Impact of Device Diversity on Crowdsourced Mobile Coverage Maps

Mobile coverage maps increasingly rely on user-side measurements such as those collected from crowdsourced mobile apps. These measurements inherently span a multitude of devices, differing in models and vendors, with different radio signal reception characteristics. We show measurement based evidence on the significant deviations in received signal strength distribution seen by different devices, all other factors being equal. More crucially, we examine the accuracy of coarse-grained/fine-grained measurement based mobile coverage maps as seen from a device's perspective. Our key finding is that mobile coverage maps based on measurements from a diversity of devices are still fairly reliable from a device's perspective so long as it is among the set of devices used to collect measurements. Our study also offers guidelines on ways towards reliable measurement based mobile coverage maps in presence of device diversity.