Cellular Signal Strength Research Articles

An Improved Practical Measuring Technique for Wireless Cellular Signal Path Loss Forecast in the African Terrain

Several studies on cellular signal path loss measurements at various locations under varying geographical and environmental circumstances in Africa have been conducted. Most of the techniques used, if not all, do not give consideration to the peculiar Africans’ road networks and building patterns, valleys, and hills that usually prevent the driving of motor cars within them when taking the signal strength measurements. The article presents an improved technique for wireless cellular signal strength measurement for better path loss prediction. The approach adopted for measurement is the regular grid outdoor foot technique. The technique was tested at various locations in the Ilorin metropolis and proved to be a better method of obtaining signal strength measurements. Although some of the signal strength values coincided with respect to distance when both methods were used, the drive test method overvalued the signal strength for study locations that were not in line of sight with the BTSs. These values range from 2 dBm to 8 dBm. If this technique is adopted, measurements will be taken in all vital locations that may not be accessible by means of a motor car drive test method, and more accurate values of the cellular signal strength will be obtained for better path loss prediction.

An infrastructure‐less emergency location detection system using basic cellular device‐to‐device connection

AbstractOne of the most time‐sensitive and critical tasks for first responders in the aftermath of a disaster is to locate people for effective and successful rescue operations. The existing solutions for large‐scale location detection of citizens depend on expensive equipment that may not be readily available in many urban areas and also cannot cover a vast area quickly. To address this challenge, the present study proposes a novel location estimation method by creating a Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) using citizens' mobile phones. The proposed solution can accurately estimate the location of mobile devices in a MANET based on their Received Signal Strength (RSS) and communicate the estimated location coordinates to first responders without any dependencies on telecommunication infrastructures. This system will help first responders locate and map mobile devices in the affected area in a matter of seconds to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of postdisaster rescue operations. The envisioned solution offers unique capabilities that differentiate it from previously existing methods. The proposed method directly estimates device locations using their basic cellular signal strength without any dependency on GPS and relies only on basic cellphone signals. Therefore, nonsmartphones can also join and function in the envisioned MANET system. It also does not impose any computational operations or requirements for installing an app on citizens' phones. The performance of the proposed system was empirically evaluated using a simulation analysis. The results indicated that the method could efficiently and accurately discover more than 93% of mobile devices and estimate their locations.

Privacy-utility trades in crowdsourced signal map obfuscation

Cellular providers and data aggregating companies crowdsource cellular signal strength measurements from user devices to generate signal maps, which can be used to improve network performance. Recognizing that this data collection may be at odds with growing awareness of privacy concerns, we consider obfuscating such data before the data leaves the mobile device. The goal is to increase privacy such that it is difficult to recover sensitive features from the obfuscated data (e.g. user ids and user whereabouts), while still allowing network providers to use the data for improving network services (i.e. create accurate signal maps). To examine this privacy-utility tradeoff, we identify privacy and utility metrics and threat models suited to signal strength measurements. We then obfuscate the measurements using several preeminent techniques, spanning differential privacy, generative adversarial privacy, and information-theoretic privacy techniques, in order to benchmark a variety of promising obfuscation approaches and provide guidance to real-world engineers who are tasked to build signal maps that protect privacy without hurting utility. Our evaluation results, based on multiple, diverse, real-world signal map datasets, demonstrate the feasibility of concurrently achieving adequate privacy and utility, with obfuscation strategies which use the structure and intended use of datasets in their design, and target average-case, rather than worst-case, guarantees.

Measurement of latency during real-time wireless video transmission for remote supervision of autonomous agricultural machines

As the prominence of autonomous vehicles continues to rise within agriculture, remote surveillance of the equipment is likely to become a key aspect of operation. Transmission latency during the relay of video from vehicle to viewer is not well explored and is an important part of communications which should be assessed. A riding mower was equipped with a Raspberry Pi using GStreamer and an open-source latency measurement library to assemble a real-time streaming system to evaluate transmission latency in different environments using cellular and radio transmission. In most locations, measured latencies were under 200–300 ms. In areas where cellular connection quality was adequate, cellular latency and variance were reduced compared to that of radio transmission for higher qualities of video. In areas of poor cellular network coverage, cellular transmission latency increased while radio transmission latencies remained constant. Overall, latency tends to increase with video quality to a statistically significant degree. It is recommended that real-time video can be transmitted over short distances for edge-of-field surveillance of autonomous agricultural machines using existing cellular networks in areas where adequate cellular signal strength is available. If adequate cellular signal strength is not available in a specific field location, it is recommended that video should be transmitted using radio transmission.

