Huawei Technologies

Base Station Survey Specifications

Base Station Survey Specifications (V1.1)

This document is the first edition of the Base Station Survey Specifications developed by Radio Network Planning Department, which targets at guiding the base station survey of the network planning engineers so as to provide services for smooth engineering design and installation and lay a solid basis for the future network optimization. Compilation objective: Normalizing the base station survey and providing a guide document necessary for survey design. Applicable objects: Network planning engineers. The authority for the interpretation of this Specification belongs to the Radio Network Planning Department under the Technical Support Department.

Chapter 1 Precautions in Base Station Survey

I. Survey preparation 1) 2)
Get familiar with the general situation of the job and carefully read relevant documents such as the technical proposals, network planning report, etc. Contact the marketing personnel and relevant personnel in the Engineering Department, record the telephone number of the Representative Office, the address of the equipment buyer, the telephone number of the contact person from the equipment buyer, travel means, etc. Prepare the relevant technical documents related to the base station survey: Contractual configuration list, the latest base station survey table of the Network Planning Department, etc. Preparation of tools: Digital camera, GPS, compass and portable computer.

3) 4)

II. Site survey 1) Survey preparation coordination meeting When the design personnel arrives at the survey site, please contact the equipment buyer through the Project Manager/Engineering Supervisor as soon as possible and convene the survey preparation coordination meeting so as to determine the personnel (possibly including the personnel from the design institute) and vehicles to be provided by the equipment buyer during the survey and work out the survey plan.
After sufficient communication with the equipment buyer, confirm that the areas the equipment buyer needs to emphasize upon are within the coverage range of local site. Nail down these important coverage areas before the survey.

2) Precautions in the survey The planning engineers should work earnestly and carefully during the base station survey and should fill in the Contract Problems Feedback List and feed it back to the company for events not in conformity with the configuration list due to unexpected alterations made by the equipment buyer. 3) Survey end The planning personnel together with the engineering design personnel should hold another meeting with the equipment buyer to discuss the problems found during the survey, confirm the survey results and sign the Survey Memorandum for items on which no agreements are reached, and request the equipment buyer to sign and confirm it so
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Base Station Survey Specifications

as to make preparations according to the set date.

4) Survey report archiving The Network Planning and Base Station Survey Report should be submitted to the engineering design personnel who will synthesize it into the on-site base station survey report and submit it to the Research Institute and equipment buyer for signing. Furthermore, the survey report should be submitted to our department for archiving.

III. Modification of survey data

If the base station survey data (including site location, antenna azimuth, declination angle, etc.) due to certain reasons, please modify the base station survey table in time and inform relevant departments (Engineering Design Department and Mobile Engineering Department) of the results in the form of Change Notice of Design Documents.

Chapter 2 Guide to On-site Base Station Survey

The main contents of the base station survey conducted by the Network Planning Department include two aspects: Site location selection and antenna feeder.

I. Site location selection

In principle, the site location of a base station should be selected according to the following principles:

1) 2)

3) 4)

5) 6) 7)

8) 9)

The site location should be in the ideal position in a regularized mesh, with the deviation not greater than one-fourth of the base station radius. On the precondition that the base station layout is not influenced, try to select existing telecom buildings, post offices or microwave stations as the site location so that we can make full use of the existing facilities such as equipment rooms, power supplies, iron towers, etc. Generally, do not select site locations in very high mounts in urban or suburban areas so as to prevent co-channel interference on one hand and reduce the construction difficulty and facilitate maintenance on the other hand. New base stations should be located in places with convenient transportation, ready mains supply, safe environment and places not occupying fertile lands. Avoid places near high-power radio transmitter stations, radar stations or other interference sources. New base stations should be far from forests so as to avoid the fading of received signals. Make sure that the new base stations have perfect connection of transmission links with the base station controllers. For site selection in mountain areas, lake areas with steep shores or areas with dense lakes, cities full of hills and environments with tall metallic buildings, pay attention to the influence of time dispersion. The site location of a base station should be as close to reflectors as possible, or when a base station is quite far from a reflector, turn the antenna against the reflector. For a site location in a forest of buildings in urban areas, make smart use of the height of buildings to realize the division of the network hierarchy. When there are a small number of base stations during the initial stages of network construction, the site location selection should guarantee the perfect coverage in major regions.

