Method and apparatus for modeling a smart antenna in a network planning tool

摘要

A network planning tool (NPT) computer program is used to model characteristics of a wireless telephone network (10). The network contains a plurality of cells (12) which each include a plurality of sectors (16-18) disposed about a base station (13) that has a respective antenna for each sector. Techniques are provided for modeling smart antennas (131), including use of a switched-beam transmit and receive patterns with approximately random allocation among the beams of frequencies assigned to an associated sector. In the case of an adaptive beam-forming smart antenna, power levels for that antenna and a remote antenna operating at the same frequency are adjusted so as to increase a differential therebetween by an improvement value associated with the smart antenna. Potential uplink interference at a given base station is modeled by simulating operation of other base stations at an uplink frequency with a reduced power level. Potential interfering signals are discounted to the extent a smart antenna can intelligently reject a limited number of undesired signals.