Air interface dimensioning techniques for coverage and capacity-limited HSPA based networks

Dimensioning and planning air interface of the evolution of UMTS networks based on HSPA technique is interesting for mobile operators. This paper deals with coverage-limited and capacity-limited dimensioning of HSPA based Beyond 3G networks with the necessary analytical support. The models established for coverage-limited case are exploited to generate abacuses useful mainly for initial dimensioning. The capacity-limited dimensioning case is also studied through different methods based on scheduling techniques. We suggest enhancing “Fair Throughput” scheduling technique to improve coverage and capacity dimensioning performance. Finally, we assess performance of the different introduced methods for HSPA dimensioning by comparing them to basic UMTS (Release 99) dimensioning.