Optimized Backhaul Planning for the Case of Small Cell Deployment in Addis Ababa Region of ethio telecom
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Date
2020-02-24
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Operators are deploying small cells to complement their macro cells to increase the coverage
and capacity of their mobile networks. Backhauling the small cells traffic to the
core network is a challenge to operators as they are usually placed in difficult to access
locations. To overcome this challenge, wireless solutions have been proposed as a costeffective
alternative to wired solutions. There are, however, many wireless technologies to
realize this: point-to-point/point-to-multipoint, line-of-sight/non-line-of-sight (NLOS) and
millimeter wave/microwave bands. This research studies practical wireless configurations of
this technologies, and proposes a planning method an operator can determine which technology
to use on each link of the small cell backhaul network so that the total cost of ownership
(TCO) is minimized. To this end, a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) is formulated
with a range of constraints for wireless technologies and backhaul requirements.
To demonstrate the effectiveness of the method, the MILP was used to plan a small cell
backhaul network for different scenarios, in a relatively built up area of Addis Ababa. The
scenarios were created based on different small cell demands, and on whether NLOS links
are allowed in the network. The path loss values were predicted by ray tracing to determine
the feasibility of a link configuration of each technology between nodes of the backhaul
network. The results showed the reduction of TCO by inclusion of more technologies as can
be seen with the need for more new aggregation nodes when NLOS was not considered. By
accepting an optimality gap of 5 %, the computation time was also reduced to less than two
hours which is acceptable for the purpose of planning. Using this method, an operator can
plan a cost-effective backhaul from available practical wireless technologies.
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Keywords
Backhaul network, optimization, small cells, microwave, millimeter wave, pointto-multipoint, non-line-of-sight, MILP