Measurement of the Impact of Building Penetration Loss on HSDPA Performance

Following the introduction and deployment of HSDPA, wireless data traffic has increased significantly. Further, current studies show that indoor users generate more than half of the traffic. Hence, the indoor HSDPA performance is of most interest for mobile operators and system vendors due to the concern of the impact of building penetration loss on HSDPA performance. To understand the practical impact of building penetration loss on indoor HSDPA performance, we carried out indoor and outdoor HSDPA performance measurement in a live HSDPA network for a mobile located near the cell edge in a suburban environment. The measurement results are consistent with the simulation results showing that greatest difference between the indoor and outdoor data rates occur during the low load period when the system is noise-limited and the building penetration loss has the greatest impact. During the high traffic (high cell load) periods, the difference between indoor and outdoor performance is minimal due to full power transmission from all base stations resulting in an interference-limited environment.