that have enabled the rampant expansion of mobile telephony during the 1990s continue to expand and are now evolving through the rapid data transmission, to the full video interaction that was the stuff science fiction within the time span of just one generation. These networks are the result of some of the most intense research and development programmes, which have generated tremendously advanced products that constitute the essential building blocks of these networks. The knitting together of these elements into a fully functioning optimised and high quality network that allows the best possible user experience is a technically demanding and complex discipline. As the network planning teams that design and optimise these networks are forever at the leading edge of the technology they are dealing with, there is a strong imperative for them to both fully understand the engineering process itself as well as the technology as it develops. This need stretches across all aspects of the network from the radio access, through the transmission and to the core. It also straddles all the technologies from GSM, through GPRS to the WCDMA networks and beyond to 4G. Ajay R. Mishra is a network planning practitioner. He has spent his career since gradu- ation in this discipline and understands fully the needs of the planning teams. He has used his practical insight to bring together, under one cover, the end to end view of network FOREWORD planning and addressed this across the technologies of GSM, GPRS, EDGE and WCDMA. The book is designed for network planners who are starting their careers in the field and for others who desire an end-to-end understanding. It emphasises the planning process itself and develops the concepts that planners need to get good results. It is not targeted at expert radio planners who want to know more about radio planning, rather it brings to them the benefit of understanding more about core or transmission planning - and likewise for all the planning disciplines. Through this book Ajay has capture