Macrocell capacity and coverage planning for UMTS in GSM frequency band

Implementing UMTS system in the GSM frequency band has gained a lot of attention in Europe in the last few years. There are several reasons for this. Those include better radio propagation in the lower frequency band, resulting in much lower price per bit for operators. In remote, sparsely populated areas, operators face cost-efficiency difficulties in providing UMTS at 2GHz range. However, by implementing UMTS at 900 MHz range, significant site number reduction can be achieved when comparing to 2GHz band for the same coverage. Following trends, operators in B&H have chosen to introduce UMTS900 technology in their mobile networks as well, providing global UMTS coverage very efficient. When it comes to UMTS network planning, coverage and capacity must be planned simultaneously, because traffic distribution, used services, and capacity requirements does have an impact to cell sizes. In this paper, influence of user demands and expected rate of broadband adoption (Broadband intensity) to UMTS900 greenfield overall planning is considered. Load factor and calculation method for a planned service mix has been proposed. Even simplified, dedicated to the first phase of planning, there is a need for method of planned broadband intensity in advance, integrated into the load factor equation. Broadband intensity parameter a has been introduced, and effect of changing of this parameter to actual network planning is presented.