|TELEComs Cellular radio: planning and analysis using GIS BY BEN DAIR AND BRONYA OLDFIELD GIS capabilities are helping mobile phone company Vodafone to plan its radio network as well as maximizing its market. ‘odafone Lids part of Vodafone \ ] Group ple and is a provider of analogue and digital mobile phone coverage throughout the UK. ‘The group also has interests in the in- ternational cellular market, whereitap- plies similar technologies and tech- niques to those it employs in the UK. Vodafone's analogue network was switched on in 1985. At the time, the network consisted of approximately 200 radio base stations. Today it consists of over 2,000 analogue or digital sites. Expanding a radio cellular network is acomplex business. A large number of different parameters have to be evalu- ated before a new site can be success- fully commissioned or an existing site optimized. Engineers must take into ‘account factors such as antenna height and orientation along with the physi- cal location of the site, its height and lines of sight. They must also consid- cer economic influences such as popu- lation density, cellular traffic and envi- ronmental concerns. Initially, Vodafone turned to map- ping software for radio planningto help it to maintain service while reacting to the demand of the expanding customer base. However, the company has ex- panded its use of spatial analysis, It now uses GIS not just for radio net- work planning, but also asa marketing tool First approaches Initially, Vodafone engineers used a VAX-based application called PACE (which stands for Prediction and Cov- erage Estimation) to plan its physical network. The PACE application en- abled them to predict the effects of ter- rain, clutter (suchas reesand tall build- ings) and frequency within a radio cellular environment. However, since PACE has no Graphical User Interface (GUI) to visualize the information in- teractively, prints of each area had to be produced before coveragedata could be analysed. ‘These prints were then overlaid onto Ordnance Survey 1:25,000-scale maps forassessment pur- poses. ‘The technique of overlaying cover- Figure 2: A view of a population map showing 250-metre cells where population is greater than 0 (nb, the display interpolation gives an artific ‘grid effect) MARCH 1996 GlSEurope‘age maps was the basis for Vodafone's next generation of radio planning soft- "ware. Atthe time, there was no suitable GULtype radio planning tool on the market, so Vodafone decided to devel- opits own. VGis (Vodafone Geographic Information System) replaced the PACE system and has been constantly en. hanced over the past four years. VGis enables the user to visualize data in- teractively and to output simultaneous multi-layered raster and vector map data. A set of modelling utilities called PACE2 are used for radio predictions, frequency planning and other complex functions, but the results of such com- putations can only be seen using VGis Spatial analysis Whilst the visual analysis afforded by VGis supports network planning asks, Vodafone also requires spatial analysis tools to generate statistical reports on existing digital networkcoverage, These reports can help the company to pin- pointareas ofhigh population but poor coverage, for instance. ‘The primary questions are: How much ofthe populationis cov- ered by the current digital network? How much ofland is covered by the current digital network? Vodafone chose SPANS GIS (devel Figure 3: County areas for marketing analysis and planning reports GIS Europe MARCH 1996 oped by TYDAC Technologies of Ot- tawa, Canada) to address these issues. Data Three main data layers are used to analyse coverage: existing digital net- work coverage, population and coun- ty boundaries (which are incorporated for marketing and planning purposes) Coverage at each individual site is pre- dicted using clutter, terrain reference and propagation models. The site pre- dictionsare collated togetherintoasin- gle database of network coverage. In order to analyse network coverages, they firsthave to beimported from VGis into SPANS. The data on network cov- erage isexported asa'TIFFfileand trans. lated into a SPANS raster using the SPANS Raster Translator. The rasteris then converted to a quadtree map, as 'SPANS uses a quadtree data structure to integrate and analyse data (see fig- ure 1), In this figure, four categories or thresholds of mobile phone units were mapped: in-carhand-held