Indoor Planning Process Flow

Draft Design and Site Survey

Based on the design inputs provided by sales, the RF planner will do a draft radio link
budget and prepare a draft design prior to the site survey. Thus the radio planner can
check all the planned antenna locations, and adapt the design accordingly.
Based on the experience from the site survey, the radio planner will be able to adapt
the draft design to the reality and restrictions in the building, in order to make the
final design. During the RF survey, take lots of photos and mark the position of each
photo on the floor plan; check the type of walls, take notes on the floor plans of the
different types.

RF measurements are a crucial part of designing and verifying indoor coverage

solutions. It is important to know the ‘RF‐baseline’ (the existing coverage) both inside
and outside the building in order to establish the correct design level and parameters
to use when designing the indoor DAS.

Designing the Optimum Indoor Solution

The optimum indoor solution exists only in theory. must DAS design utilizes the
features, possibilities and limitations in the particular building to a maximum, in order
to make the system applicable for practical implementation.
Here some

 Adapt the Design to Reality Even with theoretical knowledge on how to

design the perfect indoor solution, the main task for the RF planner will often
be to know when and where to compromise in order to implement the system
in practice and still maintain an economical and high performing solution.

 Use Only Visible Antenna Placement antennas must be ‘visible’ for the
mobiles. After all, mobile coverage is a crucial part of the buildings utility
infrastructure. If you are forced to accept installation of antennas above the
ceiling or behind walls, be sure to note it in the design document and contract
that the performance of the system is ‘best effort’ and not guaranteed due to
installation restraints.

 Use Only Quality Certified Components the quality of the simpler passive
components – antennas, splitters, tapers, connectors and jumpers – may have a
major degrading impact on the RF service performance if these components
do not perform to specification.

 Use Only High‐quality Antennas

  Dimensioning Coverage on Uplink and Downlink

 Accounting for Coax Loss

Planning the Antenna Locations

In theory the correct inter‐antenna distance for omni antennas is radius × 1.41 . This
clearly shows us that there is a need for coverage overlap between the antennas in
order to provide good indoor coverage.

Adapt the Antenna Placements to the Reality building never has uniform loss in all
directions from the antenna. In real buildings the antennas will typically serve many
types of areas. open office space, dense office areas, dense areas (stair cases), heavy
dense areas (elevator shafts).
Therefore, you must adapt the antenna locations to these specific environments when
applying the link budget‐calculated service ranges from the antennas to the reality of
the building.

The corridor effect is a strong tool, but you need to be careful when you base the
design on using this method. By choosing the optimum location for the antennas, the
building will help distribute the RF signal and you can utilize the corridor effect to a
maximum. However, if you do not choose the antenna locations wisely, the building
can lim

Fast ray tracing

One of the most popular physical model methods to predict path loss used for indoor
scenarios is known as ray tracing. Ray tracing is a sophisticated approach to
deterministic physical prediction of in-building propagation. This can be used for site-
specific predictions, provided that sufficient detail of the building geometry and
materials is available. Building materials often need to be modelled in detail as
multiple-layer structures with detailed internal construction to achieve high modelling
accuracy. Fine detail of building geometry must also be obtained to account for the
wave interactions with walls, floors and the edges of doors and windows. In fact, ray
tracing takes into account building characteristics, such as walls and inclined and
cylindrical surfaces, as shown in Figure 5.9(a), and predicts how radio waves will
propagate. In Figure 5.9(b) it is shown how ray tracing has been applied to a building
with a large corridor and many rooms on both sides. The areas that have increased
signal power due to reflection are clearly shown there. For this simulation, details of
specific furniture inside the building were not available and therefore the rooms are
assumed to be ‘empty’, as can be clearly observed. A directional antenna was placed
on the West corridor.

