Spatial Stochastic Models and Metrics for the Structure of Base Stations in Cellular Networks

The spatial structure of base stations (BSs) in cellular networks plays a key role in evaluating the downlink performance. In this paper, different spatial stochastic models (the Poisson point process (PPP), the Poisson hard-core process (PHCP), the Strauss process (SP), and the perturbed triangular lattice) are used to model the structure by fitting them to the locations of BSs in real cellular networks obtained from a public database. We provide two general approaches for fitting. One is fitting by the method of maximum pseudolikelihood. As for the fitted models, it is not sufficient to distinguish them conclusively by some classical statistics. We propose the coverage probability as the criterion for the goodness-of-fit. In terms of coverage, the SP provides a better fit than the PPP and the PHCP. The other approach is fitting by the method of minimum contrast that minimizes the average squared error of the coverage probability. This way, fitted models are obtained whose coverage performance matches that of the given data set very accurately. Furthermore, we introduce a novel metric, the deployment gain, and we demonstrate how it can be used to estimate the coverage performance and average rate achieved by a data set.