A New Method of Realistic GSM Network planning for Rural Indian Terrains

Summary This paper discusses a new method of generating rural radio network plan for GSM based on ASSET3G parameter tuning and identification of uncovered areas. The network planning has been carried out using digital clutter, terrain and vector data as input to ASSET3G whose default parameters have been fine tuned using measurement data of plane and rolling hill terrains. The ASSET3G parameters have been tuned to achieve the closest matching plot between the measured and ASSET3G generated values of path loss at 320 MHz. It is shown that the upper bound of mean error, standard deviation and path loss exponents for plane and hilly terrains are 5, 6 & 2.40 and 9, 11 and 3.13 respectively, which is below their respective acceptable limits. ASSET3G output along with boundary and census data is provided to MapInfo Professional to determine the tower position. The radio network plan for entire rural India has been generated, however as an illustrative example the coverage map generated for Manipur (India), a difficult rural hilly terrain, is presented.