Furthermore, the site location selection should guarantee the perfect call connection in areas such as mobile switching offices, China Mobile or China Unicom business halls,
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Base Station Survey Specifications

residential areas of the staff members of the equipment buyer, etc. Please avoid the coverage overlay in such regions. In fact, before the network planning engineers conduct the base station survey, the equipment buyer has already determined the locations of base stations. The network planning engineers should get well prepared for this, confirm the future network requirements of the equipment buyer, sign necessary memorandums for site locations which cannot satisfy the network requirements and also should record the opinions of the equipment buyer for future query.

II. Antenna feeder system

The antenna feeder system used in the mobile communication system mainly includes the following parts:

1)

Antenna type

In the CDMA mobile communication system, mainly the 120, 90, 65, 60 and omnidirection antennas are used. Generally, the gain of an omni-directional antenna is 6dBd to 9dBd and that of a directional antenna is 9dBd to 16dBd. In regions with small number of subscribers, omni-directional antennas and 120 antennas are preferred. In areas with dense subscribers, to reduce the influence upon the neighboring cells, mostly the 65 antennas are used. In individual areas, possibly the 6-sector antennas will be used. Generally, the 45 or 33 antennas serve as the 6-sector antennas. In addition, since the China Unicom CDMA networks and the original GSM networks share the same base stations, the antenna gain selection and isolation should be considered. Generally, the antenna type has already been determined before the survey. Once it is found that this type of antenna is applicable for a certain station, the network engineers should put forward opinions and fill in the Contract Problem Feedback List and feed it back to the relevant departments.

2) Antenna height Antennas in different cells of the same base station can have different heights. This is possibly restricted by the installation space in a certain direction or depends upon the cell planning so as to meet the requirements for different coverage, isolation, diversity and interference of each cell.
During the installation of a base station antenna, make sure whether its coverage area will generate a large shadow. The shadow generally originates from large blocking objects near the base station, such as tall buildings, high mountains, etc. Try to avoid such blocking objects during the installation. When a directional antenna is installed at the top of a tall building, try to prevent the edges of the building from blocking the wave beam radiation. The antenna should be as close to the edge of the building as possible so as to reduce or remove the shadowing effect. Sufficient space should be provided around an omni-directional antenna and there should be enough space to the top of the building. For example, as shown in Figure 1, when an antenna is installed at the top of a building, assume that the vertical beam width of the antenna is and the distance from the edge of the building to the antenna is d, then the height between the antenna and the top of the building is: h=dtan (/2)

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Base Station Survey Specifications

h building H n d

Figure 1 The relationship between the antenna height and the edge of the building If the vertical beam width of the antenna with 6dB gain is about 28 and the distance from the edge of the building to the antenna is 31 meters, then the height between the antenna and the top of the building is 7.7 meters. The shadow around the building is related to the height of the building. D=[(H+h)/tan (2)]-d If H=30 meters, h=7.5 meters, /2=14, then D = 119 meters. It can be seen that if the distance from the antenna to the edge of the building is too big, the shadow area around the building will wide. Due to the complexity of the top of the building, when an antenna is installed with a big distance from the edge of the building, the antenna should be mounted as far over the top of the building as possible. In this case, the bearing capacity of the building floor and the wind load of the antenna must be considered during the engineering. Without consideration of the antenna inclination, the following table lists the recommended values of the height between the antenna and the top of the building for the CDMA 800MHz system.
Distance from the antenna to the edge of the building D (m) 0 to 1 1 to 10 10 to 30 > 30 Distance from the bottom of the antenna to the top of the building H (m) 0.5 2 3 3.5

3) Antenna azimuth Pointing the main lobe direction of the antenna at the heavy traffic area to increase the signaling strength in the area, so as to improve the conversation quality. Setting the main lobe direction of the antenna away from the co-channel cell can effectively control the interference. In urban areas, it is recommended that the cross coverage depth between antennas in two neighboring cells should not exceed 10%; while in suburban areas or the countryside, the cross coverage depth between coverage areas should not be too deep (the inclination in the sector direction should not be less than 90). During the design, pay attention to the corresponding relationship between the number of carriers and cells. More carriers should be configured in high-density cells.
During the azimuth design, the azimuth not only depends on the traffic distribution around each base station, but also should be considered from the approach of the whole network. On the basis of meeting the requirements for high-density traffic coverage, try to use consistent azimuth for the three sectors of each base station so as to avoid the
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Base Station Survey Specifications

network complexity resulted from future base station expansion.

