Techno-Economic Investigation of LTE-Advanced Deployment for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
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Date
2018-11
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
AAU
Abstract
Due to innovative data services, the number of mobile subscriptions and amount of mobile
data traffic will increase significantly globally. According to Ericsson mobility report, in 2022
the number of mobile data subscribers and traffic is forecasted to reach 9 billion and 71
Exabyte per month, respectively, from the current 7.5 billion and 8.8 Exabyte per month.
Likewise, the report presented that Sub-Saharan Africa will also show a faster growth rate
than any other region in the globe. 2018’s Ericsson interim mobility report shows, Ethiopia
is among five countries in the world that score high in mobile subscription growth. In
addition, when we see historical records, market potential, and various telecom expansion
plans of the country, mobile subscriber and traffic growth is expected in Ethiopia, particularly
in Addis Ababa city. To accommodate the increasing mobile traffic, beside Long Term
Evolution (LTE), several operators are deploying and optimizing LTE-Advanced and LTEAdvanced
Pro
mobile
technologies.
Having
partially
deployed
LTE
network
in
Addis
Ababa,
ethio
telecom has not yet moved to LTE-Advanced but now considers to accommodate
significantly increasing mobile subscribers, traffic and future demand of the city. To that end,
there is a need of understanding techno-economically viable LTE-Advanced deployment
scenarios for the local context.
In this thesis, feasible LTE-Advanced deployment options are developed using scenario
planning method. Following, TERA Techno-economic Analysis framework and methodologies
are investigated and modified to evaluate possible LTE-Advanced deployment scenarios
techno-economically assuming 6 years study period and 10% discount rate. In the framework
market analysis and LTE-Advanced radio network dimensioning performed using COST-231
Hata model; existing LTE traffic, standard and demography analysis is conducted for macro
and small cells, respectively. In addition, the required bandwidth for the study period is
forecasted and determined. Based on resulted Net Present Value and Payback Period of
techno-economic evaluation, an LTE-Advanced scenario that applies progressive
deployment with out-of-band small cells is feasible for Addis Ababa but not the case for a
scenario that applies full deployment with out-of-band small cells. In both scenarios it is
shown that LTE-Advanced is feasible if deployed in dense urban and urban areas.
Description
Keywords
LTE-Advanced, Carrier Aggregation, small cell, TEA, TERA, Scenario planning