Network Planning

Whether the scenario is indoor, urban or rural, a network planning simulation can be regarded as post-processing of a propagation simulation.

The preparations in WallMan and AMan are exactly the same as for a regular propagation simulation.

The first difference occurs in ProMan when defining a new project: you specify that the project is a network-planning project instead of a propagation analysis without network planning.


Figure 1. Specify a network-planning project.

For network planning, the air interface (for example, CDMA, OFDM) are to be defined with parameters related to carriers (number, bandwidth, separation), transmission modes, coding, required signal-to-noise-and-interference ratio at the receiver. This information may be loaded from a file with extension .wst or defined manually.

In ProMan, most of the simulation setup is done under Project > Edit Project Parameter.


Figure 2. The key menu in ProMan is Project > Edit Project Parameter.

This menu item brings up a window with several tabs: those from the regular propagation analysis, and additional ones that are specific to network planning. If you have loaded an existing .wst file, then most or all information necessary for the network-planning part of the simulation has already been filled in under the relevant tabs.

A network-planning analysis starts with a regular propagation analysis, launched through the RUN PRO button or the Computation menu. This provides results like received power over the area of interest. The network-planning post-processing is launched through the RUN NET button or the Computation menu.



Figure 3. Launch the network-planning processing by either clicking the RUN NET button or click Network Simulation from the Computation menu.

The network-planning simulation adds results like signal-to-noise-and-interference ratio (SNIR), cell assignment, maximum data rate, maximum throughput, coverage probability. At every location in the area of interest, whether one can communicate with a particular air interface and data rate depends on the minimum required received power and minimum required SNIR.



Figure 4. Example signal-to-noise-and-interference plot. Two transmitters are using the same carrier and interfere strongly in the lower-left area.