A Cell Planning Approach in Non-Isotropic Transmission Medium with the Capability of Supporting Cellular Networks Downsizing

Radio propagation model when used in cell planning is normally assumed to be isotropic over the whole area under consideration. However, in practice, making such an assumption is idealistic since the environment and terrains are unlikely to be the same in all directions. In this paper, a heuristic approach to perform cell planning with the isotropic transmission medium assumption removed is first presented. Since the deployment of 3G networks will reduce the number of 2G GSM subscribers, we next look into a simple economic model to achieve efficient design of downsized 2G cellular networks. We show how our proposed cell planning algorithm is useful in limiting the search space to obtain the new optimal base station configuration.