Multivariate Spatio-temporal Cellular Traffic Prediction with Handover Based Clustering

Abstract

We consider an RNN-based traffic volume prediction, which is a critical problem for network slice management and resource allocation in slicing-enabled next generation cellular networks. We propose to use a novel cost function that takes SLA violations into account. Our approach is multivariate and spatio-temporal in three aspects. First, we consider the effects of several other RAN features in a cell besides the traffic volume. Second, we introduce feature vectors based on peak hours of the day and days of the week. Third, we introduce feature vectors based on incoming handover statistics from the neighboring cells. Our results show about 60% improvement over MAE-based univariate LSTM models and about 20% improvement over SLA-based univariate models. © 2022 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.