SmartPlan™

The design of systems for in-building coverage is notoriously challenging and often relies purely on subjective decisions and engineering judgement. This is increasingly causing problems both on mature 2G networks due to dense frequency reuse and on 3G networks where interference must be kept to a minimum to maintain quality of service. SmartPlan is a unique automated network planning and optimisation service which utilises Prediction from the operator’s own planning tool or from Red-M's own MbP™ (Measurement-based Prediction) system, to ensure the network is optimised against the Key Performance Indicators including profit, cost, coverage and capacity. Compared with manual approaches, SmartPlan is able to assess many thousands of network configurations in order to identify the optimum solution.

SmartPlan approach

SmartPlan utilises an efficient, fully automated evolutionary process to generate a network by gradually iterating the network configuration taking into account the list of sites, the antenna parameters at each site (including height, type, azimuth and own tilt) and EIRP (equivalent isotropically radiated power) at each site.

SmartPlan considers many thousands of intelligently-chosen network configurations and their associated costs. The relative importance of network Key Performance Indicators can be adjusted as required to change the balance between cost and coverage. A number of network plans are generated, providing a range of options from which to choose the design which best suits the requirements.

Benefits

• Significant cost savings
• Increased profits
• Improved quality
• Reduced planning timescales

SmartPlan in action

SmartPlan has two modes of operation:

Roll-out mode
This mode is ideal for initial network planning and roll-out. In this mode, SmartPlan is free to choose any antenna parameters and any sites from a large list of potential ones. Plans are therefore produced using real, known sites. This delivers a number of benefits:

• Minimises the risks and timescales involved in site acquisition
• Maximises the opportunities for using available multi-site portfolios

Optimisation mode
This mode is appropriate for post-build optimisation where improving network quality or capacity, and cutting costs are key objectives. In this mode, SmartPlan starts from an existing plan or network and iterates antenna parameters, adding or removing sites if appropriate. In both modes, changes can be made at any stage of the process, and

SmartPlan will automatically recalculate the optimum plan using the new information.

Red-M reference site

Red-M applied SmartPlan to a test scenario for UMTS deployment. The selected area was a 20km square in West London, containing the prestigious locations of Westminster, Marylebone, Chelsea and Battersea. This area was selected because of its high significance to operators in terms of revenue generation and from a planning point of view because of the presence of diverse clutter categories (dense urban, urban, suburban, parks etc) allowing the tool to perform in a mixed radio environment. The coverage target for the UMTS test network was set at 95%, of which three different designs achieved this result, based on separate KPI structures. The results included an explicit cost/benefit trade-off, providing a basis for informed decision-making rather than relying on time-consuming manual methods.

[Back to Top]