Hi Experts,
What are the best practices to follow when doing a Capacity Planning for network?
Should we consider the number of users (RRC connected users)?
PRB utilization?
Data volume/throughtput?
Any of above (or all above in a mix)?
Any help will be appreciated…
I am from Erlang_B table era… where we had channels, so it was straight to get the limit to trigger an expansion (new site or new carrier).
Hello @CarlosFuente , the sequence generally advisable is:
The process is somehow easy to define… but a lot of inputs can drive final result.
For example, one key point is to define the HMM. For example, take different HMM for each cell can lead to differences considering the Physical Sector.
Imagine a site, with several layers (for example several LTE bands 1800, 700000) … and for different technologies (3G, 2G…).
Should the “meet criteria” be for individual cell, or physical sector (the azimuth direction grouping all cells belonging to same physical sector)?
Dear Colleagues,
Does anybody knows what 5G cell capacity or spectrum efficiency (3.5 GHz, 100 MHz BW) we can expect for different products like 64T64R, 32T32R and 8T8R in urban, suburban and rural environment?
If someone do simulations, or have access to some vendor simulation, please give some hints here. Thanks in advance!
This can help for LTE Capacity Dimensioning:
https://lte-fdd-capacity-dimensioning.readthedocs.io/en/main/ltefdddimensioning/
Usually in mature LTE networks PRB utilization is mostly >70-80% ( in my network)
So we usually check RRC connected users on hourly basis
if you have more then 1 band then you can go for load balancing first to same site or adjust HO parameters ( cio, A2 etc.) to share load with neighbors
If that doesn’t work then go for the capacity sites
To plan such sites you can consider:
Majorly Avg. RRC Connected users (hourly),
Low dl th put (make sure that site low thp due to traffic and not by any other reason)
Hope this helps 
Probably the easiest approach is to consider the proportion of number of RRC Users (hourly) to “Desired” Maximum Number of RRC Users for given BW. Let’s say you decide that your 20M cell shouldn’t have more than 300 users at BH, - so 300 would be your magic number “Max RRC” for proportion. 10M cell may be half of it, etc. If at BH this proportion gives you percentage above certain threshold (let’s say 80%), your cell needs an expansion. Just tune these numbers for your desired user experience (like THP). PRB and THP are nice to consider as well, but these may have bad values due to number of reasons and not just high traffic.
Regards
