Impact of antenna downtilting on network performance in GERAN systems

Antenna downtilting is often mentioned in the literature as a powerful method for improving network performance in cellular systems. The antenna elevation angle on a number of GSM EDGE radio access network (GERAN) cells has been modified to quantify the impact of this method in a real network. In addition, a novel approach to prioritizing the cells to be tilted, which uses network statistics only, has been tested. Trial results indicate that downtilting can improve certain performance aspects, especially those related to signal quality, but not all of them on every cell.