Features

Multi-SKU

The planner requires users to specify devices to be used in the network plan. If multiple DN or CN types are included in the list of devices, the planner can decide which type should be used to minimize cost and maximize coverage.

How to add a device

To add a new device, create a new entry in the DEVICE_LIST section and populate the following fields.

Field name	Type	Meaning
DEVICE_SKU	str	The device SKU or Name that used to identify the hardware
DEVICE_TYPE	str	The type of the device, which should be either DN or CN
NODE_CAPEX	float	Hardware cost of DN or CN
NUMBER_OF_NODES_PER_SITE	int	Maximum number of radio nodes allowed on each site; for CNs, this input must be 1
SECTOR_PARAMS	a struct with the fields in the following table	The set of radio specification parameters

The set of radio specification parameters are:

Sector Params Fields
HORIZONTAL_SCAN_RANGE	float	Per-sector horizontal beamforming scan range of the antenna in degrees
NUMBER_SECTORS_PER_NODE	float	Number of sectors in each node
ANTENNA_BORESIGHT_GAIN	float	Antenna gain at boresight (dBi)
MAXIMUM_TX_POWER	float	Maximum transmit power in dBm
MINIMUM_TX_POWER	float	Minimum transmit power in dBm
TX_DIVERSITY_GAIN	float	Transmitter diversity gain in dB (e.g., polarization diversity)
RX_DIVERSITY_GAIN	float	Receiver diversity gain in dB (e.g., polarization diversity)
TX_MISCELLANEOUS_LOSS	float	Miscellaneous losses on the transmitter in dB (e.g., cable losses)
RX_MISCELLANEOUS_LOSS	float	Miscellaneous losses on the receiver in dB (e.g., cable losses)
MINIMUM_MCS_LEVEL	int	The minimum MCS level allowed
ANTENNA_PATTERN_FILE_PATH	str	Antenna pattern file defining the signal loss of the antenna in different angles in Planet's format (txt)
SCAN_PATTERN_FILE_PATH	str	Scan pattern file defining the signal gain of the antenna boresight in different scan angles (csv)
MCS_MAP_FILE_PATH	str	Scan pattern file contains the mapping between MCS, SNR, Mbps and Tx backoff (csv)

Multi-SKU Site Files

If you choose to use an optional Sites File in your plan, you may populate the Device SKU column in the CSV or field in the KML file. If you wish to identify the device type for a particular site, the SKU must correspond to one of the DEVICE_SKU entries you provide in the DEVICE_LIST section. If it does not, an error will be returned.

Note: All SKUs are case-insensitive.

Specifying Multiple SKUs for a Single Site

Leave the field blank. This will allow the system to choose a SKU for you during the plan's run. The Planner will take all the devices that match the appropriate site type, place all SKUs at each site, and select among them. This is equivalent to specifying multiple sites at the same location and explicitly setting each one to each of the devices.

How does Multi-SKU work?

The planner places each available device at a site and selects the best device to minimize cost and maximize coverage.

In general, you should not need to touch your sites file to switch between a single-SKU run and a multi-SKU run. Instead, you can leave the Device SKU column/field in the sites file blank and modify the device list. Of course, if you have reason to predetermine a particular device type at a particular site, specify the Device SKU explicitly.

Automatic Site Detection

In addition to candidate site locations provided by the user, the planner can automatically determine candidate site locations on building rooftops. This can help accelerate the planning time by helping skip the process of manual placement of sites. It can help ensure that, for example, the highest point on the rooftop is selected, which can be difficult to do manually.

How to use it

1. Provide the building outline data in the .shp or .kml format. See more details in Building Outline File.
2. Populate the field under AUTOMATIC_SITE_DETECTION
   1. Set DETECT_HIGHEST, DETECT_CENTERS, DETECT_CORNERS based on which type of location you want.
      • DETECT_HIGHEST will detect a site location on the highest point on each building rooftop, based on the surface elevation data. If the surface elevation data (DSM or DTM + DHM) is not provided, the planner will use DETECT_CENTERS instead automatically.
      • DETECT_CENTERS will detect a site location on the geometric center of each building rooftop.
      • DETECT_CORNERS will detect one or more locations on the corners of each building rooftop. Set MAX_CORNER_ANGLE, which is used to filter corners when DETECT_CORNERS is enabled. If not set, every vertex on the rooftop is considered to be a corner.
      • Among all the candidate locations, the planner will pick the ones with the most LOS links.
   2. Set DN_DEPLOYMENT as False if you don't want to detect DN site location. If enabled, the location with the most LOS links would be selected as the DN location. A candidate CN is still placed at that same location in case the planner decides that the DN is not needed.

Demand Models

Demand sites are imaginary sites in the network that are added to represent the final destination of downstream flow from the POPs. In graph theory terminology, they are the sinks nodes of the directed graph that represents the network. They are distinct from CNs because, in part,

• Not all networks will have a CN
• Multiple CNs can connect to the same demand site allowing the network to decide which CN is needed
• A DN and a CN can connect to the same demand site allowing the network to decide which one is needed (e.g., a DN can both serve the customer like a CN while simultaneously pushing data to other customers downstream).
• Each DN and CN can connect to a different number of demand sites resulting in different overall demand requirements for each one

Each demand site is associated with an amount of desired demand, i.e., throughput. The flexibility afforded by using demand sites enables several different approaches to demand modeling.

