Cellular Communications Coverage Prediction Techniques: A Survey and Comparison

A lot of effort and time is utilized in the planning and building of the cellular wireless networks to use minimum infrastructural components to provide the best network coverage as well as delivery of quality of service. Generally, path loss models are used for the prediction of wireless network coverage. Therefore, detailed knowledge of the appropriate path loss model suitable for the proposed geographical area is needed to determine the coverage quality of any wireless network design. However, to the best of our knowledge, despite the importance of path loss models, as used for the prediction of wireless network coverage, there doesn't exist any comprehensive survey in this field. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to survey the existing techniques and mechanisms which can be addressed in this domain. Briefly, the contributions of this paper are: (1) providing a comprehensive and up to date survey of the various network coverage prediction techniques, indicating the different frequency ranges the models were developed, (2) the different suitable terrains for each of the model and the best suit mobile generation were presented, and lastly, (3) providing comparative analysis to aid the planning and implementation of the cellular networks.