TABLE OF CONTENTS Network planning is a major task for operators. It is both time consuming and labor-intensive; it is expensive. Moreover, it is a never-ending process, which forces a new round of work with each step in the network's evolution and growth. Sometimes extra capacity is needed temporarily in a certain place, especially during telecommunications conferences, and network planning is needed to boost the local capacity.
The quality of the network-planning process has a direct influence on the operator's profits. Poor planning results in a configuration in which some places are awash in unused or underused capacity and some areas may suffer from blocked calls because of the lack of adequate capacity. The income flow will be smaller than it could be; some customers will be unhappy, and expensive equipment may possibly be bought unnecessarily.
The network-planning processes in a 3G WCDMA network and in a GSM network are similar in many ways, but there are some fundamental differences. In both systems a lot of data need to be collected and processed before a proper network plan can be produced. In GSM, a lot of work is done with frequency planning. In 3G WCDMA, however, there is no frequency planning, because all base stations use the same frequency. Actually, there will typically be two to three frequencies per operator, but TDMA-type frequency planning is not possible with so few frequencies. In WCDMA the different frequencies are typically used for different network...
