The objective of this project was to build a new cellular tower to enhance indoor/outdoor coverage and to alleviate traffic by introducing new 1.9GHz and 2.5GHz carriers to the area thereby improving capacity and to provide new high speed data services. As always, the project identifiers in this posting have been censored and this abstract serves simply to give a very brief overview of my involvement. I was designated the prime RF designer for this project from start to finish.

The area of concern resided in the downtown core where customer complaints were generated. Based on drive test data and computer simulation of the radio environment, I had devised the search ring for a new cellular site candidate. The leasing specialist was delegated to the project to find a candidate within the parameters of the search ring. Consequently, there were numerous locations found but had deviated away from the search ring. Further computer simulation of alternate locations were performed and compromises were documented and presented to Planning for concurrence.

Once approved, I had reviewed the project for RF qualification at which preliminary cellular and tower loading requirements were specified with design margins included to account for future changes to project scope or cellular technology. The leasing agent acquired the site and included provisions as per requirements in the RF qualification. At this stage, the acquisition phase had completed and awaited funding for build. Eventually funding was allocated (much) later and I had completed the RF design with some minor changes to the originally qualified cellular and tower loading because of changes to cellular technology. Recall that all of such changes were already accommodated in the RF qualification and thus there was no reason for the lease agreement to be revised. Construction finally finished and I had coordinated and monitored site integration in real-time with the field technician and validated performance according to our RF commissioning requirements. The system had passed all functional requirements and was accepted. It is currently in service.