What is Cellular Network planning?
The cellular mobile communication system has experienced a process of successive evolution over the past decades, driven by the ever-increasing demand for wireless services for high data rates and mobility. From the first generation (1G) system to the current worldwide 4G, the mobile communication system has experienced significant variations in many aspects. For example, multiple access methods have evolved from frequency-division multiple access (FDMA), time-division multiple access (TDMA), and code-division multiple access (CDMA) to orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) employed by the 4G network. Particularly, the infrastructure of the 4G network and beyond is different from the previous ones with well-planned macrocells. Low transmission power access points, also referred to as small cells, such as picocells, femtocells, and relays, are deployed within the coverage of the conventional macrocells in the 4G system and beyond. Such an infrastructure is called a heterogeneous network (HetNet), which can improve the throughput of the system and quality of service (QoS) for users.