Intelligent Network Planning of Cellular Networks for Southern

Africa

Anish Kurien*, Ben Van Wyk**, Damien Chatelain** & Lukas Snyman*

*School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, **French-South African Technical

Institute of Electronics, Tshwane University of Technology,
P/Bag X680, Pretoria 0001

E-mail: anishk@techpta.ac.za, ben.van.wyk@fsatie.ac.za,

damien.chatelain@fsatie.ac.za, lsnyman@techpta.ac.za

Abstract – Telecommunication networks have been experiencing a tremendous

explosion in growth worldwide. The worldwide growth patterns has sprawled into the
African continent quite rapidly in the past few years with over 1 in 100 inhabitants
having access to telecommunication services. In most networks across Africa, mobile
networks have been seen as the most appropriate technology to provide
telecommunication services to the market. This has been fueled by their relative ease
and speed of installation as well as the introduction of attractive services such as pre-
paid mobile cards that have enabled the growth in subscriber bases. With the growth
of cellular mobile networks and the introduction of new technologies coupled with
newer services, greater demands and challenges are being placed on radio planning
tools. Traditional radio planning tools have primarily focused on planning networks
from an analytical approach that focuses on radio propagation and interference
analysis. Priority was given to providing optimum coverage in areas being planned for
and addressing capacity related issues in later parts of the planning process. The
traditional methods of radio planning are gradually in the process of evolution. A
move towards the use of statistical information from the environment is considered as
a key contributing factor towards planning networks more optimally and cost-
effectively which is critical in the African context. With the varying demographics
and socio-economic status of most sectors of the country, effective intelligent
algorithms have to be integrated in the planning process to perform the role of
information extraction vital for the planning process as well as to perform the task of
adaptive network design. This paper proposes some typical models and algorithms
that would be used for the design of a typical intelligent planning tool and
demonstrates how effective data extraction from the environment could be utilized in
the provision of highly optimized networks.