11
Physical Layer Performance
11.1 Introduction
This chapter presents coverage and capacity results and investigates the impact of the radio propagation environment, advanced base station (Node B) solutions, and WCDMA physical layer parameters. The advanced base station solutions include both baseband and antenna techniques. Cell coverage is especially important in terms of the initial network deployment investment, where the offered traffic load does not set demands for a fine grid of cells; WCDMA network coverage is analysed in Section 11.2. The importance of capacity will increase after the initial coverage deployment when the amount of traffic increases; WCDMA capacity is presented in Section 11.3. In this chapter, we also present the WCDMA air interface capacity, which is limited by interference. We here assume that there are sufficient baseband hardware resources in Node B, transmission network capacity, and RNC resources to support the maximum air interface capacity. The results from field capacity trials are presented in Section 11.4. The 3GPP performance requirements are analysed in Section 11.5, and Section 11.6 presents the possible performance enhancements that are supported by the 3GPP standard, including adaptive antenna structures and multiuser detection with advanced baseband processing. The focus areas of this chapter are illustrated in Figure ...
