AIRCOM – Cingular

Model Tuning Guidance

December 2004
Agenda
•Model Calibration Experience
• Model Calibration Process
• Model Calibration Analysis

December 2004
December 2004
 CW and Model Tuning References
• 3GIS (Sweden) – UMTS, 6 models
• Belgacom (Belgium) – GSM 900, 6 models
• Swisscom (Switzerland) – GSM 900/1800
and UMTS, 9 models
• Inventis (Switzerland) – GSM R, 3 models
• Vodafone (Malta) – GSM 900, 2 models
• Globul (Bulgaria) – GSM 900, GSM1800
• Oniway (Portugal) – UMTS, 4 models
• Inquam (Portugal) – CDMA2000
• Blu (Italy) – GSM 1800
• Nortel (UK) – GSM 1800
• Ericsson (UK) – GSM 1800
• Dolphin (Belgium, Uk) – Tetra models
• KPN Base (Belgium) – GSM 900/1800, 8
Models, 4 for each
•TMN (Portugal) – GSM900, 1 model
•Mascom (Botswana) – GSM 900
• CHT Taiwan
• Brazil – GSM 900/1800, 5 models
• India BPL – GSM 900, 1 Model
• AWS (USA) – GSM 1900, 2 models
•TCI (Iran) – GSM 900, 5 models
•ESAT Digifone (Ireland) – UMTS 3 models
•Safaricom (Kenya) GSM 900 – 2 models
•Lucent (Riyadh) GSM 900 – 1 model
• Claro (Brazil) GSM1800 – 3 models
•Globe (Phillipines) GSM900 – 3 models
December 2004
December 2004
 CW Measurements and Model Calibration
Process
Site Selection Drive Route
Propagation Definition
Model
Requirements
Identification CW Survey
Campaign

Data Post
Processing

Data
Data
Validation
Validation

Calibration

YES NO
Pass
Report Model?

December 2004
 Aim of Model Calibration

• Characterise the topology with network limits – identification of operating range for each
model.

• Minimise Standard Deviation Error.

• Provide zero mean error

• Determine model parameters in accordance to realistic propagation effects existing within

proposed regions.

• Make sure calibrated model corresponds well with the collected data – data is essential.

• Provide cost efficient Nominal Plan

December 2004
 Site Selection
 More or 10 sites per model. Less number of sites can be considered if
modelled geographical area is fairly small.
 Within geographic region of model
 Spread of site heights representative of networkHeight
sites heights
Distribution within
for Site Selection

modelled region 6

 Allow measurements in all clutter types 5

 Rooftop sites are preferred in a case test transmitter has to be mounted

4

Frequency
 Ease of access 3
Frequency
2
 No blocking objects in close vicinity
1

 Nothing unusual, we are characterising the majority of the network not the
0
minority 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 More

-1
Height of Site

December 2004
 CW Drive Route Definition
• Distance
 Must account for expected coverage propagation
 Must account for expected interference propagation
• Clutter
 Sufficient measurement in all local clutter types ( >1000 )
• Roads
 Avoid street canyons, tunnels, elevated roads, cuttings etc
 Mix of radial and tangential roads
• Miscellaneous
 Do not plan a map along the roads with ground height above
the transmitter antenna. Okumura- Hata model can’t model this.
 Good balance between measurements taken in LOS and NLOS
situations
 Do not plan a route across a big water surface, if site is on the
one side of the lake, do not drive other lake side
 Data in regions of terrain slope variation
 Avoid large blocking objects as high building or long roof
 Long enough to ensure sufficient data is captured
 Check map data validity

December 2004
 CW Measurements
• Spectrum clearance
 During CW survey allocated test frequency shouldn’t be use for other purposes
 10-15KHz bandwidth monitoring
 Check restrictions on test frequency TX EIRP
• Equipment configuration
RF Signals
 Accurate Radiated Power setting, EiRP should be greater than 40dBm
 Raw/Averaged data
 Use Omni antenna with minimum vertical beamwidth of 12 degrees
 Directional antenna can be used but in postproccessing everything beyond 3dBm should be dismissed
• Driving
 Do not drive out of RX noise floor
 Avoid street canyons, tunnels, elevated roads, cuttings etc
 Distance/Time triggering

In Vehicle,
Omni Antenna Receive
with Transmitter equipment
attached through attached to roof
feeder. mounted
antenna

December 2004
 Sampling - Lee Criteria
• Lee Criteria – In order to eliminate fast fading from measurements,
minimum 36 samples should be taken over 40λ. A local mean should
be found for the chosen number of samples.
• Common practice is to take 50 samples which gives one sample every
0.8λ.
• 50 samples should be averaged and give the local mean.