4) Antenna declination angle With the vertical directivity of the antenna, the antenna declination technology can effectively control the interference and coverage. Generally, it exerts relatively big influence upon the remote end. The declination angle of the antenna should be determined according to the specific situations. Not only the interference on the cochannel cells should be reduced, but also the coverage should be guaranteed so as to prevent unnecessary blind zone. In the meantime, if the declination is too big, it will lead to distortion of the horizontal directivity diagram of the antenna. The front-back radiation ratio of the antenna must be considered so as to prevent the back lobe of the antenna from interfering the back cells or to prevent the side lobe of the antenna from interfering the neighboring sectors. The principle for selecting the declination angle is: the part between the ray from the antenna to the border of the present cell and the ray from the antenna to the border of the interfered cell should in the part with the biggest gain attenuation in the antennas vertical directivity diagram. Thus, the co-channel interference can be minimized. 5) Isolation of base station antennas To avoid cross-modulation interference, the transmitter and receiver of a base station should be isolated to some degree (Tx-Rx: 30dB; Tx-Tx: 30dB). This is also applicable to antennas between the CDMA systems. The calculation of the isolation is as follows:
a. For vertical arrangement, Lv=28 + 40log(k/); b. For horizontal arrangement, Lv=22 + 20log(d/)-(G1 + G2); (Directional) (Directional)

Where, is the wavelength of the carrier wave, k is the vertical isolation distance, d is the horizontal isolation distance, and G1 and G2 are the gains (dBd) of Antenna 1 and Antenna 2 in the radiation direction respectively. For interference analysis and requirements for antenna isolation between the CDMA system and the GSM system, no matter whether the CDMA antennas and GSM900 antennas share the same base stations, there should be always an isolation of 57dB between them. For the detailed operations, refer to the Analysis of CDMA and GSM Interferences.

6)

The requirements for space between antennas when the space diversity installation is used for base station antennas

First, make it clear that the diversity space between two antennas refers to the space between the central axes of their horizontal beams. In case of space diversity, the distance between two antennas is 12 to 18. Generally, the horizontal space between diversity antennas is 0.11 times the valid height of the antenna. The higher the antennas are installed, the greater the horizontal space between the diversity antennas will be. However, when the antenna space is 6m, it is very difficult to install the antennas on the towers. Furthermore, in diversity receiving, the vertical segregation should be 5 to 6 times the horizontal segregation of the same diversity gain. Generally, vertical diversity is not used. For the installation location of an omni-directional antenna on the tower, the antenna should over 1 meter protruding from the platform of the iron tower within the protection range of the iron towers lightning arrester. If the valid mounting height of a diversity antenna is less than 30m and the space between the diversity antennas is less than 3m, the two sets of diversity antennas are within each others near field, resulting in distortion of the antenna directivity diagram. To prevent the fluctuation of the antenna direction of the two diversity antennas from exceeding 2dB, the space between diversity antennas in valid antenna height conditions should be greater than 3m. Furthermore, in case of space diversity, to cover a highway, generally the connection line between two receiving antennas should be perpendicular to the highway.
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Base Station Survey Specifications

Chapter 3 Specifications of Filling in the Base Station Survey Report

The Base Station Survey Report of the Networking Planning Department is prepared in two copies. One copy is submitted to the Engineering Design Department and the other copy is submitted to our own department for archiving. The contents of the report mainly include the following two parts: Base Station Survey Report and Memorandum. One Base station Survey Report should be provided for each base station. The contents in the report should be consistent (The contents of the whole report should be consistent and the contents of the report should be consistent with that of the contract. Any inconsistency should be recorded in the memorandum). All contents should be filled and the survey personnel must sign their names in the signature column. For any survey alteration, give the alteration time, items and reasons and feed the information back to the relevant departments. The Base Station Survey Report is attached as follows:

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