Analyzing mobile radio field-data

The customer is promised a lot of things. In front of his eyes advertising unfolds the sheer unlimited possibilities of new mobile technologies. New services based on GPRS, EDGE or UMTS are supposed to make life easier. Operators see new sources of income and invest in the performance of their networks. But they can only prevail on the highly dynamic markets if they keep their promise – otherwise the customers are gone.

“The network is alive”, says Dr. Alexander Speetzen of P3 communications. “The networks are constantly rebuilt. Often missing are verified assertions about the quality of a service after its introduction. “What are the rates of blocked and dropped calls in a defined area? Is the quality of service (QoS) guaranteed, so that the customer is really able to use the offered voice and data services? And how consistent is the network performance?

Speetzen has developed the post processing tool MEDAS with his P3 team. Hence he finds the answers for the questions of network operators and service providers. Because MEDAS analyses large amounts of drive test data in a short time and provides approaches for an iterative optimization. Coverage can be validated and interference situations are evaluated. “The measurement results reflect reality. And usually it doesn’t look like the mathematical propagation model at all.”

During certain analysis projects MEDAS was able to display up to 70 causes of error. “The customer is annoyed. In his individual situation it does mean one thing for him: No signal!” In other words: too much promised.