Defining what constitutes a "cell"

General
#1

How exactly do we define a “cell” in the OpenCelliD data? I find there are many more cells than can be feasibly possible when I look at OpenCelliD data, therefore I’m wondering if my interpretation/definition is incorrect.

Background: I recently downloaded data from December 2022 and I’ve been having problems validating against truth datasets, so I was hoping for some guidance from the OpenCelliD community please.

Existing knowledge: As just one example, I know there are ~40,000 sites in the UK spread across four operators, and essentially two main networks (given site sharing).

OpenCelliD: With >1.7 million cells estimated for the UK, this would suggest more than 40 cells per site, which is clearly not correct. If I had a three-sector site I would class this as three cells, but this assumption can’t be true.

Possible interpretations:

  • Is a ‘cell’ technically classed as something else? For example, would a multi-band antenna be counted as multiple cells?
  • Does a MIMO-enabled asset (e.g. 4G, 2x2, 4x4, or in 5G, 64x64 or 128x128) begin to count as multiple cells?
  • Do we have double counting in the data?

I would very much appreciate some advice and guidance please from people who have a better understanding of this data than I do.

#2

Hi,

Thanks for your questions.

  • Is a ‘cell’ technically classed as something else? For example, would a multi-band antenna be counted as multiple cells?
  • Does a MIMO-enabled asset (e.g. 4G, 2x2, 4x4, or in 5G, 64x64 or 128x128) begin to count as multiple cells?

In the data you downloaded from OpenCelliD, each row represents an individual cell on top of a physical cell tower. Each physical tower can have multiple cells/ base stations on it. If the cell identifiers are different, it’ll be shown in our database as 2 separate cells.

Do we have double counting in the data?

No. Each row represents a separate cell. Because of the way we collect this data, we don’t know if a particular cell is out of service or has been replaced by another cell. If a certain location had 5 2G cells which were all converted to 4G, the OpenCelliD will show this as 10 cells scanned in that location.