Figure 1Examples of physical model (ray tracing) in a building: (a) reflections caused by walls,

To perform ray tracing, all possible ray paths between the source and field points
should be calculated, which are consistent with Snell’s laws of reflection and
refraction and including diffracted rays (Saunders and Aragón-Zavala, 2007). The
following steps are followed:
 Ray launching sends out test rays at a number of discrete angles from the
transmitter.
 The rays interact with objects present in the environment as they propagate.
 Launch new reflected, refracted and diffracted rays whenever a ray hits a
surface or edge.
 Use reflection, transmission and diffraction coefficients to find the ray power
after each ‘bounce’.
 Add the power in all rays in a given area.
Ray tracing correctly accounts for all the important propagation mechanisms
reflection, refraction and diffraction on the assumption that there is good knowledge
of the building geometry and materials. It can be more accurate provided that the
environment information is available and correct

The following assumptions are often made when performing ray tracing predictions:
 Each wall is modelled as a plane surface.
 Each surface has known, simple electromagnetic properties penetration,
reflection and diffraction).
 However, walls are rarely consistent materials and windows are complicated
GSM
Figure 2.4 shows the key elements of a standard GSM cellular network. The central
hub of the network is the mobile switching centre (MSC), often simply called the
switch. This provides connection between the cellular network and the public
switched telephone network (PSTN) and also between cellular subscribers. Details of
the subscribers for whom this network is the home network are held on a database
called the home location register (HLR), while the details of subscribers who have
entered the network from
elsewhere are on the visitor location register (VLR).

These details include authentication and billing details, plus the current location and
status of the subscriber.
The coverage area of the network is handled by a large number of base stations.
The base station subsystem (BSS) is composed of a base station controller (BSC),
which handles the logical functionality, plus one or several base transceiver stations
(BTS) containing the actual RF and baseband parts of the BSS.
The BTSs communicate over the air interface (AI) with the mobile stations (MS).
The air interface includes all of the channel effects as well as the modulation,
demodulation and channel allocation procedures within the MS and BTS. A single
BSS may handle 50 calls and an MSC may handle some 100 BSSs.
GSM was originally licensed to operate in the 900MHz band. More spectra were
allocated later on, in 1800 MHz, for a standard known as DCS1800. Both were
deployed in Europe, and many other countries in the world use the same frequency
bands. In the Americas, the bands 800 MHz and 1900MHz are used for GSM.
Although GSM was mainly designed to provide voice services at a speed of 9.6 kbps,
some overhead was left in the data resources, so this overhead was used for
transmitting short messages, leading to the SMS service. Later on, some limited data
capabilities were included in the standard using packet data, introducing GPRS and
EDGE. By using more sophisticated modulation schemes, data rates of up to 200–300
kbps could be achieved.
GSM uses separate frequency bands for the uplink (UL) and downlink (DL). This
scheme is known as Frequency Division Duplex (FDD). The two bands are separated
by 45MHz on GSM900 and by 95MHz on DCS1800. The spectrum allocated to GSM
is divided into 200-kHz channels, and each of these channels is divided into eight
time slots to be used as logical and traffic channels.
Handovers in GSM are ‘hard’, which means that the mobile monitors the Rx level of
neighboring cells and if the handover criteria is fulfilled (e.g. insufficient signal level,
poor signal quality, etc.) the network commands the mobile to hand over to a new
serving cell, using a different channel. Handovers are possible between cells or
between sectors in a cell.
For GSM in-building systems, there are some considerations that are relevant to take
into account when planning and designing the network, and could be summarized as
follows

 Coverage is achieved either by macrocell penetration or a dedicated indoor

cell using distribution systems (antennas or leaky feeders) and adjusted so that
dominance is achieved inside the building.
 Handover overlapping areas are desired to allow mobiles to have sufficient
time to handoff between cells/sectors, especially in venues like airports where,
for example, handover from the macrocell to the indoor cell needs to be
achieved right at the entrance of the terminal building.
 Voice traffic is dimensioned using trunking theory, as discussed in Chapter 8,
and more channels can be allocated depending on Grade of Service (GoS)
requirements.
 For larger traffic demands in densely populated venues, such as airports, the
system can be upgraded by adding more capacity to the base stations and by
performing zoning or further cell splitting, thus enhancing the frequency reuse.
Special careshould be taken to maintain C=I levels within specs.
Capacity is limited by the number of available resources in the BTS and by traffic
demands, which are ruled by trunking theory.
Co-channel and adjacent-channel interference need to be considered and taken into
account, especially if sectors (zones) are deployed inside a building.

