Method for planning a cellular mobile telecommunications network

A method for planning a cellular mobile telecommunications network comprising at least one network cell and intended to provide at least one network service to a plurality of user equipment located in said network cell, comprising:

• a) initializing, for the at least one network cell, a service area and a transmission power for each user equipment, the service area comprising a plurality of pixels, each pixel being assigned a network cell as its serving cell;
• b) estimating a total power received by each network cell from the plurality of user equipment located in the plurality of pixels using the corresponding network cell as the serving cell and using the at least one network service;
• c) based on the estimated total received power, determining the transmission powers required by the at least one network cell from the user equipment located in each pixel of the service area in order to update the serving cell of the corresponding pixel with a network cell, among the at least one network cell, that requires minimum transmission power;
• d) iterating said steps b) and c) until a stability condition is reached wherein a variation in the transmission power required by at least one pixel is lower than a predetermined threshold;
• e) calculating a total received power corresponding to the transmission powers at the end of step d);
• (f) ascertaining whether the total received power is lower than a maximum received power, and, in the negative case:
• g) restricting said service area;
• and
• h) repeating said steps from b) to g) for said restricted service area.