FutureWorks

NSN White paper

February 2014

Optimizing stadium and

special venue networks with
3D modeling

FutureWorks

CONTENTS

1.

Executive summary

2. A growing demand for mobile broadband at

major venues

3. Rapid simulation and accurate modeling

create an effective solution

3.1 Innovative NSN methodology

4.

Field trial at a major US venue

5.

Summary and developments

1. Executive summary
Planning the best radio network for a stadium presents a unique
challenge for operators. The propagation and interference
patterns in crowded stadiums are highly complex, with extreme cell
densities, changing line of site conditions and often, unique
building architectures.
The difficulty of planning is further heightened by restrictions on
the deployment of base stations and antennas because of safety
or aesthetic concerns. In addition, many stadiums use distributed
antenna systems (DAS) installed by a third party.
All this makes it very time consuming and labor intensive to optimize a
stadiums Radio Frequency (RF) plan.
All of these problems are addressed by an innovative Nokia Solutions
and Networks (NSN) solution that allows accurate simulation of
stadium conditions and rapid configuration of a possible network.
The service allows operators to test a large number of what-if
configurations, running into the thousands, to determine the best
cost-performance benefit for the stadium.
The NSN solution uses a full system simulation to evaluate many
design alternatives before construction of the antenna system starts.
Based on a detailed 3D model of the stadium, the solution simulates
downlink, uplink and control channels, packet scheduling behaviors
and an accurate interference environment. The 3D model is configured
to each specific venue, providing the expected signal propagation
conditions from an antenna to a specific seat.
A recent trial of the method was carried out for one major operator
at a leading US venue. The trial was broken down into three phases:
model generation and validation, optimization of the stadium (of the
existing configuration), and a second what-if phase of optimization
where significant redesign was contemplated.
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This pilot study showed that the modeling method is accurate. It

also resulted in key lessons that will help make the stadium system
more efficient.
Although the modeling solution has been designed for stadiums, it
is likely to find future application for other types of venue, such as
airports and shopping malls.

2. A growing demand for mobile

broadband at major venues
Stadiums present a very specific and tricky challenge to operators
seeking to provide excellent coverage at major sports and cultural
events. With people eager to share their experiences of the event,
many will be uploading more data than usual from their mobile devices
as they seek to update their social networking sites with images from
the event.
As well as ensuring they can deliver the high capacity and high traffic
throughput required, operators face profound planning complexity
because of the architecture of stadiums themselves, which present
major propagation challenges. Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS)
typically employed in stadiums contain up to eight antennas per cell,
requiring special expertise and tools. Remote antennas also often
have varying cable lengths and are located in constrained locations
that are difficult to reach to alter manually.
Stadium networks are typified by very high cell densities, frequently
having 25 cells per stadium, equating to a density of 500 cells per km2
(compared to 5-10 per km2 in a dense urban center). There is also
often a very high user density - 30,000 subscribers in a stadium is the
equivalent of two million subscribers per km2.
Together with a very unbalanced loading and usage profile, stadiums
also have a unique propagation environment, including challenging
line of sight conditions and a complex body loss model due to their
often singular design. As such, they present a very high interference
environment. They also demand a large capital investment to install
a stadium network and offer little control over deployment options
due to the involvement of many operators. Venue aesthetics or safety
constraints further restrict deployment options.
LTE runs on a single frequency which means that simply adding more
base stations to increase capacity can create areas with very high
interference and essentially zero user throughput. This can also cause
overload conditions in which the system becomes unstable. Antennas
are typically down-tilted to minimize interference. But in a multitier stadium the interference flows down the levels and can cause
inadequate performance for lower down the arena, with the result
that people in expensive seats, often an operators most valuable
customers, get the worst performance.
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The net result of these conditions is that stadium LTE systems do not
perform as expected and demanded. Furthermore, using distributed
antenna systems (DAS) makes the situation even more complicated.
Poor coverage, high call drop rates and handover failures, excessive
demotion and control channel overload all lead to attachment
failures and a subsequent poor experience for consumers in a place
where they expect to receive a good service. Even worse, large
stadiums often host high-profile events in the public spotlight; poor
network performance could quickly lead to a brand-damaging loss of
reputation for an operator.
Optimizing the RF in stadiums and special venues has therefore
become a difficult and time consuming, yet vital, process for
operators. Operators are poorly served by current network
optimization tools when faced with the unique challenges of stadiums.
Many of the planning tools available to the system engineer do not
adequately assess trade-offs between Carrier-to-Interferenceplus-Noise-Ratios (CINR), coverage, and capacity, especially in the
uplink. Current RF-only tools fail to effectively plan well-performing
systems and diagnose existing issues and also cannot maximize uplink
performance, vital to meet the high traffic demand experienced during
special events.

3. Rapid simulation and

accurate modeling create
an effective solution
The need to meet these challenges has been met by an NSN solution
that allows rapid simulation of stadium conditions and the possible
configurations of a network. The service allows operators and NSN
to work in tandem to hypothesize (what-if) a large number of
configurations to determine the best cost-performance benefit for
the stadium. Essentially, multiple antennas act together as a large
antenna to cover the stadium.
The NSN solution uses a full system simulation to evaluate many
design alternatives before construction of the DAS starts. Based
on a 3D model of the stadium, the solution includes a simulation of
downlink, uplink and control channels, packet scheduling behaviors
and an accurate interference environment. It also allows the analysis
of various transmission modes and specific vendor feature sets, while
future enhancements will simulate Voice over LTE (VoLTE).
The 3D model is configured to each specific venue, providing the
expected signal propagation conditions from an antenna to a specific
seat. Measurements can be used to enhance statistical PL models,
while it also offers multiband capability.

