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< UDD vs ISCI

BTS (Base Transceiver Stations) vs. GPS

May 16, 2021 in google, gps, mobile streams, mobility, xdr | 2
comments

As a simple exercise, I wanted to compare what Google knows about my
trip, versus what the phone company knows. Here's a reconstruction of
a day, Oct 19, 2020, going from home to my university and then back.
I've chosen expeditiousness over beauty, though.

[leos_oct19_traj]

The blue point to the right is my University, the one to the left is
home. The blue line is the GPS of my Google maps timeline. The red
dots are the latitude and longitude of the antennas I've connected to
during the day, and the red line is the trajectory I followed (given
the antennas I've connected to, using MovingPandas).

All in all, it's not a bad fit, but there are indeed a few kilometers
of difference between GPS and cell towers. This is somewhat worse for
shorter trips:

[leos_oct18_traj](I'll fix the x-axis at some point 

Even though the trip is reconstructed (more or less in the same way
as before), I do get to connect to far away tower (>2.7km) from where
I physically am. This means we need to be very careful and "clean up"
trajectories when working with mobile phone data!

References

  * Graser, A. (2019). MovingPandas: Efficient Structures for
    Movement Data in Python. GI_Forum - Journal of Geographic
    Information Science 2019, 1-2019, 54-68. doi:10.1553/
    giscience2019_01_s54.
  * Virtanen, P., Gommers, R., Oliphant, T.E. et al. SciPy 1.0:
    fundamental algorithms for scientific computing in Python. Nat
    Methods 17, 261-272 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/
    s41592-019-0686-2

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Tags: bts, commuting

2 comments

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Trackback link: https://leoferres.info/blog/2021/05/16/
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 1. m's avatar

    m on May 20, 2021 at 12:01 pm

    Something very important is missing here .
    The phone company has much more info about your mobile phone !
    There are a few antennas on each cell tower . Usually , more than
    one antenna knows your angle and your distance from the tower ,
    so , combining the data gives the phone company your exact
    location , and not that "cloud" you get from connecting the cell
    towers in straight lines .

    Reply

 2. x's avatar

    x on May 20, 2021 at 3:38 pm

    what m says.

    plus they could also know multiple other towers that you connect
    to, allowing full triangulation.

    Reply

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