Trading coverage for capacity in cellular systems

Abstract

It has long been recognized that cellular (or PCS) radio systems have two limiting conditions: a "coverage" limit where thermal noise in the receivers determine the maximum supportable range between a "base station" and a "user", and a "Capacity" limit where mutual interference between users reduces the coverage limited range to some minimal acceptable value. A procedure is described that first evaluates the coverage of an unloaded cellular system, and then as a function of an ever increasing load, evaluates how the coverage is reduced. The procedure is applicable to FDMA, TDMA, and CDMA technologies.