ProVision Communications
The Wireless Video Company
New WiMAX Planning Tools Put ProPhecy Ahead of the Pack
01 February 2007
ProVision Communications has enhanced the industry leading WiMAX network planning tool, ProPhecyTM, with additional tools. These enhancements, which include base station siting, automatic CPE alignment, and support for sectorised and multi-element antennas, will bring immediate benefits to WiMAX operators seeking to deploy the most cost effective networks.
The ProPhecyTM prediction engine has already set the industry benchmark as the most accurate WiMAX network planning tool currently available, offering full 3D planning at resolutions of less than 5 metres. Today’s announcement further confirms ProVision’s leading position in this rapidly expanding global market. “With the release of these new tools for our ProPhecyTM WiMAX planning services, ProVision Communications is now well positioned to exploit large scale commercial WiMAX network deployments in densely congested urban as well as rural environments, and on a global scale”, said Dr. Nicolas Lodge, CEO of ProVision Communications.
ProVision’s propagation prediction engine has been specifically adapted for WiMAX network planning and models both high building density urban environments and less dense rural environments equally well. These very accurate prediction tools model both rooftop CPEs (IEEE 802.16d) and street-level CPE (IEEE 802.16e) deployments, and scale to enable complete analysis of areas up to 50km x 50km in full 3D, and at resolutions of less than 5 metres.
The new toolset includes a site location tool which considers both technical performance criteria as well as economic factors to optimise the number and locations of base stations (BSs), hence eliminating the guesswork from BS planning. Other enhancements/tools include automatic CPE alignment to best sector/BS using spatial diversity information, frequency planning, and support for sectorised and multi-element antennas (MIMO) in point-to-multipoint and mesh configurations.
The ProPhecyTM prediction engine utilizes the latest low-cost LIDAR geographic data for terrain, building, foliage, and ground-usage. A unique feature of ProVision’s ProPhecyTM engine is the detailed modelling of both the BS and CPE antenna field patterns in full 3D space, allowing for arbitrary complex antenna patterns, antenna orientations (including downtilt and sectorisation), and polarisation states to be supported for both the BS and CPE antennas. The modelling tool supports full 3D off-axis terrain scatter and diffraction, multiple building scatter, rooftop and corner diffraction, plus combinations of off-axis diffracted and scattered paths. ProPhecyTM accounts for signal attenuation due to foliage (trees and hedges), which is critical in the planning of networks especially in the 3.5 GHz and 5.8 GHz bands.
The complete set of new tools is available now in ProVision’s ProPhecyTM planning suite, making it one of the most advanced and cost effective network planning tools currently available, for accurately modelling, planning and deploying WiMAX 802.16d and 802.16e networks.