This thesis considers the performance evaluation of third generation radio networks, in particular UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA). First, the performance evaluation methods are presented. The typical capacity of UTRA is estimated using those methods and a few solutions are evaluated to improve the capacity and coverage. The thesis further studies the effect of base station synchronization on the performance of UTRA time division duplex mode.
The performance evaluation is based on the combination of theoretical calculations, link and system level simulations, and laboratory and field measurements. It is shown that these different evaluation methods give similar results and – when combined together – they can be used for the radio network development purposes.
The simulation results indicate that the typical WCDMA, i.e. UTRA frequency division duplex mode, macro cell capacity is between 600 and 1000 kbps per sector per 5 MHz. The capacity is sensitive to the environment and to the transceiver performance. The results further show that user bit rates up to 2 Mbps can be provided locally for packet data with the basic Rake receiver, but not for full coverage circuit switched connections in macro cells.
The following performance enhancement techniques are evaluated in this thesis: soft combining of packet retransmissions, base station multiuser detection and 4-branch base station receiver diversity. The link level simulations show that soft combining can provide a gain up to 2.0 dB, which can be used to increase the capacity up to 60 %. The performance of base station multiuser detection is evaluated with link and system level simulations. It is shown that the studied sub-optimal multiuser detector is able to remove 60-70 % of the intra-cell interference. That gain can be utilized to improve the uplink capacity by 50-100 % or the coverage by 1-2 dB. The performance of 4-branch antenna diversity is evaluated in the simulations and in the field measurements. The results show that the average coverage gain of 4-branch diversity with two separate cross-polarized antennas is 3 dB compared to 2-branch diversity with one cross-polarized antenna.
The synchronization requirements of UTRA time division duplex base stations are studied with system simulations. The results show that synchronization is a key requirement for time division duplex operation, especially for the uplink performance. The study indicates that co-location of different operators' base stations is feasible in time division duplex operation only if the two networks are synchronized and if an identical split between uplink and downlink is used.reviewe
