An Iterative capacity dimensioning scheme for an LTE advanced network under resource constraints

Abstract

Since the need for high-speed broadband services is growing exponentially, legacy voice oriented networks are now becoming obsolete. Due to the unceasing demand for data, investors of mobile service providing companies are also keener on investing new technologies other than GSM, which ultimately improves spectrum efficiency and speeds up the access. Long Term Evolution (LTE) is the fastest and latest broadband technology with widespread global development of commercial networks. Until now, scientists are working to improve the communication capabilities while evolving from basic voice services to high definition video streaming and real time video game playing. However, every operator has a limited investment capacity and are highly concerned about the maximum utilization of resources with a higher ROI. As a result, it is imperative to have a properly dimensioned and well-optimized network. However, LTE network dimensioning is not as easy as legacy pure voice-only networks (circuit switched), which can be easily modeled by Erlang formulae. LTE networks are evolving from circuit switching to packet switching; therefore, both voice and data will be transferred as packets. There can be combinations of different data service requirements such as streaming, browsing, interactive video, gaming etc. with voice. In fact, different types of traffic, which require different QoS are inherent. With the new releases of LTE standards, researchers all over the world are interested in finding most optimum ways of dimensioning LTE networks. Several perspectives have looked at calculating the required number of 4G sites in the initial network-planning phase. Even though there are quality-based models, coverage based models, capacity based models and hybrid models already, due to the complexity of both UL and DL throughput calculations, each model has its own advantages and disadvantages. None of the approaches are discussing about an iterative capacity dimensioning solution to fine tune the required site count. Therefore, in this research thesis author proposes an iterative method under constraints to find the minimum site count while achieving given UL/DL speed requirements for LTE network rollouts. This method will be based on iterations, and varying parameters will be heavily significant in the context of DL and UL throughput.