Code planning strategy for UMTS-FDD networks

In UMTS-FDD, neighbouring cells can be allocated with scrambling codes in numerous ways. These allocations, however, are not necessarily equivalent since they impose different processing requirements at the user equipment and they have different synchronisation performance. This paper tries to explore the differences among the various code planning configurations in terms of synchronisation error probability, worst case number of attempts until synchronisation acquisition, worst case required complexity and peak processing power requirements for several neighbouring cell lists with sizes from 6 to 32 cells. Based on the previous results, it provides some generic guidelines regarding the code planning strategy of the UMTS networks, which will enable the latter to operate optimally.