On the time dynamics of commercial networks with comparable data sets across europe

Abstract

In this paper we present results on the time dynamics of the most used cellular bands, from the measurement campaign conducted in seven European cities. Special attention was given on acquiring comparable datasets between the different measurement locations. We provide detailed examples of how much variability there is in the measured activity and we also test the validity of common assumptions usually found in the literature. In particular, we show that the spectrum occupancy metrics exhibit significant degree of stationarity in all the measurement locations and in all of the frequency bands studied. We also characterize in detail the influence of the diurnal cycle, i.e., the differences in spectrum use during different times of day. In addition to raw spectrum occupancy metrics, we study the structure of the ON/OFF activity patterns for cellular bands. Our results show that the ON and OFF period durations in our data sets have significantly heavier tails than predicted by the commonly used Markov models.