Cell Planning with Macroscopic Diversity: Optimal Cell Deployment and SINR Evaluation under Frequency Scheduling

Macroscopic diversity (macro-diversity) techniques, such as coordinated multi-point transmission in LTE networks, are attracting attention for reducing the error rate of wireless transmission. We propose a cell-planning algorithm with macro- diversity when possible locations of cells are given. To define a cell, we focus on the desired received signal power of uplink determined by fractional power control. We also propose a signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) evaluation method under the obtained cell-deployment pattern, which takes into account frequency scheduling used in LTE networks. Numerical results show that by optimally deploying the cells, we can reduce the required number of cells to cover the defined domain by up to 30% compared to when the cells are selected greedily. Moreover, the SINR evaluation results suggest that reducing the required cells to cover the domain improves uplink SINR at the cell edge.