Week 4

Cell Sizes, Design and System

Fundamentals

Nasir Faruk, Ph.D

Department of Telecommunication Science
University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria
 This week’s lecture
 GSM Multiplexing
 Cell Types
 Cell Design
 Frequency Reuse
 Interference and System capacity in GSM networks
 Co-channel interference
 Adjacent channel interference
 Power Control
 Channel Allocation Chart

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 Cell or sector ?
 A cell is a BTS
 Cell could also mean “sector”

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 BTS SITE

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 Base Station Types
Base State Coverage Radiated Power (W) Power Commonly used
Type Consumption Backhaul Type
(W)

Indoor Outdoor
Macro < 35 km - 5 – 40 1000 – 1700 Fiber/Microwave
Micro < 2 km - 0.5 – 2 100 – 300 Microwave
Pico < 200 m 0.1 0.25 – 2 9 - 15 Microwave/Fiber/DSL
Femto 10 - 15 m < 0.1 - 6 – 14 Fiber/DSL
RRH <2 km - 5-20 550 - 760 Fiber
Relay < 2 km <1 0.25-7 10 – 120 via DeNB

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 The cellular concept design
fundamentals
 Early days design, coverage was main priority
 The use of single high powered transmitter
 Not possibility of frequency reuse
 When demand keeps increasing: Capacity becomes
problem
 Replacing existing “single high powered transmitter
(large cell)” with “multiple lower power
transmitters”(smaller cells)
 Each base station in a cell is allocated group of
frequencies (channels) from the total channels available
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 As the demand keeps increasing, the cells can be
increased by replacing the cells with smaller power
cells
 Channels/frequencies could be reused (i.e. reuse
frequency) after some interval of distance called
“Reuse distance, D”
 In reality, the cells must over lapped
 For seamless communication & “Handover”

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 Interference and system capacity
 Interference is the major limiting factor in
the performance of cellular systems
BTS 1 BTS 2
 on voice channels causes cross talk
where the subscriber hears interference in
the background due to undesired
transmission f1 f1
 On control channels: It leads to blocked Co-Channel
calls due to error in the digital signaling
 Location: It is more severe in the urban
than rural due to greater RF noise floor andBTS 1 BTS 2
large number of BTS and mobiles
f1
 Types of Interference f2
BTS 3
 Co-Channel
Interference
 Adjacent Channel
f3 Region
8 Adjacent Channel
 Interference Types
 Co-channel interference
 Interference from two or more BTS using same channel
 CCI can be reduced by:
 increasing the separation between two cochannel cells (Not too Good! Why?)
 using directional antennas at the base station (good approach)
 lowering the antenna heights at the base station (not recommended !) why?
 Adjacent channel interference
 Interference from two or more BTS using difference but close channels
 Imperfect receiver filter which allow nearby frequencies to leak into the passband
 The problem can be serious if an adjacent channel user is transmitting in very close range
to a subscriber’s receiver, while the receiver attempts to receive a BTS on desired channel.
This is called near far effect
 Adj cch int can be minimized by:
 filtering
 channel assignment i.e. by keeping channel separation large enough
 Power control for minimizing interference
 Beam tilt (MDT and EDT)
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 cell cluster
 Means group of cells
 Let
 f be the total channels available for a network operator A which is divided among
the cells on the network
 N be the total number of cells on the network
 K be group of channels allocated to each cell
 Then f= Nk or k=f/N
 The N cells that uses the complete set of available frequencies f1, f2...fn is called a
cluster
 if a cluster is repeated T times within the network, then the total network capacity
is:
 C=T*NK
 Where N is the cluster size and can only be 4, 7 or 12.
 Larger cluster means reuse distance is large
10 The frequency reuse factor is 1/N
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  Co-channel reuse ratio Q= D/R= Sqrt (3N)
 Smaller values of Q provides larger capacity since the
cluster size N is small.
 Larger Q improves the transmission of co-channel
interefernce. Therefore a tradeoff must be achieved.
 N=i2 +ij+J2 , N= 3, 7, or 12

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 Standard 7 cells sharing system (N = 7)

f3

f5 f2

f4 f6 f5

f1 f4

f3 f7 f1

f2

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 Other Common Channel Sharing

f3 f3 f3
f2 f2
f1 f1 f1
f3 f3 3 cell cluster
f2 f2 f2
f1 f1
f3 f3 f3

f2 f2 f2
f1 f f1 f
3 h
h1 2
f3 h
h1 2
1 f3 3 cell cluster
g2 h3 g2 h3 g2
g1
g3
g1
g3
g 1 g3
with 3 sector antennas

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15
 Co-channel interference (a worst case)

 Let io be the number of co-channel interfering cells, then

the signal-to-interference ration (S/I or SIR) for mobile
receiver which monitors a forward channel can be
expressed as:

S •S is the desired signal power from the

S/I  io
desired BTS
•Ii is the interference power caused by the
I
i 1
i ith interfering co-channel cell BTS

 If the signal level of the co-channel cells are known, then

the S/I for the forward link an be obtained

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  Propagation measurements in mobile radio channel show that the
average received signal strength at any point decays as a power law
to the distance of separation between TX and RX and is
approximated by:
d n d
Pr  Po ( ) or Pr(dBm)  Po (dBm)  10n( )
do do

