The automatic neighbouring calculation allows the user to carry out an automatic neighbor assignment for each of the sectors of the multi-transmitter coverage study. Additionally, as a result of the calculation, the amount of coverage of the reference cell overlapping with the neighboring cell and the area of ​​the reference cell in which the neighboring cell is the best server or second best server are also obtained.

Selecting the corresponding option in the action panel of the multi-transmitter coverage will open a calculation configuration window in which the user can configure the following parameters:

•Maximum distance. Number of kilometers between the reference cell and the possible neighboring cells belonging to other base stations.

•Maximum number of neighbors. It can be specified in this configuration window for all cells or in the neighborhood table, where the maximum number of neighbors for each cell will be specified.

•Coverage parameters. Coverage conditions that the cells must meet to be considered as neighbors. The parameters to configure are:

oMinimum RSRP: Minimum value of RSRP (Reference Signal Received Power) that will be taken into account to consider a cell as a neighbor. The default value provided by Xirio will match the default reception threshold value according to the selected service.

oRSRP Margin: Margin with respect to the signal level of the best server of the reference cell in which the handover process ends. The higher this margin, the larger the resulting list of neighbors. The neighbors will be searched in the area between the best server coverage and the RSRP margin.

oMinimum percentage of overlapping: Minimum area that the coverage of a possible neighbor must overlap with the coverage area of ​​the reference cell.

Once the above parameters have been configured, the user can select one or more of the following calculation options:

•Force sectors of the same base station as the reference cell as neighbors.

•Force adjacent cells. A cell will be considered adjacent if:

oAt least one pixel of the reference cell coverage matches one pixel of the best server coverage of the possible neighboring cell.

oThe possible neighboring cell is the second best server, respecting the handover margin.

•Force symmetric neighborhoods. Makes a neighborhood relationship reciprocal. A reference cell will be a neighbor of all its neighbors. If the list of any of the cells is complete, the reference cell will not be included as a neighbor and the first cell will be removed from the neighbor list of the reference cell.

•Remove existing neighborhoods. If this option is not clicked, the new calculated neighborhoods will be added to the existing ones.

Finally, the configuration window includes a list with the sectors contained in the multi-transmitter coverage study so that the user can select which sectors will be taken into account to perform the neighbor calculation.

NEIGHBOURING CALCULATION RESULT

The result of the automatic neighbouring calculation consists of a summary table with all the calculated neighborships (see next figure). Each sector of the study will have several rows within the table depending on the number of neighboring cells it has.

Each row of the table will be composed of several columns indicating:

•The current sector.

•The cell that is neighboring the sector.

•An identifying number of the neighbor.

•The existing neighborship relationship between the two: same base station (co-site), adjacency, symmetry or coverage.

•An indicator of whether it is an existing neighborhood in the table before dumping the result of the automated calculation (allows to calculate neighborhoods in parts).

•The overlapping value that indicates the amount of coverage of the reference cell overlapped with the neighboring cell (in square kilometers and in percent).

•The adjacency value that indicates the area of ​​the reference cell (in square kilometers and in percent) in which the neighboring cell is the best server or second best server

NEIGHBOURING ASSIGNMENT TABLE

Once the automatic calculation of neighbors has been carried out and the corresponding result has been dumped through the option "Update the neighbor assignment table" in the action panel, the user can access the neighbor assignment table by clicking the icon available at the top of the section "Network coverage" within the multitransmitter coverage parameters (the table will be displayed automatically once the result dump is finished). This table, which can also be created manually, allows modifying the different fields mentioned in the previous point.

In addition, the user will also be able to export and import the neighbor configuration to a file in Microsoft Excel format that will contain the same fields as those shown in the table.