Cellular commuications: cell size?

Question

In a practical real-world situation what must be done to change the cell size (i.e. the area where the base station is said to provide coverage) from a larger to a smaller one?

Answer 1

When the capacity increase, there is a need to provide services in a small area with high number of subscribers. There are some methods to change cell size. They are: cell splitting which splits cells to smaller cells to add more channels in smaller cell. Other popular method is cell sectoring. Unlike the cell splitting, this technique uses directional antenna. Depending on the needs, the methods are flexible and sometimes need combination of methods.

Answer 2

RS has some good advice but.............Generally it's not the coverage that is the problem it's capacity. As the subscriber list or geographic location becomes greater I need more channels to accomadate the increased loading. Therefore we commonly are adding channels to the more popular cell sites and monitoring the less used to balance the channels the FCC gives us.

Answer 3

Basically, the larger coverage, the better it is.
And the cell is specific to one distance, eg. 5 km.
So, the possible thing is because of interference of other BTS/frequency, but this is so rare, because there is some government rule that need to fulfil.

Answer 4

Cell towers can be oriented for optimal coverage to certain directions. Also towers can be higher or lower depending on the area of coverage required. Generally, towers are taller in rural areas and shorter in urban areas. You don't just make them tall in higher traffic areas because a tower can only handle so many calls at one time.

Answer 5

Information is below.