The Parameter Optimization module provides several functions to help you automatically plan and optimize the physical and electronic parameters of your network.

This tutorial uses functionality from the Parameter Optimization Module. This module can be installed by clicking the Install button on the Parameter Optimization product page. Once installed, you will need to restart Overture to use this module's features.

This tutorial shows you how to use the Parameter Planning functions of the Parameter Optimization module to plan and optimize the electronic parameters of an LTE network. We will start by assuming that the steps in the Tutorial have been followed to set up the network below:

You should then follow the steps in this tutorial to configure the network for LTE and to add LTE-specific parameters. Also make sure that you add the LTE-specific Parameter Planning components. Your Radios Table should now look like this:

You can see that the current channel plan is a simple 0, 1, 2 design. Notice that the Flag values for the N1CellID, N2CellID and PCI (CellID) parameters are all 0. Note that the N1CellID and N2CellID values are combined to form the CellID (3 * N1CellID + N2CellID) and that they are also used to seed the Primary Synchronization Signal (PSS) and Secondary Synchronization Signal (SSS).

Benchmarking The Initial Design

Before trying to optimize this network, we will first try to understand the performance of this unoptimized design. As this is an LTE network, we will be primarily interested in the CINR (Carrier to Interference + Noise Ratio). We can display a map of the CINR using the Map Layers view. Locate the map layer view and double-click the CINR entry:

This displays the following map:

We can also produce statistics for the overall network coverage. The Cover Model for LTE is based on signal quality, so the area covered by the network is limited by the CINR. We will run the Coverage By Site statistic to see how the coverage is distributed across our network. We can do this from the Start Page, by navigating to Analysis > Statistics.

Select the Coverage By Site statistic from the pull-down menu, and then click the Calculate button, as highlighted above. When Overture has finished, the following table will be displayed:

We will be making future comparisons to this result, so we will also click the Set Baseline button:

We will use the Compare to Baseline button later.

Channel Planning

Now that we have carried out a basic analysis of our LTE network, we can optimize the channel plan to improve the CINR and drive up the network coverage. To do this, we need to locate the Parameter Planning page of the Start Page. Instructions on how to reach this can be found here.

We will use this to optimize the channel plan. The Parameter Planning component works with the selected set of Radios in this instance we want to optimize everything, and so we will click the Select All Radios button at the bottom of the page, but if want to learn more about different ways to make selections, see the instructions here.

Ensure that the LTE Layer Optimizer is selected in the pull-down list, then click the Start button to begin the optimization process. When the optimization completes, you will see a table of the changes that were made:

We can now evaluate the new channel plan. The CINR map now looks like this:

Improvements can be seen around the cluster of sites in bottom left corner:

Before	After

We can also examine the improvements in the overall coverage statistics. Return to the Statistics page, select the Coverage By Site and then click the Compare to Baseline button:

Improving the CINR through optimizing the channel plan has improved the overall coverage by around 5 km².

Parameter Planning

Having improved the channel plan, we can now go on to plan N1CellID and N2CellID parameters. We will concentrate on the N1CellID; but the process for N2CellID is very similar. As before, we will first examine the performance of the network before applying optimization.

One way to visualize interference in the N2CellID layer is to look at the Resource Reuse Distance. The N2CellID reuse distance for a particular radio is the distance to the closest radio with the same N2CellID setting. We can generate a table of reuse distance by radio from the Analysis > Layer Models > Browse > N2CellID Layer > Resource Reuse menu option. This produces the following table:

Click on the Distance column to sort the table by the distance values as above. This table shows the smallest N2CellID reuse distance for every radio in the network. A N2CellID clash occurs when the two radios have the same channel and the same N2CellID value. As every radio currently has a N2CellID value of 0, there are quite a few clashes between nearby radios.

We will now plan the N2CellID values to improve these reuse distances. Broadly speaking, the better the N2CellID plan, the larger the overall reuse distances will be. Return to the Parameter Planning page and ensure that the N2CellID Layer Optimizer component is selected:

Then click the Start button to run the N2CellID optimizer. When it completes, rerun the N2CellID Reuse report as before:

The N2CellID reuse distances are now generally much smaller throughout the network:

We have now planned the N2CellID values for our network. We can process the N1CellID values in much the same manner.

Conclusion

This tutorial has shown you how to use the Parameter Planning functions of the Parameter Optimization to automatically and easily optimize the various electronic parameters of your LTE network.