A Statistical View of a Wireless Call

A wireless call in a cellular network requires the cooperation of a cell phone or other wireless enabled device and a dynamic set of base stations, antennas, and other network elements, with control of the call changing in response to changes in signal strength and the location of the mobile. The signaling between the network and mobile needed to manage the call creates a huge amount of data, some of which is seen only by the mobile placing the call and some of which is seen only by the network. This paper describes some of the subtleties in the data and provides a statistical model for a wireless call that takes the time dependent, spatial, and multivariate nature of the call into account. An approach to estimating the model parameters online as network data are collected, which would be useful for network monitoring, is also described and applied to a set of call data obtained on an active commercial CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) network.