Mitigation of pilot pollution through base station antenna configuration in WCDMA

Pilot pollution is observed in areas where a mobile station does not have enough RAKE fingers for processing all the received pilot signals or there is no dominant pilot signal at all. The paper evaluates the impact of base station antenna configuration in a 3-sectored site and in different 6-sectored WCDMA sites on the amount of pilot pollution. The results show that pilot polluted areas can be reduced simply by defining a proper base station antenna configuration by means of antenna horizontal beamwidth and downtilt. However, more advanced methods are needed in order to decrease pilot polluted areas further.

[1]  M.M. El-Said,et al.  Sensory system for early detection of pilot pollution interference in UMTS networks , 2003, 10th International Conference on Telecommunications, 2003. ICT 2003..

[2]  Matti Manninen,et al.  UMTS radio network planning, optimization and QOS management for practical engineering tasks , 2006, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[3]  Kimmo Valkealahti,et al.  WCDMA common pilot power control for load and coverage balancing , 2002, The 13th IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications.

[4]  J. Lempiainen,et al.  Impact of mechanical antenna downtilt on performance of WCDMA cellular network , 2004, 2004 IEEE 59th Vehicular Technology Conference. VTC 2004-Spring (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37514).

[5]  Tomás̆ Novosad,et al.  Radio Network Planning and Optimisation for Umts , 2006 .

[6]  Adel Said Elmaghraby,et al.  Pilot pollution interference reduction using multi-carrier interferometry , 2003, Proceedings of the Eighth IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications. ISCC 2003.

[7]  Seong-Lyun Kim,et al.  Dominant Pilot Recovery in IS-95 CDMA Systems Using Repeaters , 1999 .

[8]  Robert T. Love,et al.  A pilot optimization technique for CDMA cellular systems , 1999, Gateway to 21st Century Communications Village. VTC 1999-Fall. IEEE VTS 50th Vehicular Technology Conference (Cat. No.99CH36324).

[9]  Jari Leino,et al.  On the effect of pilot cancellation in WCDMA network , 2002, Vehicular Technology Conference. IEEE 55th Vehicular Technology Conference. VTC Spring 2002 (Cat. No.02CH37367).

[10]  J. Lempiainen,et al.  Impact of the base station antenna beamwidth on capacity in WCDMA cellular networks , 2003, The 57th IEEE Semiannual Vehicular Technology Conference, 2003. VTC 2003-Spring..

[11]  I. Forkel,et al.  Performance evaluation of soft handover in a realistic UMTS network , 2003, The 57th IEEE Semiannual Vehicular Technology Conference, 2003. VTC 2003-Spring..