Effect of anisotropic propagation modeling on microcellular system design

Microcells for wireless communications can be realized with low base station antennas operating at low power. The low base station antennas expected for microcells make the propagation characteristics dependent on the direction relative to the street grid. Due to this anisotropic propagation, the shape of microcells is no longer circular, as is typically assumed so for macrocellular system planning. Therefore the infrastructure of the microcells should be implemented with a different approach from that for macrocells. This paper aims at finding the effect of microcellular wave propagation on the development of cellular design for channelized systems in residential/commercial environments by examining key aspects of cell layout. Using a measurement-based anisotropic propagation model, cell shape and frequency reuse patterns are investigated for the downlink, and a methodology for frequency planning is presented.