Investigation and Optimization of Electrical Tilt and Azimuth for Addis Ababa LTE Network

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Date

2018-11

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Publisher

AAU

Abstract

Demand for mobile broadband connectivity is significantly increasing and mobile network operators are continuously improving their network by introducing new technologies to accommodate the demand. After mobile network is operational for the first time, to maximize network performance, it is common to perform further optimization of initially planned and configured network parameters. One important category of such network parameters that incur significant network performance impact is antenna parameters that mainly include antenna tilt and azimuth. Optimization of antenna tilt and azimuth plays a major role in optimization of coverage, capacity, load balancing and interference of mobile networks. Long Term Evolution (LTE) network is operational in some parts of Addis Ababa since 2015. This thesis work reviews Addis Ababa LTE network, deployed antenna solutions and ethio telecom antenna optimization practices. The work continues by evaluating the performance of this LTE network from electrical down tilt and azimuth steering perspective. Based on observed performance, the tilt and azimuth parameters are also optimized by applying educated trial and error approach. The performance evaluation and optimization of the network are performed through Signal-to-Interference-Plus-Noise-Ratio (SINR) and throughput parameters obtained using WinProp based network simulation backed by Matlab. Results show that, by optimizing electrical tilt, SINR and throughput can be improved by 12.5% and 4.4% respectively. On the other hand, there is negligible performance gain by optimizing the azimuth.

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Keywords

LTE, Electrical Tilt, Azimuth Steering, SINR, Throughput, Network simulation, Addis Ababa

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