Measurement collection is a primary step towards analyzing and optimizing performance
of a telecommunication service. With an Mobile Broadband (MBB) network,
the measurement process has not only to track the network’s Quality of Service (QoS)
features but also to asses a user’s perspective about its service performance. The later
requirement leads to “user-side measurements” which assist in discovery of performance
issues that makes a user of a service unsatisfied and finally switch to another
network.
User-side measurements also serve as first-hand survey of the problem domain. In
this thesis, we exhibit the potential in the measurements collected at network edge by
considering two well-known approaches namely crowdsourced and distributed testbed-based
measurements. Primary focus is on exploiting crowdsourced measurements
while dealing with the challenges associated with it. These challenges consist of differences
in sampling densities at different parts of the region, skewed and non-uniform
measurement layouts, inaccuracy in sampling locations, differences in RSS readings
due to device-diversity and other non-ideal measurement sampling characteristics. In
presence of heterogeneous characteristics of the user-side measurements we propose
how to accurately detect mobile coverage holes, to devise sample selection process
so to generate a reliable radio map with reduced sample cost, and to identify cellular
infrastructure at places where the information is not public. Finally, the thesis unveils
potential of a distributed measurement test-bed in retrieving performance features
from domains including user’s context, service content and network features, and understanding
impact from these features upon the MBB service at the application layer.
By taking web-browsing as a case study, it further presents an objective web-browsing
Quality of Experience (QoE) model
