Statistical characteristics of pedestrians´ motion and effects on teletraffic of mobile communication networks

Motion of mobile terminals greatly affects traffic characteristics (cell dwell time, handoff rates, channel occupancy lime of each base station, etc.) in mobile communication networks. Motion of vehicles was previously measured and characterized using the Global Positioning System, and its effects on traffic characteristics were examined. In this study, the authors measured pedestrian motion using an autonomous navigation system, analyzed cell dwell time and other statistical parameters by overlaying a hypothetical cellular communication system on the measured loci. The cell dwell time distribution was found to follow a lognormal distribution. Self-similarity was also discovered in the cell dwell time sequence. The impact of the self-similarity on the traffic characteristics was discussed.