December 2004
 Slow fading vs Fast fading
• Fast fading is fading due to multipath effect.
• Fast fading is characterized by Rayleigh probability distribution therefore can’t be
modelled by log normal distribution.
• Fast fading is superimposed onto signal envelope (slow fading) which we try to model.
• Slow fading is fading due to terrain and clutter.
• Slow fading follows log normal distribution.
• Okumura-Hata is log normal distribution

L L

December 2004
 Distance triggering vs time triggering
• Distance triggering allows us to easily apply Lee criterion.
• Time triggering is very difficult to follow Lee criterion due to change in
drive vehicle speed.
• Sampling in time triggering is not a problem since Lee states just
minimum number of samples.
• Averaging over 40 λ is problem to implement in time triggering since
there is not constant number of samples over 40 λ caused by speed
variation.
• Whenever possible choose distance triggering.

December 2004
 Total driving route per model
• In order for model to be realistic, statistically sufficient number of data
need to be collected.
• Aircom practise is to have at least 30000 data.
• 30000 data gives total driven distance of
 30000x40λ=198km or
 20km per site for 1800MHz range.
• If this distance is not achievable due to limitation in drivable roads it is
recommended to have more than 10 sites per model.
• As stated before, in a case of modelling small geographical area with
3 sites, tuning can be performed with 10000 data or 22km per site.
• The more data the model is more realistic

December 2004
 Data Post processing
• Depends on customer requirements:
 Averaged Measurements – post processing involves simple conversion into Signia format supported by
Enterprise
 Signia data file ( .dat ) contains longitude, latitude (decimal degrees) and received level (dBm)
 Every data file must have header file with identical name but with extension .hd.
 Header file must have antenna type (identical name to one in Asset3g), Tx power, Tx antenna height,
coordinates.
 It is common practice to include all gains and losses under Tx power value and leave other fields relevant to
gain/losses in the header blank. Therefore in a Tx field usually is put:
Tx – Ct +Atg –Arg+Crl where
Tx-Tx power(dBm),
Ct-cable loss between transmitter and antenna (dB),
Atg-transmitting antenna gain (dBi)
Arg-receiving antenna gain (dBi)
Crl-cable loss between receiver and receiving antenna (dB)

• It is important to get the projection system correctly so collected samples are lined up with the vectors in map
data. If vectors are not aligned with measurements, during post process this should be adjusted.

December 2004
 CW Data Validation
• Compare the site data (photographs, surrounding
clutter and terrain profile) to the Clutter and DTM
layer of the map data provided.

• Check the driven routes against vectors within the

map data.

• Filter out any invalid data that may cause anomalies

in the calibration process

• Make sure that details relating to a site (EIRP,

Location, Height, Antenna file) correspond to
reports from CW Survey.

• Use Asset utilities to get visual representation of

the received signal vs distance.

December 2004
 Data filtering
• Filter clutter types that have less than 500 bins. Clutter offsets or them
will be estimated later in the model tuning process.
• Filter out any file which shows extreme in signal level.
• Unusually high signal level at far distance can be caused by reflection
over big water surface, or driving along route which is higher than
antenna.
• Unusually weak signal level can be caused by driving behind blocking
object.
• Okumura –Hata can’t model above situations, therefore these data
must be filtered out.
• With careful route planning filtering can be avoided.
• Having more than one file per site makes filtering during post
processing much easier

December 2004
Filtering example-Driving above Tx antenna

December 2004
Filtering example-Blocking object

December 2004
Displaying CW measurements in Asset
 Data Types-CW Measurements-
CW Signal
 To set up thresholds double click
on CW Signal and specify
thresholds under Categories tab
 The same goes for other options
inside CW Measurements

