How to perform a radio base station site survey

Site Survey: For a any radio network either it’s WCDMA, UMTS, GSM, Wifi, LTE  or any wireless network; survey is a usual, periodic and mandatory task for all operation and planning engineers. For different types of technical aspect, we run different types of survey.

GSM radio base station service status

 

Radio base station survey may be classified into two type’s one is general objective survey or technical site survey and another is highly objective survey.

Different types of highly objective radio base station survey are given bellow:

•         Base station subsystem survey (BSS survey)

•         Radio Frequency survey (RF Survey).

•         Transmission Survey (Like LOS survey, link budget survey).

GSM Radio Base station

•        Key performance indicator survey (KPI survey).

 

Also sometimes we conduct multipurpose survey at a time, let us consider we need to know existing RF (Radio Frequency) status and Key performance status at a time, hence we need to conduct a RF survey (Radio Frequency survey)  and Key performance indicator survey (KPI survey) simultaneously.

Technical Site Survey (TSS):

For every survey few data’s are common, such as coordinate of a site, address, site access road, terrain graph etc. In a technical site survey or TSS survey we need to collect almost all types of data (Physical or logical), so that we can represent this data in various graphical presentation formats.

For a Technical site survey you need to collect following data:

• Site Name: Please include a site name, an example is “Halishohor R/A,”

• Site ID: Please include a site id, an example is “CTG_X_1008”

• Address: Please include a site address; an example is “House No-105, Road-06, Block-H, Halishohor, and Chittagong- 1492.”

• Coordinates: An example is “22.3358N, 91.8131 E”

“Please include google map screen print with coordinate, an example is given bellow”

GSM radio Base station google view

• Site Type: Green Field Tower/Roof Top Tower/ Roof Top Pole..

• Equipment room type: Indoor/Outdoor.

            "If Green field you should collect tower height or If Roof top pole you should collect building height and pole height."

• Access road condition: Normal/ No car access/ Narrow Path (walk only)

"Please include an access road photos, an example is given bellow"

GSM radio base station access road condition

• Building Height: 15.5m

• Tower Height: 18m

• Total height: 33.5m 

"Please include a photo of tower with the building, an example is given bellow"

Roof top GSM radio base station

• Total area of roof top: 14m X18m

• Availability of commercial power: Yes/ No

"If yes please specify the operator name and nearest office address"

• Site Layout: 

"Please draw the outdoor site layout in two dimensional (2D) formats “AutoCAD is the perfect tool for drawing layout."

GSM radio base station Site diagram or layout

In TSS survey also include the Base station subsystem survey (BSS survey) data, Radio Frequency survey (RF survey) data, key performance indicator survey (KPI survey) data etc. You need not to include all the BSS of highly objective survey data, but most common data should be included, such as from BSS survey includes the flowing data:

•         Total length of AC power cable.

•         Total Length of DC power cable.

•         Total length of AC grounding cable.

•         Total length of DC grounding cable.

•         Required Number of mounting pole or bracket for antenna.

•         Required number of grounding bar or bus bar.

•         Aviation light status.

“Please include a cabling and latching photos with TSS survey report, an example is given bellow”

GSM radio base station feeder cable latching

From Radio Frequency (RF survey) survey part; include the flowing data:

•   Antenna Height. 
•  Cell azimuth or orientation. 
•   RF Cable type: CPRI cable/Feeder cable.

“CPRI means for common protocol radio interface”

•  CPRI cable/Feeder cable length.

•     Link budget information.

•    Obstacle information.

"Please check the bellow diagram for obstacle information." 

GSM radio base station Obstacle graph

•  Antennas transmit power.

From Transmission Survey please include the flowing data:

•         Types of transmission: OpticalTransmission/Ethernet/Microwave (MW)

If Microwave please specifies number of Microwave antenna, number of Indoor Unit (IDU), If Optical Transmission also specifies device type, vendor name, model and maximum capacity.

•         Existing Microwave (MW) information including diameter.

•         Microwave (MW) far ends site ID and Site Name.

Please include the transmission topology photos.

Microwave Transmission topology for GSM radio base station

• ·        Free spaces available for installation of new Microwave?

"Answer should be -Yes or No"

From The Key performance indicator survey (KPI survey); please include the flowing data:

•        Total Traffic: Total Traffic should be calculated in “Erlang” 
• Site availability: Total on-air time in a observation period.

•      Major KPI values such as call setup success rate (CSSR), dropped call Rate (CDR), Equipment utilization Factor (EUF), Handover Success rate (HOSR) etc.

•         Average KPI score for the site:

"Please check the Histogram of last ten days KPI score"

GSM radio base station day_1 to day_10 average KPI values

List of tools and Software for radio base station site survey:

•  Digital Camera.
• Digital or magnetic compass.
• 50m measuring tape.
• Tilting meter.
• Digital multimeter.
• Google earth (Software)
• Mapinfo professional (Software).
• Microsoft Excel.
• Base station rigging safety tools.
• TEMS investigation (Software).
• Digital or analog inclinometer etc.