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Route classification using cellular handoff patterns

Published: 17 September 2011 Publication History

Abstract

Understanding utilization of city roads is important for urban planners. In this paper, we show how to use handoff patterns from cellular phone networks to identify which routes people take through a city. Specifically, this paper makes three contributions. First, we show that cellular handoff patterns on a given route are stable across a range of conditions and propose a way to measure stability within and between routes using a variant of Earth Mover's Distance. Second, we present two accurate classification algorithms for matching cellular handoff patterns to routes: one requires test drives on the routes while the other uses signal strength data collected by high-resolution scanners. Finally, we present an application of our algorithms for measuring relative volumes of traffic on routes leading into and out of a specific city, and validate our methods using statistics published by a state transportation authority.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    UbiComp '11: Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Ubiquitous computing
    September 2011
    668 pages
    ISBN:9781450306300
    DOI:10.1145/2030112
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 17 September 2011

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    1. handoff patterns
    2. route classification

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    • (2023)Statistical indicators based on mobile phone and street maps data for risk management in small urban areasStatistical Methods & Applications10.1007/s10260-023-00719-933:4(1051-1078)Online publication date: 30-Aug-2023
    • (2022)Superstring-Based Sequence Obfuscation to Thwart Pattern Matching AttacksIEEE Internet of Things Journal10.1109/JIOT.2022.32039959:23(23348-23365)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2022
    • (2022)Inferring Passenger Travel Demand Using Mobile Phone CDR DataUrban Informatics Using Mobile Network Data10.1007/978-981-19-6714-6_2(17-43)Online publication date: 30-Nov-2022
    • (2021)A Hierarchical Fuzzy-Based Correction Algorithm for the Neighboring Network Hit ProblemMathematics10.3390/math90403159:4(315)Online publication date: 5-Feb-2021
    • (2021)Origin-Destination Trips Generated from Operational Data of a Mobile Network for Urban Transportation PlanningJournal of Urban Planning and Development10.1061/(ASCE)UP.1943-5444.0000635147:1Online publication date: Mar-2021
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    • (2020)A Spatio-Temporal Indicator for City Users Based on Mobile Phone Signals and Administrative DataSocial Indicators Research10.1007/s11205-020-02355-2Online publication date: 3-May-2020
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