A Joint Optimization of Antenna Parameters in a Cellular Network Using Taguchi's Method

One of the primary aims of radio network planning is to place and configure the transmit antennas of the base stations such that the deployment achieves the required quality of service. Long term evolution (LTE) systems are operated with frequency reuse one and, therefore, a proper configuration of the antenna azimuth orientations and tilts is essential to mitigate the inter-cell interference. Various algorithms have been proposed to adjust these two antenna parameters, but only a few are exploiting the mutual dependencies that exist between them. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm based on Taguchi's method that jointly optimizes the antenna azimuth orientations and tilts. LTE downlink simulations show that the joint optimization of the two antenna parameters outperforms the independent optimization methods. Moreover, the joint optimization reduces the computational complexity by a factor of two.