LPWAN Coverage Assessment Planning without Explicit Knowledge of Base Station Locations

Martin Stusek, Dmitri Moltchanov, Pavel Masek, Konstantin Mikhaylov, Jiri Hosek, Sergey Andreev, Yevgeni Koucheryavy, Pavel Kustarev, Otto Zeman, Martin Roubicek

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

9 Citations (Scopus)
55 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

An assessment of radio network coverage, usually in the form of a measurement campaign, is essential for multi-base-station (multi-BS) network deployment and maintenance. It can be conducted by a network operator or its served consumers. However, the number of measurement points and their locations may not be known in advance for an efficient and accurate evaluation. The main goal of this study is to propose a new methodology for understanding the selection of measurement points during coverage and signal quality assessment. It is particularly tailored to multi-BS low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) deployments without explicit knowledge of BS locations. To this aim, we first conduct a large-scale measurement campaign for three popular LPWAN technologies, namely, NB-IoT, Sigfox, and LoRaWAN. Utilizing this baseline data, we develop a procedure for identifying the minimum set of measurement points for the coverage assessment with a given accuracy as well as study which interpolation algorithms produce the lowest approximation error. Our results demonstrate that a random choice of measurement points is on par with their deterministic selection. Out of the candidate interpolation algorithms, Kriging method offers attractive performance in terms of the absolute error for NB-IoT deployments. By contrast, for Sigfox and LoRaWAN infrastructures, less complex techniques, such as Natural-neighbor, Linear interpolation, or Inverse-Distance Weighting, can achieve comparable (and occasionally even better) accuracy levels.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)4031-4050
JournalIEEE Internet of Things Journal
Volume9
Issue number6
Early online date5 Aug 2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Mar 2022
Publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

Keywords

  • Internet of Things
  • Interpolation
  • Measurement uncertainty
  • Phase measurement
  • Urban areas
  • Weight measurement
  • Wireless communication

Publication forum classification

  • Publication forum level 2

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Signal Processing
  • Information Systems
  • Hardware and Architecture
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Computer Networks and Communications

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