Revisiting the Optimal Partitioning of Zones in Next Generation Cellular Networks: A Network Capacity Impact Perspective

Abstract

While the problem of optimal cell-site partitioning has been primarily studied from the perspective of scarce radio resources in the access network, recent field measurements have shown significant impact of paging load on the core signaling subsystem capacity. In this paper, we revisit the problem of optimal zone partitioning, identifying factors affecting partitioning cost at the core switch. We develop a general integer programming formulation for joint optimization of two key issues: (i) assignment of cells to a base station controller and controllers to the core signaling subsystem, (ii) optimal partitioning of zones at the access and network levels. Given the exponential nature of the location planning problem, we develop a genetic algorithm based approach for solving the general zone partitioning and configuration problem, both for incumbent and greenfield networks. Our results demonstrate significant cost and performance benefits at the network level for next generation converged services.