Combining PHY experimental results and advanced network planning tool for accurate coverage estimation

LTE and LTE-Advanced have introduced complex system features to improve system capacity. Although exhaustively simulated, it often happens that the simulated capacity figures differ from the actual performance seen in the field. This paper explores the combination of real measurements from LTE devices and realistic propagation models to generate coverage maps that are truly representative of radio performance. The paper illustrates the proposed methodology by forecasting the gain of inter-cell interference mitigation implemented in a UE device.