Visualizing Mobile Coverage from Repetitive Measurements on Defined Trajectories

Abstract

Ensuring pervasive coverage of mobile networks and good quality of service are common goals for both regulators and operators. Currently, however, the evaluation of coverage is mostly limited to maps provided by Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). In this paper, we use the Measuring Mobile Broadband Networks in Europe (MONROE) platform to characterize mobile coverage along transport routes, reliably and in an objective manner. We leverage access to MONROE nodes onboard public transport vehicles: our unique geo-referenced dataset comes from nodes active on board 15 Norwegian inter-city trains that travel 13 different routes. The data from hundreds of train trips between 2017 and 2018 on each of the routes shows the mobile coverage status as travellers experience it. We propose an algorithm to segment the measurement routes to enable efficient grouping of data samples for analysis and visualization. We present our analysis and visualization of coverage along the railway routes. The proposed approach is generic so that other type of performance maps, including latency or throughput maps, can also be generated.