A case study of CDMA and PCS-1900 using the GRANETTM radio planning tool

Determining which digital technology to deploy is a major decision for wireless operators. The decision between CDMA (IS-95A), TDMA (IS-136), or GSM-based systems requires many issues to be examined, such as capacity and coverage, cost and availability of equipment, and the cost of planning and maintaining the network. This paper describes a case study for comparing CDMA and PCS-1900 for a given scenario, using GRANET, a state-of-the-art radio planning tool that accounts for deployment of cell sites, radio propagation, receiver sensitivities, grade of service provided, supported traffic, etc. GRANET enables network operators to do rapid comparisons of competing technologies, and make a technology decision which best suits their requirements. For the case study presented, the CDMA based network provided approximately 10% more coverage than the PCS-1900 network