Radio quality prediction based on user mobility and radio propagation analysis

The increasing number of wireless communications applications in mission critical tasks and lifeline areas demand increased wireless communications reliability. Radio quality prediction for mobile terminals will play a key role in enhancing this reliability. Time-series radio quality prediction (TSRP) methods, which predict future radio quality based on past radio quality measurements, have been proposed in the past. However, TSRP methods are difficult to apply to urban areas where fluctuations of radio quality are too large to make long-term predictions. On the other hand, movement of people is easier to predict because people tend to move toward certain destinations along streets. We propose a mobility-based radio quality prediction (MBRP) method that predicts future radio quality based on user mobility and radio propagation analysis. Evaluation results in single-hop and multi-hop wireless environments show that MBRP can achieve a prediction period more than two times longer than TSRP. We also introduce a prototype system that demonstrates the feasibility of MBRP.