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The simulation service optimizes antenna specific parameters as well

as the DAS antenna feed network, minimizing expensive and long
duration rework.
Such a large scale and detailed simulation requires a large computing
array to complete design alternatives in a timely manner. The NSN
array consists of over 400 processors, able to evaluate around 100
designs per week, including pre/post processing and analysis.

3.1 Innovative NSN methodology

A typical project will start with a visit to the site by the operator and
NSN experts to take physical measurements of the stadium and
record antenna limitations and feasible locations.
The next stage sees NSN generating the 3D model of the stadium.
This stage can model even large stadiums with a capacity of around
80,000 or more people. This will produce initial downlink-only RF
plots, including SINR and RSRP for review. These are based on input
from the operator about issues such as the number of sectors/
zones, band, tilts, beam width and transmission power.
Based on their long experience and wide expertise, NSN engineers
then optimize the system based on the outcome of the previous
stage by running multiple parameter settings. Uplink analysis will be
performed at this stage.
This is followed by a second review of the optimized system. This
includes various cases identified in the first review as well as user
throughput and capacity metrics using a Monte-Carlo simulator that
runs repeated random sampling to obtain an optimum result.
In a second optimization step, NSN experts incorporate any design
improvements, following which a definite network design is drawn up.
Future developments of the basic design can include such aspects as
increased load, LTE-Advanced features and VoLTE.

4. Field trial at a major US venue

A recent application of the modeling process was that conducted
for a major US operator, which asked NSN to help it evaluate a
number of stadium networks that either were in the process of being
deployed or were already deployed. To demonstrate the viability
and the benefits of the service and techniques involved, a trial was
conducted for one of the operators poorer performing venues.
DAS modeling was the most complicated part of the project due
to the large number of antennas assigned with unique physical
placement, many of which are widely separated. A Matlab (matrix
laboratory computing environment) based tool was created to
generate the user input, traffic distribution and path loss required
for the simulation engines.
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Tier 1
Tier 2
Tier 3
Tier 4

3-D Stadium by Tier

Height (m)

50
40
30

50

20

100

10
0

150
200

180

160

140

120

200
100

X (m) [East/West]

80

Y (m) [North/South]

250

Fig. 1. Tiered 3D model of the US trial venue created by mathematical

modeling of the stadiums physical structure
Matlab was also used to combine basic geometric structures as
building blocks. Arc sections were used as the basis for the stadium,
with 45 arc sections across 4 tiers.
The tool is unique in that only a minimum set of information is
required to build a detailed model. For the trial venue, this consisted
of cross sectional diagrams to obtain exact height and depth
information, and arc section information obtained from Google Earth
projections. Path loss modeling was enhanced to provide a model that
depended on the placement of the LOS, NLOS and DAS antennas.
System-Wide SINR Distribution

1
0.9
0.8

CDF

0.7
0.6

Overall 2dB

0.5

improvement

0.4
0.3
0.2

Baseline

0.1
0

Most Improved
-10

-5

10

15

20

SINR (dB)

Fig. 2. Results from phase 1 optimization of the NSN pilot for a US

stadium showing a 2dB reduction in interference, equivalent to a
37% reduction

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The trial had three phases: Model generation and validation,

constrained optimization of the stadium, and finally a second what-if
phase of optimization. In the first phase, NSN demonstrated alignment
of simulation and live stadium Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and
also refined the output KPIs that the operator had specified.
The second phase focused on different aspects of the distributed
antenna configurations, including down tilt, azimuth, power, and some
selected sector pairings to achieve an optimum setup. This produced
37 different scenarios for evaluation. The key finding in this second
phase was the impact of large differential cable loss per cell
on performance.
The last phase was a large what-if analysis to evaluate various
combinations of adjacent sectors, with the aim of assessing if
alternative configurations could offer any gain in system
performance. To evaluate this, a suite of over 600 unique cases were
run, none of which exceeded the best case presented in the phase
one optimization.

5. Summary and developments

The US pilot study shows that the modeling method is accurate. It also
threw up key lessons that will help make the stadium system more
efficient.
The conventional trial and error based system of planning and
implementing effective stadium-wide coverage, employing a best
guess installation of antennas and a walk around to optimize them, is
proving too slow and too costly for operators.
The innovative NSN solution enables network implementation in
a stadium to be done correctly from the start. The first projects
indicate that interference can be reduced by between 30-60%, with
corresponding gains in quality and throughput. NSN has proven
credentials to manage large events and this solution adds further
capabilities to help address operator challenges. Following the pilots
success, NSN planning experts are now using this approach in further
stadium venues in the US.
As well as stadiums, the solution could be applied to other
venue types, such as shopping malls. NSN is currently working on
appropriate propagation tools and looking to bring in new venue
types. Furthermore NSN is investigating whether this approach and
methodology can be applied to other scenarios such as macro and
small cell deployments.

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Nokia Solutions and Networks

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