A novel cell design approach for LTE underground tunnels coverage

Abstract

Recently underground subways are often constructed to accommodate more pleasant public transportation conditions in metropolitan areas. For mobile operators, it is required to provide proper cellular coverage in the underground subway tunnels with certain coverage requirement. In this paper, we propose a novel LTE cell design approach for underground tunnels based on minimum data throughput requirement over the certain percentage of coverage. The feasibility of the design approach is verified by actual measurement. We also provide a simple two-slope propagation model for tunnel environment.