Optimization Manager

The OptMan component included in the WinProp software suite allows you to optimize radio networks designed with WinProp

Existing networks, containing transmitters with directional antennas, can be optimised regarding azimuth and tilt adjustment of the antennas. Beyond this, the tool is able to assist during the planning process of new radio networks by extracting a subset of specified antennas required to fulfill a user-defined set of thresholds.

For the optimization of the adjustment of directional antennas in azimuth and tilt, the user can define a range and increment for each antenna separately. The azimuth for one antenna can be changed, for example, between 10° and 50° with an increment of 10°, whereas the tilt of the same or another antenna can be specified to vary between 5° and 15° with an increment of 5°, for example. Individual antennas can also be excluded from the optimization process and considered as fixed, or can be disabled.

Since an optimization target has to be defined, the user has to select a result (for example, SNIR) which shall be used for optimization. For this result, at least one target threshold has to be specified.

The tool computes all combinations of azimuth and tilt angles automatically and displays the performance of each combination. After the simulation, the combination which provides the best performance can be assigned and saved in the project file.

Depending on the number of combinations the computation time can be high. However, the OptMan tool implements a time efficient approach, so that each potential sector orientation is only computed once (regarding the propagation part). Furthermore, the user can influence the number of combinations to be examined, and therefore the required simulation time, by using larger increments for the angles. After a coarse tuning, a fine tuning with reduced ranges but finer increments can be done.

During the installation of new radio networks, it is often quite difficult to find the optimum location of new transmitter antennas.

OptMan offers the possibility to find the best suitable subset of a larger set of possible, user-defined transmitters / cells within a radio network. You first define more transmitters than you expect to need. Based on any specified result type, for example, data rate, signal level, interference level and corresponding optimization target definitions, OptMan finds the best subset of transmitters or cells to fulfill these specified targets or approach the defined targets as close as possible.

The tool automatically computes the wave propagation and network planning predictions. It adds a first transmitter or cell to the configuration from the list of available predefined transmitters or cells. Then the next transmitter or cell is added to the network if a minimum cell area is additionally provided by this transmitter, and so on until all user-defined thresholds are achieved.



Figure 1. Example of a distribution of sites in Paris before and after optimization.