The ever-increasing demand for cellular services raises the necessity of developing more sophisticated techniques to improve system quality and capacity. One of the techniques is the use of microcells in urban and occasionally suburban regions. However, the major problems facing the microcell deployment are the microcells peculiar propagation characteristics, which are very different from the conventional cellular systems. In order to address this problem, an experimental study of cell shape, shadowing effects and multipath, was carried out. A mobile laboratory was assembled and extensive measurements on different urban environments were performed. Deterministic and statistical analysis were carried out to find the parameters such as path loss versus distance factor, and the standard deviation of signal variability. Special attention was given to the determination of the breaking point, transition between the near field and diffraction regions on line-of-sight path. An important contribution was on the study of the effects of transmitter antenna height on coverage. The measured results will help on cell characterization and on finding the best height for the base station antennas. A statistical analysis of signal variability was performed to determine the best-fit probability distribution function with parameters carefully calculated. The collected results are of extreme importance to clarify propagation aspects of microcellular signal and to make it available a huge data bank for elaboration of better prediction models which will produce better quality and capacity of the microcellular systems.