Ranplan and University of Warwick to use social media to map coverage blackspots

Ranplan Wireless has announced it is collaborating with the University of Warwick on the COCKPIT-5G project to identify wireless blackspots to support the rollout of 5G and help improve urban and rural coverage.

The project will use crowd-sourced intelligence and social media techniques, in combination with real-time natural language processing, to automatically build a database of cellular coverage blackspots in the UK.

“The aim of the project is to use customer-centric data to improve network deployment efficiency and increase user satisfaction,” said Jie Zhang, chief scientific officer at Ranplan. “The vision is for 5G wireless networks to self-regulate as this is the future of managing complex ‘on demand’ connectivity in dense environments. By being able to identify coverage blackspots means that operators can also more precisely determine where to place additional small cells to ensure quality of service and save on CAPEX.”

Back in April, the University of Warwick reported that the COCKPIT-5G project had been awarded £210,000 in funding from Innovate UK’s Geospatial Commission.