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European Journal of Applied Sciences (EJAS) Vol. 10, Issue 3, June-2022

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

performance and quality of service areas in the network. Then following

optimization techniques proposed, how defined solutions and strategies can be

applied to improve performance of these areas based on current network

configurations.

Key Word: Drive test; e-learning, Network optimization; LTE; Quality of service.

INTRODUCTION

Radio Frequency planning is the first step to be done for the deployment of a new network or

for a network expansion and this is done by specialized software. And after the deployment

phase, the network has to be tested to ensure the guaranteed theoretical network performance.

Also, for a real-time view of the RF environment, RF engineers have to move around the

network coverage areas to study the QOS, evaluate the coverage, check the data speed and so

one. Therefore network planning and deployment is not enough before commercialization,

network optimization is necessary and is a key phase for the whole deployment and integration

process. For this reason, Drive Tests (DT) are carried and their analysis made to detect areas

with poor coverage and performance which result in poor subscriber QOS. Generally, DTs are

performed by equipment vendors for their corresponding mobile operators and only the

results of the analysis are provided to operators, which limit the operators’ views and

understandings of the real-time network. This practice is especially common in African country

and especially in Cameroon. Thus, in this regards, the purpose of this paper is to provide a web

based tool that can be used by operators to directly analyze their DT data, providing them with

more insight and maneuverability during analysis of this DT data and consequently better

optimization techniques and solutions.

In addition to network optimization which is the basic purpose of any DT and its analysis tool,

this study also has purposes which could be categorized as below, by understanding this

purpose, the problems solved by the study and analysis tool developed are also understood.

These categories include;

A. Corporate: Generally, DT are performed by vendors on operators’ networks for

network maintenance and optimization when necessary and reports are provided to the

latter which sometimes do not provide satisfaction. The software used for this analysis

is a proprietary one and the cost is sometimes high. Also vendors tend to offer

optimization services to operators at very high prices with high Drive Test cost. In this

study we aim at providing a tool locally which can be used directly by operators to study

and analyze their drive test based on drive test raw data and permit operators to save

CAPEX because every DT analysis requested by the operator is charged by the vendor.

Thus reducing operators’ capital expenditure and operational expenditure.

B. Academic: In telecommunication engineering schools in Cameroon as in many African

countries, we lack laboratory resources and this tool could be used as a good basis for

telecom laboratory introductions to engineering students in this field. It can then be

used for teaching purpose, to teach to students what is drive test, drive test raw data,

how drive test data are processed and what is drive test data processing software. With

the apparition of Corona virus 19 which has obliged governments to order social

restrictions and confinement, and the implementation of e-learning to support

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Deussom Djomadji, E. M., Kabiena Ivan, B., & Chiegue Tchuinmogne, H. Y. (2022). Web based 4G Drive Tests Post Processing Software for

Educational and Enterprise Purpose. European Journal of Applied Sciences, 10(3). 231-257.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/aivp.103.12348

education system, the tool proposed here can be very helpful to implement e-learning

solution and e-laboratory with a very low cost as proposed by authors in [1] [2][3].

In this paper, we won’t focus again on presenting the advantages of e-learning and the usage of

web based solutions to enable e-learning, we will mostly focus on the presentation of the

proposed tool and its characteristics. The next part of the paper will be organized as follows,

we will present the context in section 2, then the method used to build the tool in section 3, and

in section 4 we will present the results obtained and we will end with a conclusion.

CONTEXT

LTE Radio Network Planning & Deployment

The major objective of LTE radio network planning is to give a cost effective solution for RAN

deployment specially in terms of coverage, capacity and quality which entails optimizing Base

Station number and deployment location, antenna type determination, Tx / Rx power and

propagation environment characteristics. The RAN planning can be divided into the following

3 steps; [4] Nominal Planning (Dimensioning), Detailed Planning and Deployment as depicted in

the detailed flow chart below proposed by Huawei:

Figure 1 - LTE RNP Overview [5]

The process of LTE Dimensioning is to estimate the lower bound number of NEs and the

configurations required for the network to provide a sufficiently high QOS. LTE Dimensioning

can be separated into 4 different steps according to [5] including: Coverage, Capacity, Active

User and X2&S1 Dimensioning. Its flow can be shown as below.