Baseband or Systhesised Frequency Hopping

The number of TRXs is not the main criterion to decide on BFH or SFH implementation
alternatives.
BFH is well suited for coverage driven low capacity scenarios, where hopping shall enhance
quality and sensitivity. Here, low combining losses and hopping TCHs on TRX0 add coverage
and quality into the previously non hopping network.
SFH is designed for interference limited high capacity scenarios, where more hopping
frequencies are needed to deal with the interference of a tighter re-use and to make use of
interference reduction of PC and DTX in both UL and DL for extra capacity. SFH allows for a
larger number of hopping frequencies than TRXs are installed. So full hopping gains can be
exploited immediately at moderate cost and even with small BTSs and Micro BTSs. In
interference limited scenarios, non-hopping TCH performance on TRX0 is good since BCCH
needs to be well planned for low interference anyhow. Also higher insertion losses in SFH can be
more easily tolerated in interference limited scenarios.
Both random and cyclic hopping can be implemented in both BFH and SFH. SFH is a means to
benefit on high hopping gains at moderate cost, but at the price of some loss in coverage.

Band split non-hopping - hopping - micro

The split of the frequency band between BCCH carriers, TCH carriers and micro cell carriers
is a tradeoff between the quality of the different frequency bands. Usually to set the frequency
resources for the BCCH is the starting point. Depending on the homogeneity of the network a
reuse between 15 and 21 is recommended to assure the quality of the BCCH plan, especially
with respect to good handover performance in terms of neighbour measurements and BSIC
decoding.

If micros exist a further portion of the available frequencies should be exclusively reserved for
mircro BCCH carriers. In isolated hot spot applications one to three frequencies may be sufficient
while for contiguous coverage appropriate spectrum (6 - 8 carriers) are recommended.

The rest of the spectrum can be flexibly used for hopping TCH carriers in both macro and micro
layer.

Borders of synthesised frequency hopping areas

Generally few problems are to be expected from the boundaries between SFH areas and non-
hopping areas, due to the de-correlation between the hopping and the non-hopping carriers. A
constant interference of the hopping and non-hopping carriers will not occur.

When drawing the boundaries in the network between hopping and non-hopping areas, the best
is to select "isolated" areas for the SFH to avoid mutual influence between both areas. In most
real networks this is difficult to achieve. For the drawing of boundaries some basic
recommendations should be considered:
As the creation of a frequency plan for the SFH a dedicated band planning for the BCCHs and
TCHs along a boundary is recommended to avoid a constant interference of the TCHs by the
BCCHs.
Drawing the boundary across a high traffic area should be avoided. If this is not possible then at
least the sites on along the boundary shall be replanned to adapt to the tighter re-use in the SFH
area.

When reassigning frequencies in a selected area of an existing network one has to consider the
existing assignments along the boundary.
Assigning frequencies for a SFH network manually, even for a limited number of sites, is very
time consuming and even experienced network planners will hardly find satisfying assignments.
Considering the existing assignments along boundaries makes the task even more complex.
To achieve good assignments in this case it is highly recommended to use an advanced
frequency planning tool. These tools are able to find optimum assignments in short time and
consider the boundaries to the non-hopping areas properly. For example when using the
Siemens AFP-tool it is possible to read in at the same time the site and interference information
of a complete network and a list of sites which exclusively shall be replanned. The assignments of
the complete network, except the sites contained in the list, are frozen for the planning process.
During the planning process, the AFP-tool minimizes the interference in the area to be planned.
This minimization process will not be performed isolated only for the sites to be replanned, but
also the mutual impact of the whole network's and the planning region's interference will be taken
into consideration.