Predicting the Performance of Cellular Networks: A Latent-resilient Approach

Cellular service providers (CSPs) require predicting the network performance for various reasons such as analyzing the impact of planned configuration changes and large-scale events on the network. Although network configurations are widely considered as key predictors of performance, we claim that they are insufficient for accurately predicting cellular network performance. The cellular networks are impacted by unmeasured external factors (e.g., weather, called latents), therefore, the performance prediction based solely on configurations may result in confounding effects. We show that the Mobility, Access, and Traffic (MAT) metrics should be considered in addition as network performance predictors. Using a large dataset collected from a live cellular network, we validate the claim and show the benefit of using MAT metrics for accurate performance prediction.