Cell capacity engineering methods in multilayered cellular networks with application to GSM 900/1800 dual band operation

Sufficiently accurate traffic dimensioning of the air interface in cellular mobile networks is a major concern to any network operator in achieving acceptable quality and cost requirements, given specified levels of grade of service. In the wired network, for specific assumptions on the statistical distribution of voice call arrivals, Erlang B and two-moment approximations are commonly used tools for traffic analysis and dimensioning. Recent studies on traffic measurements, conducted on live mobile networks reveal that similar assumptions hold equally well for voice traffic in cellular mobile networks. We report in this paper on approximative computation methods to cell capacity, in particular with the introduction of dual-band GSM 900/1800 operation. Numerical results are compared with exact calculations.