No abstract

To help telecommunication operators in their network planning, namely coverage estimation and optimisation tasks, this paper presents a comparison between a semi-empirical propagation model and a propagation model generated using Artificial Intelligence (AI). These two types of propagation models are quite different in their design. The semi-empiric Automatically Calibrated Standard Propagation Model (ACSPM) is specific for an operating antenna, being calibrated every time a use case application is used and the Artificial Intelligence Propagation Model (AIPM) can be applied in different scenarios, once trained, allowing to estimate coverage for a new antenna location, using information from neighboring antennas. These models have quite different features and applicability. The ACSPM should be applied in network optimisation, when using data from the current state of the antennas. The AIPM can be used in the deployment of new antennas, as it uses data from a certain geographical area. For a better comparison of the models studied, extensive Drive Tests (DT) collection campaigns conducted by operators are used, since coverage estimations are more realistic when DTs are considered. Both models are generated using very different methodologies, but their resulting performance is very similar. The AIPM achieves a Mean Absolute Error (MAE) up to 6.1 dB with a standard deviation of 4 dB. When compared to the ACSPM we have an improvement of 0.5 dB, since this only achieves a MAE up to 6.6 dB. AIPM achieves better results and is the characterised for being completely agnostic and definition-free, when compared with known propagation models.

One of the main concerns of telecommunications operators is related to network coverage. A weak coverage can lead to a performance decrease, not only in the user experience, when using the operators' services, such as multimedia streaming, but also in the overall Quality of Service. This paper presents a novel cloud-based framework of a semi-empirical propagation model that estimates the coverage in a precise way. The novelty of this model is that it is automatically calibrated by using drive test measurements, terrain morphology, buildings in the area, configurations of the network itself and key performance indicators, automatically extracted from the operator's network. Requirements and use cases are presented as motivations for this methodology. The results achieve an accuracy of about 5 dB, allowing operators to obtain accurate neighbour lists, optimise network planning and automate certain actions on the network by enabling the Self-Organising Network concept. The cloud implementation enables a fast and easy integration with other network management and monitoring tools, such as the Metric platform, optimising operators' resource usage recurring to elastic resources on-demand when needed. This implementation was integrated into the Metric platform, which is currently available to be used by several operators.