HSPA+ – RAYmaps

September 27, 2011November 15, 2011Antennas, LTE, Network Planning, WiMAX

Base Station Antenna Tilt and Path Loss

Path loss is basically the difference in transmit and receive powers of a wireless communication link. In a Free Space Line of Sight (LOS) channel the path loss is defined as: L=20*log10(4*pi*d/lambda) where ‘d’ is the transmit receive separation and ‘lambda’ is the wavelength. It is also possible to include the antenna gains in the link budget calculation to find the end to end path loss (cable and connector losses may also be factored in). Antenna gains are usually defined along a horizontal plane and vertical plane passing through the center of the antenna. The antenna gain can then be […]

September 11, 2011November 15, 2011HSPA, LTE, Network Planning

4G LTE Coverage within Virginia

Since our last post on Verizon LTE coverage within California, Verizon has removed the LTE Coverage Map from its site. Now it only gives a list of cities that have 4G LTE service (just like T-Mobile). So we now move from the West Coast to the East Coast i.e. Virginia. The state that is home to Virginia Tech, one of the finest schools in the country and a breeding ground for Wireless Engineers. It is thus somewhat of a shock to see that Verizon Wireless has no 4G LTE footprint in the state of Virginia. The only place that it […]

August 28, 2011November 15, 2011HSPA, LTE

T-Mobile 4G Coverage within US

T-Mobile claims to be serving 4G to 152 markets with 170 million POPs across the US. The technology that T-Mobile is using is HSPA+ which achieves data rates comparable to those achieved by 4G LTE technology being used by Verizon. With this technology (HSPA+21 and HSPA+42) end users can experience average download speeds of 5Mbps and peak download speeds of 12Mbps. However the future of T-Mobile hangs in the balance now as the AT&T and T-Mobile merger is being debated at the FCC. T-Mobile LTE Coverage Although the above figure seems to suggest that T-Mobile 4G service is available throughout […]