Optimizing Radio Network Planning Evolution Towards Microcellular Systems

Service demand in cellular radio networks is generally heterogeneous and non uniform, leading to asymmetrical topologies. This complexity along with the multiple radio access technologies, the radio channel and practical constraints, make the radio network planning process a challenging task that leaves little room for intuitive solutions. In this paper we formulate the framework that allows for radio network planning analysis to be performed in the context of an evolutionary macro–micro-relay combination approach, or wide area microcell deployments. Coverage, capacity and cost requirements as well as different practical constraints such as reuse of existing 2G and 3G sites, are considered along with a multi-objective optimization algorithm adapted to the radio network planning problem for 4G systems. Among other things, the produced results highlight two key issues: (a) the way towards high capacity radio networks is to replace macrocells with a number of microcells that is more than one order of magnitude higher, (b) optimizing the radio network deployment can reduce the cost/Mbps/km² by factors of 4 to 20, compared to equivalent macrocellular reference scenarios.