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Mobile

PMR

This section shows how our software tools can be applied to the general field of Private Mobile Radio (PMR) and specifically how our products can be used to design, optimise and roll out conventional and trunked mobile radio networks including technologies such as MPT1327 and TETRA. The methods and sub-tools developed within tools such as ICS Telecom have come from our work with various customers. These companies have either used our tools or have contracted ATDI to carry out work on their behalf to further their development of mobile radio systems.

General PMR Planning Methods

The following general modelling methods have application in mobile radio and are included in ATDI planning tools.

• The ability to compute the coverage of ground area from a given transmitter type and specification to a given receiver type and specification.
• The ability to compute the degree of interference suffered by both mobiles (down link) and base stations (up link) from all on the same or adjacent channels.
• The degree of resilience built into a system allowing the network to be optimised for overlap, traffic demand or critical coverage.
• The ability to link the planning tools via a network to develop the system using a number of planners each with privilege to change their own zone yet compute the effects of those adjacent.
• The ability to link the planning tools via an Open Data Base Connectivity protocol to external database such as Oracle and MS Access allowing the sharing of engineering data across a multi-discipline project team.
• The counting of mobile population covered under a transmitter footprint with the addition of an irregular polygon limit.
• The counting of area under a transmitter footprint but showing the results over a variety of different urbanisation categories including roads, urban and suburban areas with the addition of an irregular polygon limit.

Specific PMR Planning Methods

The design and subsequently the roll out of PMR networks to cover both data and voice is a well established process. There is however very great scope for automation of the methods used and for optimisation of the engineering design to critically engineer the network to meet the customer requirement with the minimum base station and antenna system resources. The specific methods noted below are some of the tools employable to ensure that the planning engineer produces the most cost effective system.

The coverage calculated can be filtered to only display on specific ground use types such as roads or railways. This then allows the planner to focus on the desired target user for the service. Similarly, interference calculations over rural or open areas away from that target user can be ignored or reduced in significance. Several views are possible once a coverage computation from a given site has been made. The best server view shows where on the ground mobile would vote or register on the basis of field strength. The simultaneous communications view shows which areas on the ground benefit from signal from several sites and where a radio dispatcher might be used to access several repeaters.

The computation of traffic capacity of a network will of course be dependant on the number of subscribers served by a given base station. Traffic analysis can be done using methods such as Erlang B or C. The traffic demand is made up in a demand file directly in the planning tool. ICS Telecom contains a host of sub-tools to be used in site finding. This includes the ability to place a series of points and to reverse the planning process to request the locus of points where a useable signal will be received from those locations. Once established a site can be positioned there and the coverage probed. ICS Telecom allows the investigation of the lie of the land in three dimensions allowing the engineer to see directly the effect of positioning a site at a given location.

For quasi-synchronous systems including DQS ICS Telecom allows the user to analyse in both amplitude and phase the effects encountered by the mobile in overlap areas within the system. Once computed the planning engineer can introduce a launch delay at each transmitter and optimise the effects of overlap.

Once coverage has been assessed the operating frequency of each site can be assigned automatically from a frequency list. This is done primarily in the talk out path by selecting the best frequency to maximise the C/I ratio experienced by the mobiles.

Paging

This section shows how our software tools can be applied to the general field of radio paging and specifically how our products can be used to design, optimise and roll out modern paging networks employing technologies such as Flex 3200 or 6400, ERMES and POCSAG 2400. The methods and sub-tools developed within tools such as ICS telecom have come from our work with various customers. These companies have either used our tools or have contracted ATDI to carry out work on their behalf to further their development of high bit rate paging networks.

Specific PMR Planning Methods

There are too many general sub-tools within ATDI products with application in this sector to mention all of them here. Some of the most relevant however are:

• The ability to compute the coverage from a given transmitter type and specification to a given receiver type and specification.
• The ability to compute the degree of interference suffered by all parties, whether using the same or different modulation scheme.
• The degree of resilience built into a system allowing the network to be optimised for overlap or critical coverage.
• The ability to reverse the task and ask the tool to suggest the location of a transmitter in order to cover a given set of locations.
• The ability to link the planning tools via a network to develop the system using a number of planners each with privilege to change their own zone yet compute the effects of those adjacent.
• The ability to link the planning tools via an Open Database Connectivity protocol to external databases such as Oracle and MS Access allowing sharing of engineering data across a multi-discipline project team.
• The counting of population covered under a transmitter footprint with the addition of an irregular polygon limit.
• The counting of area under a transmitter footprint but showing the result over a variety of different urbanisation categories including roads with the addition of an irregular polygon limit.

Specific Paging Methods

High bit rate iso-frequency or simulcast networks share one thing - the transmission of high bit rate data simultaneously from all transmitters. The characteristics of the resultant composite signal at the overlap between transmitters and the use of distant, dominant sites must be controlled carefully to avoid degradation of the perceived call success rate by inter-symbol interference. The specific methods below indicate the applications added to ATDI tools for this application.

Display on screen the condition 'if dominant site at that location, dominant site prevails, else consider next two highest field strength sites, and report the difference in propagation delay (time of arrival) greater than DuS between arrivals from these sites.' Dominant sites are those where the field strength received from these sites is greater by EdB than that from all others. Both D and E can be set by the user. Areas victim to inter-symbol interference can be shown in colour across the area being planned.

The above condition considers that the modulation is launched coincidentally from each site. To modify the effects of inter-symbol interference on the ground there may be value in delaying the launch from one or more transmitters by delays of between 0 and 100uS. This fixed delay can be set in both ICS Telecom and HTZ Warfare.

