I-Corps: Efficient Terrain-Based Measurement Gathering for Path Loss Inference

为了应对蜂窝网络需求的倍增，运营商小区范围的大小已经向下移动，以最大限度地提高网络容量。在此过程中，准确和细粒度的覆盖估计成为空间重用、小区间干扰和小区间平滑切换的关键问题。在历史上，电信公司使用现场实验来估计给定地区的无线传播特性，由于所需的人力和设备资源，这是昂贵的。智能手机的日益流行提供了一种便宜得多的替代方案，通过众包直接记录来自蜂窝用户的现场网络观测。然而，众包通常提供不完全的测量覆盖以准确地推断路径损耗。使问题更加复杂的是，不同的子区域可能需要不同的测量量来实现相同的路径损耗表征精度。这个i-Corps团队开发了一个系统，该系统使用地理特征信息(例如，建筑高度、树叶、自由空间)，使用统计学习框架来预测一个地区的测量收集需求，使网络运营商能够优化其测量收集策略。拟议的工作将降低在特定用户区域推出新一代蜂窝和/或频段的财务障碍，并增加覆盖保证。该项目还将提高利用来自用户的众包信息的信心，而不是依赖昂贵的驾驶测试，从而节省人力并允许更快的网络性能反馈循环。该项目将允许团队成员开发商业敏锐性，以提高他们研究的质量和保真度，并培训其他各级拥有商业上可行的智力资本的学生。通过参加i-Corps课程，该团队打算清楚地确定当前运营商的确切支出金额，以及客户愿意为拟议服务支付的金额。

To address multi-fold increases in cellular network demand, carrier cell range sizes have shifted downwards to maximize network capacity. In doing so, accurate and fine-grained estimation of coverage becomes a critical issue for spatial reuse, intercell interference, and smooth handoffs between cells. Historically, in-field experimentation has been used by telecommunication companies to estimate wireless propagation characteristics of a given region, which is costly due to the manpower and equipment resources required. The emerging popularity of smartphones offers a far cheaper alternative, recording in-field network observations directly from the cellular users via crowdsourcing. However, crowdsourcing often provides incomplete measurement coverage to accurately infer path loss. Further complicating the issue, different sub-regions can require differing amounts of measurements to achieve the same path loss characterization accuracy. This I-Corps team has developed a system that uses geographical feature information (e.g., building heights, foliage, free space) to predict measurement collection requirements over a region using a statistical learning framework, allowing network operators to optimize their measurement collection strategy.The proposed work will lower the financial barrier to and increase the assurance of coverage in rolling out new cellular generations and/or frequency bands over a given region of users. The project will also allow increased confidence in leveraging crowd-sourced information from users as opposed to relying on costly drive testing, thereby saving manpower and allowing a quicker feedback loop in terms of network performance. The project will allow the team members to develop commercial acumen that could increase the quality and fidelity of their research as well as train other students at all levels that have intellectual capital that could be commercially viable. By participating in the I-Corps curriculum, this team intends to clearly identify the exact amount current carriers spend, and the amount customers would be willing to pay for the proposed service.