Coverage and service bounds for UMTS

Although upper bounds on cell planning have been derived for UMTS systems, little has been done to address lower bounds. In this paper we present the findings of a preliminary investigation into techniques for deriving upper and lower bounds for 3G network design. Lower bounds are derived via an integer linear programming (ILP) approach and upper bounds are derived using a meta-heuristic approach (tabu search). The lower bound provides a bench-mark against which the effectiveness of the meta-heuristic approach can be evaluated. We propose three optimization models addressing transmitter and pilot power requirements, and derive and contrast upper and lower bounds. The results of experimentation show that the tabu search is competitive with the lower bounds derived from the ILP and has substantially lower execution time for larger problems