There are three demand models that can be enabled:

1. CN Demand
2. Uniform Demand
3. Manual Demand

CN Demand

In this case, a demand site is added to every CN in the network. This is a very common deployment scenario. Consider a rooftop deployment - the demand sites in this case are effectively equivalent to subscribers.

Uniform Demand

A grid of demand sites is added within the area of interest. The spacing of the grid is configurable and for each demand site, the DNs and CNs within a specified distance of it are connected to it.

This can be useful when wanting to ensure coverage throughout a geographic area to blanket it with service (e.g., for municipal Wi-Fi).

Manual Demand

The demand sites are added explicitly by the user. Like the Uniform Demand model, for each demand site, the DNs and CNs within a specified distance of it are connected to it.

How to use it

Parameters to control the demand site model are found under the DIMENSIONING subsection of NETWORK_DESIGN.

1. To enable the CN Demand model, set ENABLE_CN_DEMAND to True. To enable the Uniform Demand model, set ENABLE_UNIFORM_DEMAND to True. To enable the Manual Demand model, set ENABLE_MANUAL_DEMAND to True. At least one must be set to True but multiple can be enabled simultaneously, in which case demand sites will be added according to each enabled model.
2. If ENABLE_UNIFORM_DEMAND is True, specify the grid spacing under DEMAND_SPACING.
3. If ENABLE_MANUAL_DEMAND is True, specify the demand sites in the Candidate Topology File.
4. If ENABLE_UNIFORM_DEMAND or ENABLE_MANUAL_DEMAND is True, specify the connection distance between the DNs/CNs and the demand sites under DEMAND_CONNECTION_RADIUS.
5. Specify the amount of demand under DEMAND.

Tiered Service

Tiered Service allows you to provide different levels of bandwidth to chosen CNs when the CN Demand model is enabled. Example use-cases are:

1. A region with single-family homes and multi-dwelling buildings with a different number of units in each one. For example, assume you want each customer to receive 100 Mbps of service and there is a building with 5 units and another with 3. This feature allows you to serve 500 Mbps of service to the first building and 300 Mbps of service to the second which is then further subdivided among the various customers so each one receives exactly the desired amount of service.
2. Networks shared by businesses and residential homes where businesses require more bandwidth.

The feature works by creating multiple demand sites at specified CN locations. For the example in #1 above, this means placing 5 demand sites on the CN on the building with 5 units and 3 demand sites on the building with 3 units.

How to use it

1. Set ENABLE_CN_DEMAND to True.
2. Modify the User Input Site File.
   1. For KML/KMZ input, for each relevant site, add a number of subscribers data field and set to the desired value.
   2. For CSV input, add a number of subscribers column and set it to the desired value for each relevant site.

The number of subscribers field is only applied to CNs and ignored for DNs and POPs. If left blank for a CN, it is assumed to be 1.

POP Placement

POP Placement allows you to specify additional POPs you would like to add to a candidate topology. The POPs are selected from the candidate DNs.

This can be useful to meet demand requirements when the number of provided POPs is insufficient. It can also help connect disconnected portions of the network. It is particularlly useful in early-stage planning where not all possible POP locations are already known.

How to use it

Specify the number of additional POPs you would like in NUMBER_OF_EXTRA_POPS under the NETWORK_DESIGN section.

Maximize Common Bandwidth

Maximize Common Bandwidth (MCB) equally distributes bandwidth across all connected demand sites during the network optimization steps. When MCB is disabled, the total shortage (unsatisfied demand) in the network is minimized but there are no guarantees of how that shortage is distributed among clients.

If the input demand is too high for the underlyling network, some clients can be disconnected in order to improve the bandwidth to other clients. Consider the following example. Suppose you have a single POP connected to 10 CNs. For simplicity, assume that this POP has one sector and each of the links from the POP to the CNs has a capacity of 1.8 Gbps. If you request that each CN receives 200 Mbps of service, it will not be possible to satisfy that amount of demand, so there will be (200 * 10 - 1800) = 200 Mbps shortage in the network. With MCB disabled, that shortage can be split among all the CNs in different ways (unfortunately, how it is distributed is unpredictable). It is possible that the planner could provide 200 Mbps of service to 9 of the 10 CNs and leave 1 of the CNs disconnected. This is a common cause of disconnected sites when planning networks.

One way to address this is to simply reduce the demand to 180 Mbps instead of 200 Mbps. However, it can often be difficult to determine what this value should be in more complex networks. With MCB enabled, each of the 10 CNs will get 180 Mbps of service because the shortage will be distributed among the CNs evenly.

Unfortunately, this feature requires solving a few extra optimization problems which might make the overall runtime worse. In many cases, simply adding more POPs to the network or reducing the requested demand is a better alternative.

How to use it

To use the Maximize Common Bandwidth feature, set MAXIMIZE_COMMON_BANDWIDTH under the NETWORK_DESIGN section to True.

Extend Base Topology

This feature enables the addition of new sites to a base topology with known sites and links. The sites and links can be assigned with any status.

LOS will be computed between the sites in the base topology and the new sites and between each of the new sites. The new candidate topology includes the base topology as a subgraph. The candidate topology is then optimized to generate a network plan.

How to use it

1. Get or generate the topology for the existing network. Store it as a KML/KMZ or CSV using the same rules as Candidate Topology File.
2. Specify the file path in BASE_TOPOLOGY_FILE_PATH under the DATA section.
3. Generate a User Input Site File to specify the new sites.

NOTE: This feature cannot be enabled together with Automatic Site Detection feature.