ration RADIO NETWORK PLANNING AND OPTIMISATION 2.2.3 Dimensioning The dimensioning exercise is to identify the equipment and the network type (i.e. technology employed) required in order to cater for the coverage and quality requirements, apart from seeing that capacity needs are fulfilled for the next few years (generally 3-5 years). The more accurate the dimensioning is, the more efficient will be network rollout. In practice, network rollout very closely follows the output of network dimensioning/planning. For an efficient network rollout, the equipment has to be ordered well before the planning starts (i.e. after dimensioning), as the equipment orders are placed based on the dimensioning results. Planning engineers should try to do very realistic/accurate dimensioning for each cell site. The inputs that are required for the dimensioning excercise include: the geographical area to be covered the estimated traffic in each region minimum requirements of power in each region and blocking criteria path loss the frequency band to be used and frequency re-use. With the above parameters, the radio planner can predict the number of base stations that will be required for coverage in the specified area to meet the individual quality targets, and to meet the expected increase in traffic in the next few years. 2.3 RADIO NETWORK PRE-PLANNING Although, in a real scenario, network dimensioning and pre-planning go hand in hand, they have been separated in this chapter for the ease of understanding. Pre-planning can be considered to be the next stage after dimensioning and it is at this stage that some concrete plans related to coverage, capacity and quality are made. The major target of the radio planner is to increase the coverage area of a cell and decrease the amount of equipment needed in the network, SO obtaining the maximum coverage at minimum cost. Maximum coverage means that the mobile is connected to a given cell at a maximum possible distance. This is possible if there is a minimum signal to noise ratio at both the