Microcellular design system (MIDAS)

With the widespread use of microcells, the definition of what is a microcell, and when a conventional cell becomes a microcell, is not consistent across all users. The authors define a microcell as the coverage area produced when the base station (BS) antenna is below the local urban skyline. typically, therefore they would expect a BS antenna height of approximately 3-9 m leading to coverage distances typically of 200-400 m from the antenna, and up to a maximum of about 1 km in extreme cases. After performing numerous microcellular propagation measurements at 900 MHz and 1.8 GHz it became apparent that if supplied with accurate detailed maps of the buildings and streets in a city a computer model could be developed capable of making accurate predictions of radio coverage in microcellular networks. Such a model has been developed to run on a PC, and considerable use of the model coupled with confirmatory measurements has demonstrated the accuracy and usefulness of the package. They discuss some of the more important issues concerning microcellular planning tools, and give details about the development of the prediction package, known as MIDAS