Assessing wireless network quality

• US 20070004394A1
• Filed: 06/30/2005
• Published: 01/04/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 06/30/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Baluja, Shumeet, Crady, Mark, Chu, Michael
• Granted Patent: US 7,392,017 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/422.100
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 16/18 Network planning tools
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/00 Supervisory, monitoring or testing arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/08 Testing, supervising or monitoring using real traffic

Abstract

A method of providing information indicative of network coverage by one or more wireless service providers in a geographic area may include obtaining, at an information provider, performance indicators for a plurality of accesses to the information provider by a plurality of wireless devices. The performance indicators may be correlated with one or more network service areas. Related performance indicators may be aggregated to produce one or more aggregated performance indicators. A human-discernible representation of network performance for one or more network service areas may be produced.

Claims

1. A method of providing information indicative of network coverage by one or more wireless service providers in a geographic area, comprising:

obtaining, at an information provider, performance indicators for a plurality of accesses to the information provider by a plurality of wireless devices;

correlating the performance indicators with one or more network service areas, and aggregating related performance indicators to produce one or more aggregated performance indicators; and

producing from the aggregated performance indicators a human-discernible representation of network performance for the one or more network service areas.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the wireless device comprises a wireless personal digital assistant.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the information provider is not affiliated with the one or more wireless service providers.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the information provider is selected from the group consisting of a wireless service provider, a cellular telephone service provider, a data provider, and an application provider.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising obtaining location information associated with the wireless devices.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the location information comprises GPS location information.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the GPS location information is predicted based on previously received heading, speed and GPS location of a wireless device.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein the GPS location information is extracted from an HTTP request received by the information provider.

9. The method of claim 5, wherein the representation of network performance comprises a map showing quality of coverage for a wireless service provider over a geographic area.

10. The method of claim 5, wherein the representation of network performance comprises an animation of quality of coverage for a wireless service provider over a geographic area and over time.

11. The method of claim 5, wherein the representation of network performance comprises a graph of quality of coverage over time for a particular geographic location.

12. The method of claim 5, wherein the representation of network performance compares quality of coverage of two or more wireless networks relative to a time of day or a location.

13. The method of claim 5, wherein the representation of network performance compares reliability of two or more models of wireless devices.

14. The method of claim 5, further comprising generating instructions for improving performance of the device, and sending the instructions to the device.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the instructions comprise a direction the device should be moved to improve performance.

16. The method of claim 5, wherein the location information comprises location information obtained through a technique selected from the group consisting of terrestrial triangulation and cell identification.

17. The method of claim 5, wherein the location information is received from a wireless device and is selected from the group consisting of a particular physical location, a zip code, an intersection of two or more roads, and a location-specific query.

18. A system for providing information indicative of network coverage by one or more wireless service providers over a geographic area, the system comprising:

a service performance monitor that obtains performance indicators for a plurality of accesses to an information provider by a plurality of wireless devices;

a performance correlator that correlates the performance indicators with one or more network service areas, and aggregates related performance indicators to produce one or more aggregated performance indicators; and

a report generator that produces from the aggregated performance indicators a representation of network performance for the one or more network service areas.

19. A system for providing information indicative of network coverage by one or more wireless service providers over a geographic area, the system comprising:

a means for obtaining performance indicators for a plurality of accesses to an information provider by a plurality of wireless devices;

a performance correlator that correlates the performance indicators with one or more network service areas, and aggregates related performance indicators to produce one or more aggregated performance indicators; and

a report generator that produces from the aggregated performance indicators a text or pictorial representation of network performance for the one or more network service areas.

20. A method of providing information indicative of network coverage by one or more wireless service providers in a geographic area, comprising:

obtaining, at an information provider, performance indicators for a plurality of accesses to the information provider by a plurality of wireless devices;

obtaining, at the information provider, location information associated with each performance indicator;

correlating the performance indicators with one or more network service areas, based on the location information, and aggregating related performance indicators to produce one or more aggregated performance indicators; and

producing from the aggregated performance indicators a human-discernible representation of network performance for the one or more network service areas.