Radio planning and optimisation - the challenge ahead

The paper tries to identify some significant areas where challenges remain in the planning and optimisation of radio networks. There is no attempt to create an exhaustive list of challenges, nor is it suggested that the challenges all remain to be addressed from scratch - indeed, some of the issues introduced are covered in other papers in the conference. Of course, the network operator's Nirvana would be the network that plans, deploys and tunes itself. Even here, progress is being made, for example with ad-hoc networks, but for some time to come it is still a pipe dream and we will have to plan our networks. Some of the big issues cellular network planning are discussed.