The RACE PLATON project-planning tools for third generation mobile systems

Describes the intentions and the first year´s achievements of the RACE PLATON project. This is a three year collaborative project under the EC RACE scheme, aimed at producing advanced planning methods and tools for the third generation mobile system UMTS. One of the critical issues in the current era of mobile communications is the planning and implementation of advanced networks. The project addresses this requirement-to be able to plan and implement networks both effectively and efficiently. The project described will lead to methods which are fundamentally more advanced in that they allow the user to define the service, quality and traffic requirements, and then most of the cell planning task will be carried out automatically. They will therefore form a set of synthesis tools. The planning tools will be able to produce a number of outputs, including the location of base stations, the optimum cell shapes and the frequency management parameters