Mapeamento da área de cobertura do sinal 4G de telefonia móvel na cidade de Itaqui- RS

Abstract

Mobile communication systems have increasingly influenced the daily lives of the population around the world. The fourth generation (4G) of telephony technology is already being implemented in Brazil, but since the first generation, the difficulty has been the standardization of the handsets and the expansion of technology in the extremes of the national territory. Under the rules of ANATEL, the coverage of the operators' mobile telephony service must meet the prerequisite of service provision of 80% of the urban area of the municipalities. In light of the above, the signal coverage area of the telephone operators is a key issue and a powerful tool for the representation of spatial data of the present time is a Geographic Information System (GIS), which allows analysis based on the spatial information obtained. In this sense, the present work aimed at mapping the availability and intensity of the 4G signal in the city of Itaqui. The study area was the urban area of the municipality of Itaqui, which belongs to the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Visits were made to the locations of the ERBs in which their locations were confirmed with a geodetic coordinate trace of the same with GNSS RTK device. The collection of the coverage points was performed through the signal tracing promoted by 4G cell phones, considering that the signal of real interest for this research is the one distributed directly to the population, for later insertion of the data in the GIS. Signal tests were performed for the four operators with Radio-base Stations ERBs operating in the city, for this work denominated A, B, C and D. Data representation by IDW interpolation and later processing was performed in ArcGIS 10.3® software. Only the C operator reached coverage greater than 80%. It was also verified that the signal coverage of all the operators presents places with little or no signal. These results allowed to identify areas of signal coverage, as well as areas in which the 4G signal should be improved.