Employing Clustering Techniques in Mobile Network Planning

Network planning is of key importance during the construction of new communities and cities, in which telephone and data services have to be introduced as a component of the overall master plan of the city. With the rapid development in mobile network we need effective network planning tool to satisfy the need of customers. However, deciding upon the optimum placement for the base stations (BS's) to achieve best services while reducing the cost is a complex task requiring vast computational resource. This paper addresses antenna placement problem or the cell planning problem, involves locating and configuring infrastructure for mobile networks by modified the original partitioning around medoids PAM algorithm. The PAM original algorithm has been modified and a new algorithm M- PAM (modified-partitioning around medoids) has been proposed by the authors in a recent work (L.F Ibrahin and M.H. Al Harbi, 2008). This paper presents CWN-PAM (clustering with weighted node-partitioning around medoids) algorithm and compare it with M-PAM algorithm. Implementation of this algorithm to a real case study is presented. Results demonstrate the effectiveness and flexibility of the modifying algorithm in tackling the important problem of mobile network planning.