UMTS
The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) was specified and
selected for 3G since the use of the spectrum is very efficient. UMTS has a high
rejection to narrowband interference using Wideband Code Division Multiple Access
(WCDMA), being thus very robust against frequency selective fading.
For UMTS cells, users share the same frequency, having a distinct spreading code.
Thus, most of radio planning for UMTS is based on noise and power control.
UnlikeGSMwhere
cells are assigned a different frequency, the intercell interference needs to be
minimized.
There are two main types of UMTS radio systems: TDD and FDD. For TDD systems,
the same frequency is used for the UL and the DL, whereas for FDD systems different
frequencies are used for UL and DL. The latter is the most frequently used WCDMA
radio system and requires a paired set of bands and an equal bandwidth separated
95MHz duplex distance throughout the band.
The frequency band 1920–1980MHz is assigned for the UL for WCDMA-FDD and
2110–2170MHz for DL. This is used worldwide, although WCDMA-TDD is used in
a few countries. Most operators are assigned two or three carriers in the 2.1 GHz band
per license, but considerations for reusing the GSM900 spectrum are being made to
utilize it for UMTS (Tolstrup, 2011).
In UMTS a spread spectrum signal is used, having a bandwidth of 5 MHz. A
spreading code is employed to spread the original narrowband signal throughout the
spectrum.
Thus the signal becomes less sensitive to selective interference; for example,
intermodulation products from narrowband services.
The concept of frequency reuse in UMTS can be understood in a slightly different
way to GSM. For UMTS the frequency reuse factor is 1 and different primary
scrambling codes (highly orthogonal) are used per cell.
One of the key parameters for UMTS signal quality is the energy-bit-per-noise density
ratio (Eb=N0). It is the reference point for link budget calculations and defines the
maximum data rate possible with a given noise – the higher the data rates, the stricter
the Eb=N0 requirements. On the other hand, the quality of the pilot channel is
measured as Ec=I0, which is the
energy per chip/interference density ratio measured on the pilot channel (CPICH).
When the user equipment (UE) detects two or more CPICH with similar levels, it will
enter soft handover. Thus, the UE constantly monitors the Ec=I0 of the serving cell
and
adjacent cells and compares the quality of the Ec=I0 of the serving CPICH against the
quality of other measured CPICHs and trigger levels or thresholds to add or remove
cells
from the neighbour list. The CPICH thus defines the cell size.
There are two types of handovers in UMTS. The softer handover occurs when a UE is
within the service area of cells originating from the same NodeB at the same power
level,
using both RF links, using two separate codes in the DL. On the other hand, soft
handover
occurs when a mobile is in the service area of two cells originating from a different
NodeB, and thus the mobile will use one RF link to both base stations; that is
macrodiversity.
Pilot pollution occurs when a mobile receives CPICH signals at similar levels from
other cells that are not in the neighbour list. This is the case when a distant macrocell
can be ‘seen’ in a high-rise building at one of the upper levels. This will cause
interference of the serving cell’s CPICH, the so-called pilot pollution. This problem
can be solved if an indoor cell is installed inside the building and has dominance
(Tolstrup, 2011).
UMTS is very sensitive to noise control, since all traffic is in the same frequency and
all
signals from active UE need to reach the NodeB at the same level. If one UE reaches
the
UL of the NodeB at a much higher level, it will interfere with all the other UEs in
service
on the same cell. Therefore, noise and power control are very important for UMTS
networks.
The load of a UMTS cell determines to a great extent the soft capacity, as more traffic
will bring more noise to the cell. Therefore, the load needs to be limited to around
60% to
65% in indoor cells as they are more isolated from macros and can in principle be
loaded
relatively high (Tolstrup, 2011).
The main issues that should be considered when designing UMTS indoor networks
can be summarized as follows:
Interference management and control should be very strict, as all cells share the same
frequency.
Power limits DL capacity, so sufficient antennas should be used to provide dedicated
indoor coverage.
Noise limits UL capacity; therefore low noise devices should be employed in the front
end of any distribution system.
Soft handover areas should be minimized, as this requires doubling the use of
overhead and network resources.
In-building cell dominance should be guaranteed if a dedicated indoor solution is
being deployed, as this minimizes the risk of pilot pollution.

Power Levels
In terms of maximum power levels that can be transmitted per AP, there are regulations
in terms of maximum EIRP (effective isotropic radiated power) limits per standard.
Recall that EIRP refers to the maximum radiated power transmitted by the antenna
taking into account antenna gain and cable losses (in dB):
EIRP . AP transmit power _ cable losses . antenna gain