Refined Statistical Analysis of Evolution Approaches for Wireless Networks

To meet future traffic and data rate demands, operators have the opportunity to select between a variety of network evolution approaches. This paper presents a new method for evaluating such approaches, in a simple yet operator specific way. The novelty of the method lies in that, with limited complexity, it takes into account not only conventional dimensioning parameters like targeted user experience, average traffic demand, user density and cell sizes, but also three dimensional spatial user and traffic distribution, site specific propagation, and deployment strategies. This is enabled through the use of an explicit city model, capturing the main characteristics of the operators environment. Applying the method to two examples of different cities illustrates the influence of the refinement parameters and their impact on the benefits of two evolution approaches: macro densification and deployment of small cells.