Techno-Economic Investigation of Street Furniture Usage for Outdoor Small Cell Planning: The Case of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
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Date
2020-02
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
For more than a decade, mobile network data traffic and users’ demand are considerably
increased due to the advent of evolving mobile technologies, capable end-user devices
and data-intensive content. Different forecasts show that the growth will continue for
similar reasons. To accommodate the increasing network traffic and users’ demand,
operators should continuously expand the capacity of their mobile networks using
different capacity enhancing technologies. Network densification using small cells is one
of the important capacity enhancement methods that are being implemented.
To successfully exploit capacity benefits of network densification, efficient network
planning is needed to address its deployment challenges including availability and cost
of site, energy source and backhaul while minimizing interference and maximizing
network capacity and users’ throughputs. Using street furniture including lamp posts
and utility poles during the planning of dense/ultra-dense networks is being considered
as one method to address the availability of sites and cost challenges. But technoeconomic
benefits
of
using
the
furniture
and
usage
methods
are
not
studied
in
the
context
of
Addis
Ababa.
In this thesis work, the techno-economic benefits of using the furniture from an outdoor
network planning perspective for a selected area of Addis Ababa will be investigated.
The outdoor planning optimization is performed using technical and economic objectives
while considering lamp posts and utility poles of the selected areas as part of candidate
locations for small cells. The multiobjective optimization is solved using Genetic
algorithm and its implementation and result analysis are performed using MATLAB.
Propagation computation for network simulation is undertaken using a deterministic
dominant path model that is implemented within WinProp. Empirical economic analysis results show that using streetlamp posts and utility poles
decreases deployment cost by 17% compared to using a new standalone pole (dedicated
pole used for only small cell deployment). Furthermore, obtained Pareto optimal
networks from outdoor planning simulation that considers 143 lamp posts and 81 utility
poles as candidate cells provide 53 lamp posts and 43 utility poles. Thus, only 24% is
consumed by street posts for 96 sites while for 13 sites using new standalone pole 57% of
the total deployment cost is consumed.
Description
Keywords
LTE, Small Cell, Densification, Street Furniture, Lamp Posts, Utility Poles, Multiobjective optimization, Users’ Demand, Cost-Benefit, Techno-Economic, Addis Ababa