HSDPA performance analysis in UMTS radio network planning simulations

Whereas high speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) channel performance has been investigated to some extent, its impact on the planning process has hardly been addressed at all. In order to allow a fast HSDPA performance analysis in everyday planning purposes, a novel two-staged process is introduced. It builds on snapshot based simulations, but introduces a dynamic analysis of the HSDPA channel with scalable increase in computational effort of the network analysis. The method includes very detailed modeling of the RSDPA channel, including a time varying fading environment. Different traffic models and scheduling schemes can easily be integrated. The application of the approach is illustrated for a realistic planning scenario, where different HSDPA configurations are compared.