A Quantification of Link Budget Differences Between the Cellular and PCS Bands

The median propagation loss in the PCS band (near 1.9 GHz) is generally recognized to be 9-10 dB greater than that in the Cellular band (near 850 MHz). It would be highly desirable to make up this deficit, in order to minimize the infrastructure cost of PCS service startup. This goal is aided by three factors favorable to operation at PCS frequencies. First, the vertical pattern gain of the base station antenna, for the same size, will be more than 3 dB higher at 1. 9 GHz. Second, the SNR benefit derived from using base station antenna diversity on the uplink will be greater at 1.9 GHz. The third factor is lower manmade noise at 1.9 GHz, especially in urban areas. We have carefully examined all these factors, in order to quantify the link budget differences between the two bands for three types of environment, namely, urban, suburban and rural. We find that link budget parity (meaning the same allowable cell sizes) can be achieved in urban environments with no special measures; and that, in suburban and rural environments, parity can be achieved with fairly modest remedies.