Finding the Distribution of Users in a Cell from Smart Phone Based Measurements

Paper i proceeding, 2016

Mobile users are assumed to be positioned within the cell or sector boundaries of the serving cell in the network. Measurements of location done by the smart phones combined with the network layout show differently. There is a significant amount of users which are actually outside the nominal sector boundaries. Knowledge about the statistical location distribution of users inside or outside the serving cell intended coverage may prove valuable in finding more optimal resource management methods. Another application is the development of over-theair characterization of base station antennas. Distance and directional statistics are shown for samples of relative positions within the cell sectors of a real network using smart phone based measurements. Samples for LTE in 800 and 1800 MHz non-voice usage and 3G at 2100 MHz voice usage is included. The distance distributions show clearly that the usage density rapidly decrease with the distance, and there is a clear confirmation that lower frequencies have longer range, also in terms of usage density. Mean usage distance for 800 MHz is 1.62 km, while for 2100 MHz it is only 580 m. It also shows that 90% of the usage is within 3.47 and 1.35 km for the two cases, respectively. The directional distributions relative to the sector centre direction shows that 80% of the users are within 153 degrees for lowest frequency, and 109 degrees for the highest.