Capacity comparison of WCDMA and GSM

Different Capacity Calculation of WCDMA and GSM

GSM:
Capacity is hard blocked, limited by the amount of hardware.
TRX number

WCDMA:
Capacity is Soft Capacity, it is a interference limited system, we cant get
the capacity by the hardware quantity.

The traffic will be affected by following factor

1 DL Power
2 Signal quality (Ec/Io, RX level)
3 Iub Transmission
4 (OVSF)Code Resource
5 CE Resource

GSM Capacity Calculation Flow

1 TRX =8 time solts

TRX

Erlang-B table

TRX

Budget Erlang

Case study

The
utilization
can be
higher than
100%

The Traffic is base on TRX time slot amount, there is no other

factor affect the traffic, if the time slot is fixed, the Traffic is
fixed
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WCDMA Coverage Capacity Quality Relation

Users Capacity
Capacity Cell Coverage

Capacity

COST
Quality

Capacity & Coverage

Capacity & Quality

Capacity Quality (interference )
Quality (Ec/Io , Rx Level )
Capacity

Coverage

Coverage & Quality

Quality (Ec/Io ) Cell Coverage

For a soft capacity limited system, the Erlang capacity cannot be

calculated from the Erlang B formula, since it would give too
pessimistic results

WCDMA Capacity Calculation

1 DL Power
2 Signal quality (Ec/Io, RX level)
3 Iub Transmission
4 (OVSF)Code Resource
5 CE Resource

1 DL power analysis
DL total power is 20W
5 W for

4 W for

power control

common channel

Reserved power

11 W for
Traffic channel
Usable power,75% of total power

DL Loading=DL used power/Total power

If DL power utilization is over 75%,DL power
congestion.

If the user use the max service ,one cell can support 2 384K subscriber,
one site can only support 6
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1 DL power analysis

3G:The DL Cell power is dynamic. If User is far away the cell or the
signal quality is bad, the cell need to use higher power to maintain it
service .So the max and min user will be change. The DL power
utilization will affect the cell user number and traffic

2G:The DL power is fixed. It will not affect the cell user number and
traffic
If one subscriber want to access one cell ,it will increase the DL power
utilization.

So the DL

power is the main resource in WCDMA system.

Question :
If the DL power is the main resource, can we use high power RRU to
improve it ?how 60W or 80W RRU?
Answer:
No, we cant do like this. Because the WCDMA is self interference system.
If one cell improve its TX power, it will increase the Io, so the Ec/Io will
become very bad.
In WCDMA, We need to control the coverage to improve the Ec/Io quality
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2 Signal quality analysis

Cell capacity

Cell Interference

Cell Ec/Io

Cell A

Cell Ec/Io

Cell capacity

Cell B

2 Signal quality analysis

Spreading and Despreading

Service Ec / Io= Eb / No PG (Processing Gain)
Ebit

Eb/No

MAX interference level (Io)

Processing
Gain

Other user
interference
singal

Ec/Io range

Echip
If user TCH Ec/Io is lower than 6.2 dB, the
cell cant provide 384k service

2 Signal quality analysis

3G: WCDMA is a self interference system The capacity is affected by

RX level and Ec/Io. Ec/Io is the main factor to affect cell capacity.
2G: The capacity is affected by RX level.

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3 Iub Transmission

384k user in one

site

site
throughput

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5.8Mbps

If the DL power isnt in congestion, and the DL Ec/Io is higher than -9.2
dB, then one site throughput can reach 5.8Mbps.
As we know, The mobility of subscribers, fluctuation of the radio
signals, the variety of service and the complexity of the network
system has made Ec/Io and DL power in unstable situation, it is very
hard to let the site throughput reach 5.8Mbps.
one site cant support 12 users if DL Ec/Io is very bad or DL power is
not enough

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4 OVSF Resource
OVSF:Orthogonal Variable Spreading Factor
Cch,4,0 =(1,1,1,1)
Cch,2,0 = (1,1)
Cch,4,1 = (1,1,-1,-1)
Cch,1,0 = (1)
Cch,4,2 = (1,-1,1,-1)
Cch,2,1 = (1,-1)
Cch,4,3 = (1,-1,-1,1)
SF = 1

SF = 2

SF = 4

In WCDMA system, Channelisation code uses OVSF code, for keeping

the orthogonality of different subscriber physical channels.
One cell only has one OVSF tree
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4 OVSF Resource

One sites OVSF can support 21 384K subs if DL power is enough or

the Ec/Io is good.

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5 CE Resource

Case study

In this case ,users number is limited by the DL CE, because it is 64.

But one site capacity can support 256 DL CE, it can support more subs

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Summary

DL power is the main resource in WCDMA system.

So we need to monitor its utilization, if the DL power utilization is
reach 70%,we can say the site utilization is 100%

DL Power Utilization
=DL used power/Total power

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Typical Capacity

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CE Consuming of differenct service

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Thank You