December 2004
December 2004
 Okumura-Hata
• Okumura-Hata is a worldwide the most popular model in mobile
telecommunication
• It is semi-empirical model.
• Based on Okumura measurements in Tokyo in 1968 mathematical
model was published in 1980 by Hata.
• Limitations:
 Up to 2GHz
 No less than 1km
 Transmitter antenna always above mobile station antenna

December 2004
 Okumura-Hata in Asset
• Asset uses slightly modified Okumura-Hata:
 Ploss =K1 + K2*log(d) + K3*Hms + K4*log(Hms) + K5*log(Heff) +
K6*log(Heff)*log(d) + K7*Ldiff + Lclutter
 d is distance in km between Tx antenna and mobile station
 Hms is mobile station height
 Heff is effective antenna height in metres
 Ldiff is a loss due to diffraction
 Lclutter is a clutter loss
• Asset has 4 algorithms for calculating effective antenna height
• Asset has 4 algorithms for calculating diffraction

December 2004
 Asset improvements

• K1 near and k2 near are designed to overcome Okumura-Hata

limitation for close distances.

• Through Clutter Loss – takes into the account clutter profile along
distance d from mobile station to base station.

• Advantages in improved accuracy/reduced standard deviation error

and more realistic calculated predictions.

December 2004
 Through Clutter Model Definition

• Each clutter category is given Through Clutter Loss (dB/km) on the

path between transmitter and receiver.
• Through clutter losses are linearly weighted. The clutter nearest the
mobile station has the highest effect.

December 2004
 Overview of Model Calibration

• There must be project set up (map data, antennas, sites, propagation model)
in order to start tuning
• Load CW data
• Make appropriate filtering, usually:
 -110dBm to -40dBm
 125m to 10000
• Start with the default values for k parameters
• Do Auto Tune
• Try all combination of effective antenna height and diffraction algorithms and
determine which one gives the lowest standard deviation
• Take note of second and third best
.

December 2004
CW Window
• 3g/Asset-Tools-Model Tuning
• Click Add to add measurements file
from its destination, they mast have
extension .hd
• Highlight Site ID and click Remove
button to remove particular file

December 2004
Model setting
• Tools-Model Tuning-Options
• Select the resolution of mapping
data
• Select the model as a start tuning
model. It is recommended to use
default model

December 2004
Filter seting
• Tools-Model Tuning-Options-Filter
• Set up distance filtering
• Set up signal level filtering
• Filter out clutter types with
insufficient data by highlighting
them
• If you tune k7 click just NLOS
• Click antenna button if directional
antennas were used

December 2004
Auto Tune
• Tools-Model Tuning-Auto Tune
• Set up deltas
• Click fix box next to the k factor you
don’t want to tune
• Click Auto Tune under Tools tab
• Wait for results
• You can apply new parameters by
clicking apply new parameters
• Through clutter offsets and clutter
offsets are under Clutter tab

December 2004
 K parameters
• K3 and K4 are not altered. This is because they relate to mobile
height which in a typical cellular system is constant making these
coefficients redundant.
• K7 is the diffraction parameter. It can be determined by tuning just
NLOS data.
• All K parameters must keep the same polarity as in the original
Okumura Hata model
 K1, K2, K7 >0
 K3, K5, K6 <0
• Above step can be easily fulfil by determining the delta range under
Auto tune window

December 2004
Default K parameters

December 2004
 k1,k2 near calibration
• If model is not good close to the site, for example up to 700m, auto
tune the model from 700m to 10k. Apply found k parameters.
• Tune model again with k5,k6 and k7 locked and filter out distances
above 700m.
• Result will be k1near and k2 near.
• If standard deviation is still bad try with other distances until you find
the best fit.

December 2004
 Clutter offset
• Some through clutter offsets and clutter offsets need to be estimated
due to insufficient data.

• Estimation is done relative to the clutter offsets with sufficient data.

• Clutter offsets must be realistic relative to each other.

• Water will have the smallest offset while building and forest the
highest.

