Statistical Link Budget Analysis Approach for LTE Cellular Network Dimensioning

Radio network dimensioning is an essential step towards designing a cellular network and has traditionally relied on a pragmatic approach to capture the effects of fading and shadowing on the system interference. However, with the increased flexibility of LTE which builds on the statistical variation of wireless channels by adapting resources accordingly, there is a need for new customized dynamic dimensioning methods. The main contribution in this paper is a statistical approach to link budget analysis for LTE that jointly accounts for fading and shadowing in the channel as well as loading due to traffic demand in the interference calculation. Derivations of probability density functions (PDF) of three dimensioning parameters: interference margin, maximum allowed path loss and cell range are first presented. The PDF's are then validated and used in different scenarios to capture the tradeoff trends between coverage, capacity and quality of service constraints in LTE. Finally, cellular network dimensioning insights and guidelines are discussed based on the obtained results.