This document is intended for radio-planner, technical director, project manager, consultant to be aware of the important goals to pursue when planning a DVB-H network. It focuses not only on macro-scale DVB-H planning and its analysis on the geo-marketing point of view, but also provides methodologies for deep-indoor network densification, at the address level. The suggested methodologies are divided into three topics:

• Defining the coverage model
• Enhancing the business model according to technical inputs
• Analyzing the impact of the integration of a DVB-H service in the existing spectrum, as well as checking the COFDM interference areas for SFN networks.

Coverage Aspects

ICS telecom manages cartographic layers necessary for:

• The computation of the coverage.
• The display of the coverage.
• The analysis of the coverage.

Technical parameters of the sites

ICS telecom manages radiation patterns in the horizontal and the vertical plane. They can be manually configured, imported from an equipment database or calculated using the positions and the technical parameters of each panel they are made with (HRP, VRP, V Phase, H Phase…) using Antios©.

Propagation models and planning thresholds

ICS telecom offers a flexible interface for the selection of the propagation model to be used. The choice of the propagation model is made among :

• deterministic models (Fresnel method + ITU-R 526 diffraction and multipath effects for instance);
• empirical models (COST 231 for instance) :
• coordination/regulation models (ITU-R 1546 for instance) :

Coverage Analysis

ICS telecom features exhaustive functionalities in order to display and analyze the coverage result.

Composite coverage of a DVB-H SFN network for an in-car mobile receiver

Best Server coverage of a DVB-H SFN network for an indoor mobile receiver

Population Analysis

ICS telecom can also be used in order perform a geo-marketing analysis of the population covered according to a given class of receiver.

Post-code map in ICS Telecom

Spectrum Aspects

The Multi-Frequency Network technique can be used if :

• the DVB-H network is in MFN mode;
• the DVB-H network is made of several SFNs, in that case, two sites belonging to the same SFN area not interfering one another (they share the same network ID in ICS telecom) :

Conclusion

ICS telecom features dedicated functionalities for an exhaustive DVB-H radio-planning:

• Coverage aspects
• Convergence aspects : Import or calculation of the back-channel coverage based for instance on the cellular infrastructure
• Spectrum aspects

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