portable units (HPUs), outdoor HPUs, mobile and partial mobile units. ‘The population data, supplied by CCN Systems Ltd (of Nottingham, UK), ‘was derived from estimates of the 1994 population from the 1991 census, ‘mapped and adjusted to postcodes and converted toa250-metregrid. The cen Figure and county maps sus data consists of an ASCH file con- taininga National Grid Reference (NGR) and population forevery inhabited 250- ‘metre cell. ‘The resulting map has in- habited 250-metre cells classified by the population value for the cell (see figure 2). County boundaries from the AA ‘Automaps dataset, supplied byTYDAC ina SPANS vector file, were imported directly into SPANSand converted into ‘a quadtree map (see figure 3). A UK base map was created by aggregating the county map toa single class. Modelling Vodafone uses SPANS' ‘unique condi- tions modelling’ capabilities to inte- grate and combine data from these di- verse sources and output data in the form of maps or tables. This technique identifies any unique combination of map classes, so, forinstance, itwill pick up coverages classes in a particular county and report statistical informa- tion for that area in tabular form. Man- ‘agers and engineers analyse the tabu- lar information to see how the network expanding and the effect the expan- sion has on population coverage. ‘Vodafone then uses the unique con- ditions table—produced by overlaying the digital network coverage map, the population map and the county map— to generate coverage reports for mar- A.unique conditions map of coverage, population a|TELEComs MAP A MaP B keting and planning (see above). The ‘base statistics in the unique conditions table may be analysed in SPANS using the table modelling and aggregation functions or it can be exported to an ASCII file forreport generation in stan- dard packages such as MS ACCESS or MS EXCEL. Population and land area summary statistics can be aggregated by coverage threshold and/or by coun- ty (see example report below). Thesame type of report can be computed on a national basis to summarize digital net- work coverage across the country. SPANSisalso beingused to plan Voda- fone'’s expansion of its digital cell net- work by analysing potential cell site coverage against population and land area. Statistical comparisons can be made between digital network cover- Unique Conditions Map: [Dy Repeating (1,1) Repeating (1.2) Unique Conditions |_ Modelling Unique Conditions Table: Unique Area |MapA |MapB Conditions| km2 Class | Class 4 26.15 1 1 =z 23.50 2 1 3 3.60 3 a 4 21.65 1 2 5 25.10 3 2 age survey results and VGis-predicted coverage data. Site classification for strategic planning purposes is neces- sary to categorize base stations by the type of land they are on. ‘This is done usinga VGis clutterraster. Clutter data is extracted from the VGis 250-metre clutter database derived from interpre- tation of aerial photography (supplied by GEC Marconi, UK Ltd, London), Consistingof urban, suburban and rural classes, this data is imported asa raster and converted to a quadtree map. Motorways (from the AA Automaps dataset) are buffered to 500m and com- bined with the clutter map to generate a map showing urban, suburban, rural and motorway areas, Site data is im- ported from an NGR point table and converted to a quadtree map. The two layers are overlaid using unique con- ditions modellingand the resultingtable Unique conditions modelling is analysed to classify sites by clutter category. Future work In the future, Vodafone hopes to use spatial analysis to investigate demo- graphic data such as income, job dis- tribution and type, travel patterns and other parameters to identify new and expandingmarkets. Engineersalso plan to analyse road networks to determine which areas need modification and to identify which sites need tobe expanded to improve national coverage. The system will also be used to plan system capacity using dynamic network traf- fic analysis and mapping network performance. "BEN DAIR is marketing support ‘development engineer for Vodafone Ld. ‘He can be contacted at 2-4 London ‘Road, The Court Yard, Newbury, Berkshire RG14.1JX, UK. Tel: +44 1635, "503588; Fax: v44 1685 503969 BRONYA OLDFIELD is responsible for customer support at TYDAC ‘Technologies Ltd, 2 Venture Road, Chilworth Research Centra, Southampton SO16 7NP, UK and can be reached on Tel: +44 1705 760824; Fax: +44 1703 760824 a2 MARCH 1996 GIS Europe