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 RF Planning functions of the Parameter Optimization module to optimize various parameters of the Sectors in your 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.

Benchmarking The Initial Design

We are now ready to examine the performance of the network before optimization. In this tutorial we will assume that we would like to increase the area cover of our network, but you can easily adjust the Objective to target subscribers or other KPIs should you wish to do so.

We will start by examining the coverage for each site. 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.

Optimization Settings

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

We first need to decide which properties we want the optimizer to explore. Click the Edit Optimizable Parameters button to display the optimizable parameter collection editor:

In this tutorial we will assume that we want to tune azimuths, so double-click the Azimuth entry to select it, then click OK.

We now need to set up the range of azimuth values to try for each sector. The RF Planning component uses the various Range properties of the Sector and Radio entities to decide which values should be tried during optimization. The Default Template sets up each sector with an Azimuth Range property set to [0°, 10°, 20°, ... 360°]. We can easily adjust this using the RF Planning page; scroll down the page and then expand the "Set Relative Azimuth Ranges" section:

We will use the default values, so click the Set Relative Azimuth Range button to set the Azimuth Range properties of all sectors to be +/-30° about the sector's current Azimuth value in steps of 10°.

We are now ready to run the parameter optimizer. The optimizer makes changes to the selected sites, so we now must choose which sites we wish to optimize. We will select three sites from in the middle of the network directly from the map; but you can learn more about different ways to make selections in this tutorial.

Hold down the Shift key and then drag the selection rectangle over the three sites in the middle of the network as below:

This selects the sites MCD005318, MCD005434, and PSA011080.

Now return to the RF Planning page and click the Start button to begin the optimization process. The RF planning component will now start to make changes to these sites. The Event Log reports the current progress, including any improvements found:

When the optimization completes, two tables are produced. The first lists all the azimuth changes applied to the selected sites:

The second displays the improvement to the area cover:

Now return to the Statistics page, select the "Coverage By Site" statistic and click on the Compare to Baseline. This will show us the impact of the changes on the rest of the network:

The table above has been sorted by increase in area covered; the sites we selected for optimization (MCD005318, MCD005434, and PSA011080) are the top three entries. We can also see that the optimization process has had little impact on the rest of the network.

Conclusion

This tutorial has shown you how to use the RF Planning functions of the Parameter Optimization module to automatically tune the physical properties of the sector and radios in your network.