculate the average through-
Morphology Dense Urban Suburban put per site.
urban Avg. throughput per sub in BH (DL+UL) (Kbps) =
Cell Radius 0.33 0.46 1.49 Month service package × Usage ratio for service pack-
(Km)
age × × BH convergence ratio × 1000 ×
After determining the cell radius for each scenario, sites 1000
number and sites coverage areas are calculated by the Total avg. throughput per sub in BH = ∑ (Avg.
equations below: throughput per sub in BH (DL+UL) × packet percent-
age)
Site coverage area =
TABLE 6 – Total average throughput per subscriber in
BH
Required sites number =
• Dense Urban: Data card Average throughput
Site Cov. Area = 0.2122 km2, Required Sites No. = package Type /user in BH
144 site (Kbps)(DL+UL)
• Urban: Gold 88.89
Site Cov. Area = 0.412 km2, Required Sites No. = 283 Sliver 66.67
site Bronze 44.44
• Sub Urban: Total 60
Site Cov. Area = 4.326 km2, Required Sites No. = 86
site

ISBN: 978-960-474-350-6 174

 Recent Advances in Image, Audio and Signal Processing

Avg. throughput per subscriber for UL = Total avg. Total sites number =
throughput per sub (UL +DL)
× UL traffic ratio
Avg. throughput per subscriber for DL = Total avg.
throughput per sub (UL +DL) • Dense Urban:
× DL traffic ratio Total sites number = 215 site
• Urban:
Table 7 shows the results of Average throughput per Total sites number = 129 site
subscriber calculation for each (UL &DL). • Sub Urban:
Total sites number = 86 site
TABLE 7 – Average throughput per subscriber for UL
& DL The required sites number for a specific area should be
chosen to be the maximum number of sites obtained
Chanel Total avg. Traffic Avg. from coverage and capacity planning calculations to
Type throughput per ratio throughput satisfy the traffic requirements of both coverage and
sub (UL +DL) per sub- capacity; according to the results obtained from the
(Kbps) scriber coverage and capacity planning analysis, the final sites
(Kbps) number required for each scenario are shown in table 9.
UL 62.91 20% 12
DL 62.91 80% 48 TABLE 9 – The final required sites number for each
scenario
Then the peak and average throughputs per site for both
UL and DL must be calculated. Scenario Required Sites
Number
Peak throughput per site =(data RE/sec × bits per RE Dense 215
× MIMO effect × coding rate) urban
Average throughput per site = ∑ (peak throughput Urban 283
per modulation scheme × sub number percentage) Suburban 86
The average throughput per site is shown in table 8.
4. PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT FOR THE
TABLE 8 – Average throughput per site LINK LEVEL OF AN LTE NETWORK
DL U The performance of the link level and communication
Avg. throughput per site L quality in terms of bit error rate (BER) or block error
(Mbps) 11 40 rate (BLER) can be expressed as a function of the sig-
2 nal-to-noise ratio (SNR), or the signal to-interference
ratio (SIR), depending on which type of signal distur-
Now, the maximum subscribers number per site is cal- bance is dominant. In digital transmission, the number
culated for UL and DL and the lowest is chosen. of bit errors is the number of received bits of a data
stream over a communication channel that have been
Max Sub No. per site = altered due to noise, interference, distortion or bit syn-
chronization errors.
In this section a simulation of the channels between the
transmitter (eNB or UE) and the receiver (eNB or UE)
Max Sub number per site (DL) = 2333 sub/site is done to know how the BER and BLER are related to
Max Sub number per site (UL) =3333 sub/site the SNR, also to get a clear view to the spectrum of the
transmitted signal, at the transmitter and the receiver.
Then the total number of sites according to the capacity To perform this simulation, ADS2009 (Advanced De-
planning analysis is calculated. sign System 2009) simulation program is used.

4.1 Downlink(DL) with FDD propagation mode, at

the receiver(Rx)

ISBN: 978-960-474-350-6 175

 Recent Advances in Image, Audio and Signal Processing
Some cases are illustrated in this paper. For the first
case, the channel between the transmitter (eNB) and the
receiver (UE) is simulated for DL scenario, the propa-
gation mode applied is FDD, and all the results are
taken at the receiver (UE) end. The plots that include
the resulted BER and
BLER and how they affect the SNR are shown in Fig-
ure 2.
Figure 2 – BER&BLERvsSNR for DL-Fading
4.2 Uplink(UL) with FDD Propagation Mode, at the
Receiver(Rx)
In this case the channel between the transmitter (UE)
and the receiver (eNB) was simulated for UL scenario,
the propagation mode applied is FDD, and the results
are taken at the receiver (eNB) end.
The plots that include the resulted BER and BLER and
how they affect the SNR are shown in Figures 3.
Figure 3 –BER&BLERvsSNR for UL-AWGN
5. Conclusions
A solution to improve the current communication sys-
tem in Tripoli city is introduced by designing an LTE
ISBN: 978-960-474-350-6
radio network taking into consideration the possibility
of maintaining the current 3G network at the very low
populated areas “the rural areas”. The outcome as
shown in fig.4 of the network planning design is as
follows:
• The peak throughput/site for the DL is 144 Mbps.
• The peak throughput/site for the UL is 50.4 Mbps.
• The average throughput/site for the DL is 112
Mbps.
• The average throughput/site for the UL is 40
Mbps.
• The max. Subs. No./site was found to be 2333
sub/site.
The total sites number for each scenario apart; for
dense urban 215 sites, for urban 283 sites, and for sub-
urban 86 site.
From the link level -of the LTE network- simulation
cases, we see that as the BER or BLER increases, the
SNR decreases, and vice versa. The relation of
BERvsSNR and BLERvsSNR varies depending on
many parameters such as: modulation scheme, code
rate, channel type, and antenna configuration.
The main observations are summarized in the following
Figure 4. The peak throughputs
points:
• From the results it is shown that the BER&BLER
can get improved by increasing the number of re-
ceiving antennas (antenna diversity improve-
ment).
• The number of transmitting antennas doesn’t af-
fect the BER or BLER values.
• The resulting BER&BLER from TDD and FDD
simulation cases have the same performance for
the same antenna configuration.
• Receiver diversity affects the SNR; SIMO (1x2)
antenna configuration increases the SNR by 3dB
whereas MIMO (2x2) increases the SNR by 4dB.
For the future work, it’s recommended to include the
rest of the country in the network planning, including
the rural areas. It’s also highly recommended to use a
planning tool like Atoll, the planning tool will save the
time and effort and will make the calculations more
accurate. Such planning tools are so expensive and
that’s why in our work it was impossible to use it.
Reference
[1] M. Junaid Arshad, Amjad Farooq, Abad Shah,
"Evolution and Development towards 4th Generation
176
 Recent Advances in Image, Audio and Signal Processing

(4G) Mobile Communication Systems", Journal of

American Science, 2010; 6(12).
[2] Harri Holma, Antti Toskala, "LTE for UMTS –
OFDMA and SC-FDMA Based Radio Access", John
Wiley & Sons, Ltd, both of Nokia Siemens Networks,
Finland, 2009.
[3] Ericsson, “Long Term Evolution (LTE), an intro-
duction”, October 2007.
[4] HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES, “Long Term Evolu-
tion (LTE) Radio Access Network Planning Guide CO.,
LTD”.
[5] Abdul Basit, Syed, “Dimensioning of LTE Network,
Description of Models and Tool, Coverage and Capac-
ity Estimation of 3GPP Long Term Evolution radio in-
terface”, February 2009.

ISBN: 978-960-474-350-6 177

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