A Deep-Learning Model for Estimating the Impact of Social Events on Traffic Demand on a Cell Basis

In cellular networks, a deep knowledge of the traffic demand pattern in each cell is essential in network planning and optimization tasks. However, a precise forecast of the traffic time series per cell is hard to achieve, due to the noise originated by abnormal local events. In particular, mass social events (e.g., concerts, conventions, sport events⋯) have a strong impact on traffic demand. In this paper, a data-driven model to estimate the impact of local events on cellular traffic is presented. The model is trained with a large dataset of geotagged social events taken from public event databases and hourly traffic data from a live Long Term Evolution (LTE) network. The resulting model is combined with a traffic forecast module based on a multi-task deep-learning architecture to predict the hourly traffic series with scheduled mass events. Model assessment is performed over a real dataset created with geolocated social event information collected from public event directories and hourly cell traffic measurements during two months in a LTE network. Results show that the addition of the proposed model significantly improves traffic forecasts in the presence of massive events.