HSDPA Measurements for Indoor DAS

The target of the paper is to study performance of HSDPA in indoor environment, and to provide guidelines for HSDPA coverage and capacity planning and antenna configurations selection. Field measurements with a HSDPA data card, field measurement software, and a fully functional HSDPA enabled UMTS network were performed. Indoor corridor environment was used to study the impact of different distributed antenna configurations on a HSDPA performance. In addition, pico cell configuration is compared to corresponding distributed antenna configuration, and the effect of coverage limitations on HSDPA capacity is studied. The results show, that ensuring sufficient coverage is the key factor in planning HSDPA indoor network. Signal quality can be enhanced by increasing the number of antennas in DAS, which is also visible as improved capacity. Better signal level can be achieved by pico base stations, but taking benefit of added capacity is problematic. The measurement results show that distributed antenna configuration provides better performance compared to pico cells. As a conclusion, adequate coverage planning plays an important role in planning indoor networks for HSDPA, and some additional capacity can be gained by antenna configuration optimization.