Course Overview
As operators ready themselves to deploy LTE, a good understanding of planning considerations for its successful rollout is essential. This course presents, in a theoretical and practical way, the parameters necessary to plan an LTE network, from a RF coverage point of view.
The course begins with a quick reminder of LTE system architecture and air interface characteristics. It is then followed by a discussion of uplink and downlink link budget. The course provides hands-on practice on Link budget calculations and associated formulations to analyze sensitivity impact across variables and to resolve specific case studies.
Target Audience
This course is suitable for managers, engineers and technicians working in the field of mobile communication.
Course Prerequisites
Participants should have attended ‘4G LTE Technical Overview’ course or have equivalent experience working with LTE systems.
Expected Accomplishments
Explain the LTE Air Interface Structure
Explain the principles of OFDMA and SC-FDMA
Formulate LTE link budgets for uplink and downlink considering channel bandwidth, TX, RX and transmission parameters
Derive SNR requirements for a given cell edge throughput
Estimate slow fade margin for a given cell edge probability
Describe resource allocation in the uplink and downlink
Describe the LTE frame format in the downlink and uplink
Perform uplink and downlink coverage and capacity calculations for LTE.
Understand traffic modeling for LTE
Highlight the main factors that impact cell capacity
Evaluate the cell capacity
Estimate the number of sites based on coverage and capacity
Course Outline
LTE Air Interface
Review the LTE & EPS system Architecture
LTE frequency bands
OFDMA vs. SC-FDMA
OFDMA parameters
Uplink and downlink frame formats
Resource allocations
LTE Downlink Budget
Uplink budget parameters
Thermal noise
SINR requirements
Cell load
Downlink interference margin
Cell edge probability
Slow fade margin estimates
LTE Uplink Budget
Uplink budget parameters
Path loss as a function of cell edge throughput
SINR requirements
Uplink interference margin
LTE Coverage Planning
RF propagation models for LTE
Okumura-Hata and Cost-Hata models
Walfish Ikegami model
Estimating cell range and cell area
LTE Capacity Planning
Subscriber traffic profiles
Traffic modelling
Cell throughput dimensioning
Simulations
Factors affecting cell capacity
Estimating site counts based on coverage and capacity