 Where Po is the power received at a close reference point, do is

the distance from the TX and n is the path loss exponent which
takes values from 2-4
 When the TX power of each BTS is equal and the path loss
exponent is the same throughout the coverage then
R n
S/I  io
A

 i
( D
i 1
) n

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 First Tier co-channel cells
 Considering only the first tier of interfering cells, if all the interfering BTS
are equidistant from the desired BTS and if all distance Is equal to D btw cell
centers then equation (A) becomes
n
( D / R) n ( 3N ) (B)
S/I  
io io
Using the Fig, we can see 7 cell cluster.
Assuming n=4, from equation (A),
the worst case S/I can be Derived as:

(C)

 Since Q= D/R then eqn © can be written as:

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19
 Improving capacity in cellular
systems
 Buying more frequency band may not be wise option bc
its scares, limited and expensive. So how do we increase
capacity?
 Cell splitting : Network densification
 Sectoring
 Coverage zones
 ??

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 Cell splitting : Network densification

 Reduction in antenna height and transmitted power.

 it increases number of times that channels are reused.
 By defining new cells which have a smaller radius than the original
cells and by installing these smaller cells between existing cells,
capacity increases due to additional number of channels per unit
cell area
 In this D/R ratio is kept constant and entire system is rescaled.

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  use of directional antennas to see next week!
 In cell sectoring a single omnidirectional antenna at base Sectoring
station is replaced by several directional antennas, each
radiating within a specified sector.
 By using directional antennas power is transmitted in single
desired direction decreasing number of interfering co-
channel cells and co-channel interference.
 The factor by which the co-channel interference is reduced
depends on the amount of sectoring used. A cell is
normally partitioned into three sectors.
 When sectoring is employed, the channels used in a
particular cell are broken down into sectored groups and
are used only within a particular sector.
 Advantages:
 Improvement in S/I ratio.
 Improvement in system capacity.

 Disadvantages:
 Increased number of antennas at base station.
 Decrease in trunking efficiency due to channel sectoring at the base
station.
 Increase in number of handoffs, since sectoring reduces the coverage
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area of the particular group of frequencies.
 Microcell zone concept:
 The increased number of hand off, increase load on the switching and control link because of sectoring. A
solution to this problem is given by microcell zone concept
 Large control base station is replaced by several lower power transmitters on the age of cell.
 The mobile retains the same channel and the base station simply switches the channel to a different zone
site and the mobile moves from zone to zone.
 Since a given channel is active only in a particular zone in which mobile is travelling, base station radiation
is localized and interference is reduced.
 The advantage of zone cell technique is that while the cell maintains a particular coverage radius, co-
channel interference in the cellular system is reduced. As the large central base station is replaced by
several lower power transmitters on ages of cell. Decreased co-channel interference improves signal
quality leads to increase in capacity without degradation in trunking efficiency caused by sectoring.
 Advantages:
 Decrease co-channel interference which leads
to an improvement in signal quality and also leads to
an increase in capacity.
 No degradation of trunking efficiency.

 Disadvantages:
 More antennas are required.
 Base station need to be more sophisticated
to handle transfer of call from one zone to another zone within the cell.
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 Examples
 If a total of 33 MHz of bandwidth is allocated to a
particular FDD cellular telephone system which uses
two 25 kHz simplex channels to provide full duplex
voice and control channels. Compute the number of
channels available per cell if a system uses (i) 4-cell reuse
(ii) 7-cell reuse (III) 12- cell reuse

 If 1 MHz of the allocated spectrum is dedicated to

control channels, determine an equitable distribution of
control channels and voice channels in each cell for each
of the two systems. Comment on the result.

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 solution

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26
 Example 2

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 solution
D/R=Q= √(3N) (2.4)
S/I= (1/6)*(D/R)n (2.9)

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 Study Questions
1) Differentiate between adjacent channel and co-channel interference
2) Briefly, discuss the how Interference is the major limiting factor in the
performance of cellular systems for voice and control channels
3) Discuss how the concept of cell splitting and sectoring improve the capacity
in cellular system.Your explanation should demonstrate your understanding
of cell radius (R) and reuse distance (D).
4) Write short note on the following Macro, Micro cells, Pico cells, Femto
cells, Remote Radio Heads and Relays.
5) Increasing the separation between two cochannel cells and lowering the
antenna heights at the base station are among techniques employed to
minimize adjacent channel interference however, these methods are not
very efficient. Explain clearly the limitations.
6) Discuss the benefits and shortcomings of using microzones and sectoring in
Improving capacity in cellular systems
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 Tutorial Questions
1) Determine the gain in C/I in moving from an unsectored cell to one with
six 600 sectors assuming
i. Three cell cluster
ii. A seven cell cluster
2) Suppose the acceptable signal-to-interference ratio in a certain cellular
communications situation is S/I=20dB. Also from measurements it is
determined that . What is the minimum cluster size?
3) Consider that the mobile is at the cell boundary, where it experiences worst
case co-channel interference on the forward channel. Using a better
approximation of the distance between the mobile and the first tier
interfering BTS illustrated in Fig 1. Show that, the signal-to interference
ratio (S/I) is given by; S R 
 Fig 1
I 2( D  R)   2 D   2( D  R) 

4) Assuming the cellular system described above requires an S/I ratio of 18

dB.
i. For a frequency reuse factor of 7, calculate the worst-case signal-to-interference
ratio given
ii. Is a frequency reuse of factor 7 acceptable in terms of co-channel interference? If
not what would be a better choice of frequency reuse factor?
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5)