From routine to network deployment for data offloading in metropolitan areas

This paper tackles the WiFi hotspot deployment problem in a metropolitan area by leveraging mobile users' context and content, i.e., their trajectories, scenario interactions, and traffic demands. The careful deployment of hotspots in such areas allow to maximize WiFi offloading, a viable solution to the recent boost up of mobile data consumption. Our proposed strategy considers the restrictions imposed by transportation modes to people trajectories and the space-time interaction between people and urban locations, key points for an efficient network planning. Using a real-life metropolitan trace, we show our routine-based strategy guarantees higher offload ratio than the current approach in the literature while using a realistic traffic model.