Joint User Mobility and Traffic Characterization in Temporary Crowded Events

TL;DR

This paper characterizes and models user mobility and traffic in Temporary Crowded Events to enable better network planning and adaptive access point positioning using UAVs.

Contribution

It provides a detailed statistical characterization of user movement and traffic patterns in TCEs, facilitating improved simulation and network optimization.

Findings

User mobility in TCEs is highly dynamic and event-dependent.

Traffic generation patterns vary significantly during TCEs.

Statistical models developed can improve simulation accuracy for TCE scenarios.

Abstract

In TCEs (Temporary Crowded Events), for example, music festivals, users are faced with problems accessing the Internet. TCEs are limited time events with a high concentration of people moving within the event enclosure while accessing the Internet. Unlike other events where the user locations are constant and known at the start (e.g. stadiums), the traffic generation and the user movement in TCEs is variable and influenced by the dynamics of the event. The movement of users can lead to overloads in APs (Access Point) in case they are fixed. In order to minimize this phenomenon, new techniques have been explored that resort to the adjustable positioning of APs integrated into UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles). In these scenarios, the dynamic of the location of the APs requires that tools of prediction of the users movements and, in turn, of the sources of traffic, gain particular expression when being related to the algorithms of positioning of the referred APs. In order to allow the development and analysis of new network planning solutions for TCEs, it is necessary to recreate these scenarios in simulation, which, in turn, requires a detailed characterization of this kind of events. This article aims to characterize and model the mobility and traffic generated by users in TCEs. This characterization will enable the development of new statistical models of traffic generation and user mobility in TCEs.