Both the vertical and horizontal antenna responses can be changed to illustrate the use of different antenna types. Standard antennas can be called from equipment database. This allows the use of antenna tailoring to direct areas victim to inter-symbol interference away from areas of key interest such as towns and major roads.

Individual colours can be assigned to the best server footprint of each site. This ability to differentiate between the coverage from each site to the equi-signal loci can be used to develop an offset plan. With colour representation, +150 Hz, -150 Hz and channel centre offsets can be assigned across the country.

In all ATDI planning tools the user has total control over the thresholds and colours painted on screen to represent coverage. The user can therefore set thresholds to represent given Call Success Rates in all the various environments in which paging subscribers will operate.

Penetration loss can be assigned to each urbanisation or clutter category such that this is added as an excess loss to each path loss assessment. This automatically accounts for the fact that pager users in urban areas will be located inside buildings.

UMTS

ATDI has developed advanced UMTS functions in collaboration with major actors for actual UMTS network deployments. ICS Telecom integrates powerful functionalities for the simulation, validation and design or 3G networks. These features allow the study and modeling of the whole network, whatever the technology employed -fixed or mobile (Point-to-Point, Point-to-Multipoint). This is particularly critical when interconnecting stations and networks.

Full UMTS planning features

Existing site validation (GSM...):

• Pilot coverage
• EC/I/O coverage
• Site selection
• Interferences analysis

Network Analysis:

• Eb/N0 forward and reverse coverage analysis
• Coverage visualization according to traffic
• Coverage modification according to traffic and Power Control
• Detailed analysis of each link in point to point mode: quality, jamming,
• Traffic analysis
• Power Control: static or according to statistical anticipation

Network design and roll-out:

• Network dimensioning
• Automated prospective planning
• Multiple propagation models based on literature and ITU recommendations (geometrical, statistical, mixed) or user defined in external DLLs

Multi-service traffic modeling:

• According to different ground occupancy classes
• According to density per area
• According to fixed or random display of mobiles with different activity rate
• According to localization area
• Dynamic Monte-Carlo to analyse system loading and performance
• Cell-breathing visualization

Cellular & PCS networks

This note describes how ATDI software can be used across current cellular and PCS technologies using TDMA and CDMA modulation to optimise and roll out networks. Such networks can give expansive coverage such as is typical in the 900MHz bands or can be small cell and micro-cell providing footprints of only a few hundred metres. The methods and sib-tools within tools such as ICS Telecom have come from our work with various customers. These customers have either used our tools or have contracted ATDI to carry out work on their behalf to furthers their development of their cellular or PCS networks.

General Cellular and PCS Networks Planning Methods

The following general modelling methods have application in cellular and PCS networks and are included in ATDI planning tools.

• The ability to compute the coverage of ground area from a given transmitter type and specification to a given receiver type and specification.
• The ability to compute the degree of interference suffered by both mobiles (down link) and base stations (up link) from all sources on the same or adjacent channels.
• The counting of mobile population covered under a transmitter footprint with the addition of an irregular polygon limit.
• The counting of area under a transmitter footprint but showing results over a variety of different urbanisation categories including roads, urban and suburban areas with the addition of an irregular polygon limit.
• The ability to link planning tools via either local or wide area computer networks to develop the cellular or PCS network using a number of planners each with privilege to change their own zone yet compute the effects of those adjacent.
• The ability to link the planning tools via an Open DataBase Connectivity protocol to external databases such as Oracle or MS Access allowing the sharing of engineering data across a multi-discipline project team.

Specific Cellular and PCS Networks Planning Methods

The design and subsequently the roll our of cellular and PCS networks to cover both dada and voice is a well established process. There is however great scope for automation in the methods and for optimisation of the engineering design to critically engineer the network to meet the customer requirements with the minimum base station and antenna system resources both initially and as the network develops. The specific methods noted below are some of the many tools employable to ensure that the planning team produces the most cost effective system.

The coverage calculated can be filtered to only display on specified ground use types such as roads and railways. This then allows the planner to focus on the desired target user for the service. Similarly interference calculations over rural or open areas away from that target user can be ignored or reduced in consideration during automatic frequency planning. Several views are possible once a coverage computation from a given sites or radio base station has been made. The best server view shows where on the ground mobiles would vote or register on the basis of signal strength. The simultaneous communications view shows which areas on the ground benefit from signal from several sites.

Once coverage has been assessed the operating frequency of the base station can be assigned automatically from a frequency list. Frequency group planning can also be set fixing groups of channels to particular base stations. This assignment is done primarily in the talk out path by selecting by a genetic exclusion method the best frequency or group of frequencies to maximise the C/I ratio experienced by the mobile users.

The computation of the traffic capacity of the network will of course be dependent on the number of subscribers served by a particular base station. Traffic analysis on the basis of best server or on forced server can be computed using methods such as Erlang B. The traffic demand can be made up in a demand file directly in the planning tool and various demand profiles can be used simulating the development of the user population with time.

The ability to connect the planning tool, to the network management system, and to provide continuous performance assessment at all stages of network availability, ICS Telecom can be used to command reconfiguration of the network to account for changing scenarios. This is an area where we would be happy to discuss additional possibilities in this field.

Relevant ATDI Software tools:

ICS telecom nG
for all general fixed link network planning in the bands 1.5GHz to 55GHz.

ICS map server
for the creation and manipulation of high definition terrain and buildings data allowing planning to go ahead anywhere in the world

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