Detection and Analysis of Urban Area Hotspots Based on Cell Phone Traffic

This paper is to explore new ways to better understand urban system emphasizing on detection and analysis of urban area hotspots through cell phone traffic data. Firstly, according to the characteristics of GSM network, Voronoi cellular network is introduced to determine the service area of the base station. Then two visualization methods are discussed through analyzing the distribution of cell phone traffic data. Next, activity patterns of residents in urban areas are discussed in macro-perspective. Additionally, an algorithm to detect hotspots of urban areas is proposed, and through the usage of the algorithm, many hotspots are found, and then, some typical hotspots are analyzed. Meanwhile, an experiment is conducted based on real cell phone traffic data during the month on February 2011, covering the entire area of Kunming, China.