Development of Enhanced Dynamic Cell Sectorization Scheme for Improved WCDMA Network Capacity

Abstract

Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) technology has provided a great multiple user interfaces to third generation (3G) wireless network mobile users. The existing cell sectoring scheme with directional (sector) antenna deployment lacks the capacity to mitigate the problem of Multiple Access Interference (MAI), interference from adjacent or nearby cell, and sudden increase in number of users that tend to exhaust the system capacity. Empirical measurements were taken from a third generation (3G) wireless network situated in Enugu metropolis South East Nigeria to determine the basic network configurations and the channel capacity of the existing sites. An Enhanced Dynamic Cell Sectoring (EDCS) model was also developed to improve on the multi-user system capacity. The measured data was deployed in the developed models using a three twin-beam sector antenna concepts to demonstrate how the new scheme added to capacity of the network. The model was simulated using matlab and the result obtained proved that replacing directional antennas with twin-beam sector antenna, the WCDMA capacity increase per sector would be of the ratio of 1:2, with decrease in sector overlap of 3.69%, thereby providing double capacity increase with less handover when compared with the existing cell sectoring scheme.