OPTIMIZATION OF COST 231 MODEL FOR 3G WIRELESS COMMUNICATION SIGNAL IN SUBURBAN AREA OF PORT HARCOURT, NIGERIA

Radio propagation models are important tools adopted for the characterization and optimization of wireless communication signals in a propagation environment. In this paper, the Cost 231 model was optimized for 3G wireless communication signal in Aggrey Road ( 04 ? 45? .06 ? N, 07 ? 02 ? .24 ? E ), a suburban area in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Phone - Based Drive Test was adopted for field measurement using TEMS 11 network simulator. The optimization process was implemented through the use of Least Square Algori thm taking into account the initial offset parameters and the slope of the model curve in Cost 231 model for the process. The performance of the optimized model using the statistical tools in Minitab - 14 software was evaluated for the Mean Absolute Deviatio n (MAD) and the Mean Squared Deviation (MSD) respectively. The results obtained demonstrated the following parametric values: 1.196, 2.01 and 1.179, 1.94 for Cost 231 and Optimized models respectively. The optimized model is recommended for deployment for a better and accurate path loss prediction on the environment of study.