New ICS Manager, ATDI's new spectrum administration software.		Testimonial Harris optimises it's point to multipoint offerings with ICS Telecom.		Reference Radiocommunications Agency Purchase Site-wide licence.		Technologies Support for TETRA.		New ICS Telecom 3G.

On the road to 3G with ICS Telecom 3G

With ICS Telecom 3G, ATDI is becoming fully involved in the UMTS market.

ICS Telecom 3G has been designed very specifically to meet the concerns of UMTS operators. It is based on a tried and tested technology for more than 10 years and on powerful simulation functions, which have helped make ICS Telecom, ATDI’s premier software from which it is derived, one of the leading tools in the radio communications network planning market.

ATDI has designed and developed ICS Telecom 3G focusing on two main aspects:

• the validation of existing sites.
• the automatic deployment of sites (prospective planning).

ICS Telecom 3G provides validation of existing sites thanks especially to the following functionalities:

• calculation of pilot channel coverage is used to identify areas that are a priori impossible to cover,
• the Ec/Io [Energy per chip over normalized interference] map defines the best server coverage by eliminating areas of interference,
• selection of the best site from n sites in a network thanks to the Ec/Io calculation enables the site least exposed to interference to be adopted.

Site deployment itself is effected thanks to an automatic site search and location module (prospective planning) which is used to dimension the network.

There is also network analysis, thanks to forward Eb/No [Energy per bit over normalized noise] coverage functions, which is used to determine coverable areas according to the traffic carried by stations, the display of reverse Eb/No coverage, i.e. viewing the impact of traffic and power control over the coverage, taking power into account in order to optimize the operation of the network. Finally, ICS Telecom 3G integrates a non-static Monte-Carlo simulation module, a statistical study module for solving the problem of cell contraction (see hereunder).

All of the functions specifically developed for UMTS make ICS Telecom 3G one of the best performing solutions on the market, especially if you consider the powerful functionalities of prospective planning, which very few competing tools are capable of offering.

W-CDMA

In making the transition from 2nd generation (GSM) to 3rd generation (UMTS) mobile telephony, we have changed from TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) technology to CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) technology: in TDMA, users speak on the same frequency but at different times, while in CDMA, they speak all at the same time but are identified by a code.

In theory, this second technology increases call capacity but it presents a major drawback: in the event of too many simultaneous calls, the codes, speech or data may no longer be carried correctly and so be identified by the base station. Communication then becomes impossible. In order to overcome this degradation, the base station will adjust its transmitting power thus creating a variation in coverage of the cell. This causes various fluctuating effects over time; for example, reduction in power restricts the range, in other words, a contraction of the cell, which then can no longer take care of the mobiles farthest from the base station. It must then be taken over by another and it is this that forms part of the difficulties in guaranteeing a good quality of service.

Statistical models like the Monte-Carlo module integrated into ICS Telecom 3G, can be used to deal with this concern.