Radio Frequency Footprint Characterization Based on Mobility Indicators

Building accurate radio frequency footprint models is an exercise often conducted to optimize the performance of mobile communication networks. Despite the large number of theoretical models, operators frequently utilize empirical radio frequency measurements taken through drive test activities. However, obtaining these measurements is an expensive activity which also, due to its discretized nature, does not cover the entire area of the network and generally produces incomplete radio frequency footprint models. A method to characterize the radio frequency footprint using network configuration and performance measurements automatically collected by the network is presented in this letter. Data from an operating commercial Long Term Evolution network has been used to validate the results of the proposed method.