GSMR Coverage and Capacity Planning Awash-Woldia Rail Line

This thesis is intended to give a good understanding of GSMR radio network planning and perform a case study in Awash-Woldia rail line. It also considers future network implementation. In any cellular network, whether an expansion of the existing one or as a new technology to be deployed, the nominal planning of radio access network is considered as critical point. This is because it gives the first rough estimation to coverage and capacity. In this thesis the coverage estimation is done by considering the nature of the route inspected from Google Earth. The number of base stations required to cover a given suburban rail line is determined. Appropriate propagation model is also selected. The capacity planning is done only in the analysis part; because of the unavailability and difficulty of having the traffic digital data for railway systems. The analytical results are simulated using radio planning tool called Atoll. Atoll is chosen over other dimensioning tools like Excel-based software and MATLAB for its indepth input analysis, flexible working environment and being professional planning software. After integration of the results in the dimensioning tool, the work is reviewed and iterations are performed till the desired results are reached. The simulations show that it is quite evident the planned network provides satisfactory results especially in coverage performance. Finally, we have found that 48 GSMR BTSs with total capacity of 3.35Mbps for the entire Awash-Woldia rail line.