Patent ID: 7433692

Claim:
A method for dimensioning a number of radio carriers in a cell of a mobile telecommunications network, the cell being suitable for managing data calls associated with data terminals having different terminal capabilities, the method comprising: categorizing the data calls as a plurality of data traffic streams, whereby each data traffic stream is associated with a different data terminal capability; identifying a set of possible cell statuses associated with the cell, each possible cell status corresponding to a different set of values {m 1 , m 2 , . . . m N } where m i represents a number of data terminals associated with the i th data traffic stream and N represents the total number of data traffic streams; determining, for each data traffic stream, an upper limit for the number of data terminals that can be associated with the data traffic stream; limiting the number of possible cell statuses based on the upper limits respectively determined for the data traffic streams; determining, for each of the limited number of possible cell statuses, at least one sequence of data terminals used to access the cell; determining, for each of the limited number of possible cell statuses, one or more data-call death frequencies corresponding to frequencies with which data calls are terminated in the data traffic streams, the one or more data-call death frequencies for a possible cell status being determined based on the at least one sequence of data terminals used to access the cell in that possible cell status; determining, for each of the limited number of possible cell statuses, one or more data-call arrival frequencies corresponding to frequencies with which data calls are initiated in the data traffic streams; determining a set of cell status probabilities for the cell on the basis of the determined data-call arrival frequencies and data-call death frequencies; and dimensioning the cell on the basis of the determined set of cell status probabilities.