WCDMA Radio Network Planning

Compared to the 2nd generation Mobile Telecommunication System -GSM, WCDMA is differed from GSM in services and air interface. Only services like voice and low data rate services are supported in GSM/GPRS network, but now WCDMA network can also support applications like multimedia services. In WCDMA, air interface is built with CDMA technology, radio network's data bearer changes from circuit switch to packet switch. As there are so many fundamental differences in WCDMA from GSM, so the theory and methods of WCDMA radio network planning are obviously different from GSM's.At present, Chinese Mobile operators have launched GSM service for more than 10 years, and accumulated a lot of experience. But based on WCDMA's specialty, WCDMA radio network planning is quite a big challenge to them. Because WCDMA radio network planning results are directly impact on real network's quality, service deployment, and network operation. Radio network planning's goal is to apply theoretical analysis and tool simulation/prediction to obtain network's equipments' quantity and configuration and location ,to achieve the guaranteed services and supported subscribers in certain planning area.This paper starts with a real WCDMA network planning's demand for network construction target and network service requirement. The paper describes WCDMA radio network planning process, which covers following aspects: radio network pre-planning, propagation model tuning, and radio network performance simulation and site selections. Paper focuses on introducing radio network planning procedure and principal, and meanwhile...