December 2004
 Adjusting ME
• Mean error is usually altered after estimation of clutter offsets.

• ME can be easily bring back to 0 by changing k1

• If mean error is Δ change k1 to k1+ Δ

December 2004
December 2004
 Model analyses
• Make statistical analyses for ME and SD for different distance ranges.
• In the range of interest, typically 1km to 4km, following requirements
should be fulfilled
 -1 < ME < 1
 SD < 8
• If ME or SD is outside the above specified values, try with changing
the dual slope distance or take the second best model from the initial
tuning.

December 2004
 Example-Coastal Urban 900MHz
15m resolution map

• Area considered: densely populated coastal cities.

• Used frequency: 935.2MHz

• Total of 10 sites were included in tuning process with 80260 points.

• Signal strenght threshold set to –40 to -110 dBm.

• Distance used for tuning from 125m to 10km.

December 2004
 Data Analysis for Coastal Urban 15m
Distribution of bins per signal level

30000

25000 Distribution of bins per clutter type

20000
Number of bins

30000
15000
26856
10000
25000
5000

0
20000

Number of bins
0) 0) 0) ) ) ) 0) ) ) )
-5000 ( -12 -11 -10 90 80 70 -(6 50 40 30
-( - -(- -(- -(- -(- -(-
30- 20-( 10-( - 1 00 -9 0 -8 0 -7 0 -6 0 -5 0 -4 0
-1 -1 -1
Signal level (dBm) 14421
15000

10574 9995
10000 9056

5062
Distribution of bins per distance
5000 3010
35000 1062
29598 4 0 189 28 0 3
30000
0
25000
Number of bins

st
n
g
n
sid r

gh
s
en

l
19351

p
a

l
tia

ria
te

ge
ba

ba

rk
ba
17791

in
se

am
20000

re

hi
op

wa

en

ild

a
st

ur

fo
la
ur
ur

sw
n
du
bu

vil

ba
15000

in
e
n

in
ns
ea
re

en

ur
8700

de
m
10000

op

e
ns
de
5000 2899
373 1030 891 0
0 Clutter type
0-0.125 0.125-0.25 0.25-0.5 0.5-1 1-2 2-4 4-8 8-16 >16
Distance (km)

December 2004
Statistical Breakdown for Coastal Urban 15m

No. of Mean Standard Deviation

Bins Error Actual

Calibration whole
80260 0 6.8
range

125~250 1030 -0.5 8.1

250~500 2899 -1.1 8

500~1km 8700 -1.4 7.7

1km~2km 19351 -0.1 7.4

2km~4km 29598 0.9 6.6

4km~8km 17791 -0.4 5.4

8km~16km 891 -1.6 5.2

December 2004
 Statistical Breakdown for ME and SD

Mean error vs distance Standard deviation distribution

1.5 9

8
1
7

0.5

Standard deviation
6

5
Mean error

-0.25
0 0.5 0.5-1 1-2 2-4 4-8 8-16 4
0.125 0.25-
-0.5
3

2
-1

1
-1.5
0

-0.2 50 0.5-1 2-4 8-16

-2 0.125

Distance (km) Distance (km )

December 2004
 Validation of Tuned Model-Site 1
No. of Mean Standard
Apoview site Bins Error Deviation Actual

Calibration whole
10668 -1 6.1
range

125~250 53 4.3 5.6

250~500 368 0.4 7.5

500~1km 1153 -2.7 7.3

1km~2km 2324 -1.5 6.3

2km~4km 4383 0.4 5.9

4km~8km 2343 -2.4 5.1

8km~16km 44 -2.4 4.1

December 2004
Coverage plot – Site 1

December 2004
 Validation of Tuned Model-Site 2
No. of Mean Standard
Bins Error Deviation
Banawa site
Actual

Calibration whole
6354 0.1 6.4
range

125~250 95 11.6 5.2

250~500 42 2.7 5.7

500~1km 252 -1.8 7.7

1km~2km 1620 -0.9 6.3

2km~4km 3228 1 6.4

4km~8km 1041 -1.6 4.8

8km~16km 76 -2.9 3.8

December 2004
Coverage plot – Site 2

December 2004