Designing for coverage availability with different data rates - an improved methodology

A new improved methodology for determining the shadow fade margin in a multi-cell network is presented. To design for a specified coverage availability requires what is commonly known as a shadow fade margin in the link budget. The shadow fade margin is dependent on the percentage area coverage, the propagation range law, and the standard deviation of the lognormal shadowing. The shadow fade margin is normally calculated assuming an omni-directional, isolated cell. To account for a network of cells, a multi-cell gain is also included in the link budget. It is shown that the multi-cell gain is also a function of coverage availability. The new, improved methodology calculates the shadow fade margin together with the variable multi-cell gain. By adopting this new methodology an operator can more accurately, estimate the range of the radio system and hence calculate the number of cell sites required to cover a given geographic region.