US 8,805,433 B2Granted

System and method for point to multipoint radio survey

AssigneeSteven Ali Al-Shalash

InventorSteven Ali Al-Shalash

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Abstract

A methodology and system for performing radio network coverage surveys of multiple site candidates concurrently using one reserved channel based on reverse path signal strength measurements of a signal from a test mobile station transmitter (100) to a plurality of prospective base station receiver sites (200, 200′, . . . ) over a geographical area is presented. The instantaneous position, time-stamp and power of the Transmitter (101) is recorded and stored as it moves along a test route(s). Stationary Test Receiver(s) (201) tuned to the selected channel at each prospective site location (200, 200′, . . . ) save received instantaneous signal strength and, it's time-stamp so they can matched up to the position of the Test Transmitter (101) and used to ascertain received signal strength at each site. Results can be useful for ascertaining optimum site locations, antenna configurations, propagation model tuning, frequency planning, pilot planning and extraction of signal correlation statistics.

Claims23

Dependent claims

A method for simultaneously performing a radio frequency evaluation survey of multiple base station site candidates, the method comprising:

i) a plurality of stationary receiver units, wherein at least one stationary receiver unit being located at each base station candidate site;
ii) a mobile test transmit unit located in a test vehicle;
iii) transmitting one or more radio test signals from said mobile test unit;
iv) recording a time stamp for each location along the drive route 900 of said test vehicle, the power of said transmitted radio signals, and geographical coordinates of each location;
v) receiving said radio test signals at each of said stationary test receivers, measuring the signal strength of said radio test signals, and recording said signal strength of these measurements along with a time stamp for each measurement;
vi) correlating said recorded signal strength measurements with the location of the mobile test unit for each recorded corresponding time stamp;
vii) calculating the path loss between the location of each base station candidate site, and each location along the drive route 900 visited by said test vehicle during the test survey as the ratio of transmitted and received test signals for the timestamp corresponding to said location;
whereby said path loss information for said base station candidate sites is obtained with a single drive of said test vehicle throughout the desired test area.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.