Investigation and Optimization of Electrical Tilt and Azimuth for Addis Ababa LTE Network
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Date
2018-11
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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