Utilizing Geospatial Information in Cellular Data Usage for Key Location Prediction

Abstract

Previous research on the identification of key locations (e.g., home and workplace) for a user largely relies on call detail records (CDRs). Recently, cellular data usage (i.e., mobile internet) is growing rapidly and offers fine-grained insights into various human behavior patterns. In this study, we introduce a novel dataset containing both voice and mobile data usage records of mobile users. We then construct a new feature based on the geospatial distribution of cell towers connected by mobile users and employ bivariate kernel density estimation to help predict users’ key locations. The evaluation results suggest that augmented features based on both voice and mobile data usage improve the prediction precision and recall.

Keywords: cellular data usage, geospatial information, home and workplace, precision marketing, telecommunications, kernel density estimation