Urban LTE with Monte Carlo

Perform urban network planning with LTE and generate a Monte Carlo report.

Motivation for a Monte Carlo Analysis

A Monte Carlo analysis helps to evaluate the numbers of served, blocked, and not-assigned mobiles (users) for each application and for each cell. In this example, a traffic simulation report is generated using the Monte Carlo approach. For radio network planning, different types of simulations are available. Monte Carlo simulations use randomly distributed users, which are generated according to location-dependent traffic definitions.

Model Type

In this urban scenario, in addition to the conventional building definitions, a clutter table was defined as part of the database to distinguish between different types of buildings.
Tip: Click Project > Edit Project Parameter and click the Traffic tab to view the types of buildings in the clutter table.
Figure 1. Overview of the clutter database.


Sites and Antennas

The five sites in this scenario are installed at different geographical locations, as shown in Figure 1. Each site has a number of directional transmitter antennas.
Tip: Click Project > Edit Project Parameter and click the Sites tab to view the antenna settings.
Site 1 has four transmitting antennas placed in approximately linearly opposite orientations at a height of 15 m. Site 2, Site 4 and Site 5 each have three directional antennas with their beams separated by 120 degrees. Site 3 has six transmitting directional antennas with their beams separated by 60 degrees.

Air Interface

The air interface is defined by a long term evolution (LTE) wireless standard file, LTE_Band1_BW_20MHz_FDD.wst. Orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDM/SOFDMA) is selected for multiple access. Two-stream MIMO technology is in use at Site 1.

Tip: Click Project > Edit Project Parameter and click the Air Interface tab.

Computational Method

The dominant path model (DPM) focuses on the most relevant path, which leads to shorter computation times compared to rigorous ray tracing. Empirical losses are used for transmission, reflection, and diffraction. Empirical losses can be determined with measurements, whereas obtaining actual electrical material properties can be more difficult.
Tip: Click Project > Edit Project Parameter and click the Computation tab to change the model.

Results

The type of network simulation is a Monte Carlo simulation (location dependent traffic). Propagation results show at every location the power received from each transmitting antenna. Results are calculated for a single prediction plane at a height of 1.5 m.

For all modulation and coding schemes, the network simulation calculates the following:

  • signal area
  • cell area
  • site area
  • maximum data rate
  • maximum throughput
  • number of MIMO streams for both uplink and downlink

Network results also include the Monte Carlo report arranged in tabular format (10 snapshots and their average) evaluated for 19 cells, and histograms for cell load, noise rise, and throughput for downlink and uplink. As an example, a snippet of the Mote Carlo report is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. A section of a Monte Carlo report.