Transforming network planning and tuning

Infovista has integrated direct access to crowdsourced user data into Planet 7.5, the world’s first AI-powered planning and optimization solution. By automatically integrating processed data on how subscribers are using and experiencing operators’ services into Planet, network engineers can derive actionable insights from a detailed picture of traffic demand and network KPIs based on 9 billion data points collected daily worldwide.

The geolocated data, visualized as easy-to-use heatmaps, enables operators to make focused and informed network planning and tuning decisions. Collected around the clock, 365 days a year from more than 250 million mobile devices continuously delivering multiple voice and data related measurements, the information is sourced from umlaut, the international industry-leader and de-facto industry standard in network benchmarking.

“Designing 5G networks is more complex than with previous technologies and we see the usage patterns of mobile subscribers are much more dynamic and less predictable,” said Régis Lerbour, VP R&D and Product Management for RAN Engineering at Infovista. “As a result, the ability to plan networks efficiently with a subscriber’s experience in mind is critical for operators. They need easy access to the right data sets collected on all relevant networks to ensure they can plan to address customers’ demand in terms of coverage and capacity when and where they will need it, and maintain high quality of experience. This new direct crowdsourcing capability provides up-to-date, granular data from real users on both an operator’s own network and others in their country to help efficiently plan the evolution of existing 3G/4G networks and deliver profitable high quality 5G networks.”

The crowd data is automatically collected from more than 10,000 diverse Android apps running background diagnosis processes wherever and whenever customers use their smartphones. With no manual adjustments, the data is automatically pulled and intelligently post-processed in Planet to generate highly accurate geospatial heatmaps of network traffic and usage for all networks in a country, searchable by area, time and date.

This visualized data is fully integrated with Planet Automated Cell Planning (ACP) to improve radio design and optimization, including identifying capacity demand, finding optimal cell placements or prioritizing mMIMO. Access to real-world crowdsourced subscriber location and mobile usage data allows engineers to easily validate network plans, and benchmark end-user experience against competitors in the most cost-effective way.

Planet is Infovista’s market-leading RF planning software and optimization solution, which provides powerful and accurate tools to plan, design and optimize 3G, 4G, 5G and beyond easily and accurately. It incorporates the world’s first RF planning model powered by AI, and is changing the way engineers will plan their wireless networks, using machine learning advances to accurately predict wireless coverage and remove manual complexities, allowing radio engineering activities to become simpler and faster.

The access and integration of crowdsourced data within Planet is available today as a subscription-based service to Infovista’s more than 400 mobile operator customers as well other MNOs globally.