Planning begins with the development of a comprehensive statement of user requirement. A user requirement shows what service the user expects in time, space and service. In space, the requirement may use vectors to describe postcode areas or points, roads, railways or military areas of responsibility. In service, the specification may define the call types to be supported, the service for packet transmission or the data throughput. In time, this defines the way the user expects the network to evolve against the project plan.

The documents listed cover issues relating to planning and provide a framework for the structure and management of planning projects.

Planning progresses by expressing the user requirement electronically in a planning tool and then applying selected infrastructure. The specification normally includes performance parameters such as path availability, confidence in achieving a particular connectivity, limits to intra-network interference for given spectrum blocks and the like. At any stage the plan can be compared to the requirement and compliance tested.

Once a satisfactory plan has been developed on-screen this can be exported to allow development of a bill of material for the network. Infrastructure can be costed, revenue determined and metrics developed to show return on investment. ATDI offer a unique service – the automatic planning of networks using a goal-seek algorithm. This means that large networks can be dimensioned and costed in days.