Efficient Interactive Global Cellular Signal Strength Visualization

Cellular Signal Strength (CSS), defined as the signal power received by mobile phones, is an important aspect of geographic information flow analysis, because the density of such information can reflect the urbanization variables such as population, gross domestic product, built-up area, electric power consumption, etc. Despite the importance, the real-time analysis of global CSS distribution remains a challenging problem due to the large data scale. In this article, a Display-driven Computing (DisDC) technique is designed and applied to provide efficient large scale interactive CSS visualization, generating results by calculating the value of each pixel that directly for display. Specifically, we present an efficient CSS measurement algorithm, which introduces spatial indexes and a corresponding query strategy; besides, an optimized parallel computing architecture is proposed to ensure the ability of real-time visualization. Experiments show that our approach obviously outperforms traditional methods and is capable of handling more than 40 million base stations in real-time. Moreover, an online demonstration is provided at <uri xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://github.com/MemoryMmy/CSSMap</uri> .

Digitalisation and the Performance of Micro and Small Enterprises in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

This study examines the effects of internet use, as part of digitalisation, on the performance of micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in Yogyakarta province. Using primary data on MSEs in Yogyakarta, the paper exploits conceivably exogenous variations in the cellular signal strength that MSEs receive to connect to the internet, once number of local cellular transmitters, location topography, local building and infrastructure development and sectoral characteristics are controlled. The findings show that internet use has enabled MSEs to engage in the digital economy and has improved labour productivity and exports. The associated monetary benefit due to internet use is substantial for local people.

Regresi Terboboti Geografis dengan Fungsi Pembobot Kernel Gaussian pada Kekuatan Sinyal Seluler

Cellular signal strength may be affected by its location, so researches concerning signal strength need information about location and analysis method that observe spatial aspect. Spatial Regression analysis evaluates location in modeling relation between explanatory variables and response variable. One of the spatial regression analyses is Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR). This method utilizes location to create weight matrix using certain weighting function. GWR analysis with Gaussian kernel weighting function creates better model than Ordinary Least Square model. The model created using GWR is local model which parameter estimation differs in each observation point. Clustering of observation point is performed to summarize the result of GWR. The number of optimum clusters in clustering based on coefficient is five clusters while the number of optimum clusters in clustering based on p value of t test is four clusters.

Rancang Bangun Model Infrastruktur Transmisi Data Aplikasi E-government pada Level Sinyal Edge Menggunakan IaaS (Infrastructur As A Service)

The poor cellular signal strength subscription is one of major problem faced by most of the sub-districts in the Lampung province. Poor cellular signal strength subscription has a side effect in Internet transmission data processes both of transmit mode (Tx) and receives mode (Rx). To solve the problem that has been presented, this research proposed a new approach by utilizing Internet Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) based on Cloud Computing to solve Internet data transmission problems. This research gets a conclusion that Cloud Computing-based Internet Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) can convert a massive transmission data packets and break it down to a small transmission packet that can be transmitted or received through GSM-EDGE signal level.

Does IT Lead to More Equal Treatment? An Empirical Study of the Effect of Smartphone Use on Customer Complaint Resolution

Customers with more education may get better service after complaining, because they are better placed to advocate for themselves. It is unclear how digitization of the consumer complaint process will change this situation. To investigate this, we analyze 364,189 customer complaints to the city of Boston. Empirically, complaints that originate from areas with high levels of education are more likely to be solved quickly. However, dedicated mobile app technologies that automate the complaint process can help mitigate the advantage conferred by education. Since the adoption of digital devices is endogenous to wealth and education, we instrument their usage using granular geographic data on a proxy for cellular signal strength. This analysis again suggests that mobile applications can partially eliminate the disparity between educated and uneducated people. We present suggestive evidence that this is because mobile devices and the standardization of communication they require, eliminate potential differences in treatment of cases that arise due to differences in communication skills. This result suggests that using newer forms of automated digital communication tools enhances equality in customer service.