Advanced Geographic

Information Systems
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Lab 3

Visibility Analysis of Cell Towers

By Austin Gates
 Introduction
As cell phone use and reliance becomes more prominent in today’s society, the
importance of the towers that power these devices also increases. The phones are no
longer a simple means of communication, but is now a tool with thousands of different
applications. Therefore, there are a plethora of reasons for knowing the location of cell
phone towers and understanding their range..
Procedures and Results
Given the $30,000 budget, the options for coverage improvement are limited.
Currently, Los Angeles County contains 27 Licensed Cell Towers providing cellular
coverage to 56.97% of the county or 5945 sq km. This paper will review three methods
to increasing the existing county coverage: increasing tower height, increasing tower
range, or adding three additional towers.
The first step to this analysis was to map out the existing coverage. The Federal
Communications Commision provides updated data to the location of all licensed and
application cell towers in the form of a database file. Once the file was obtained, the
next step was to scrub the data, removing unnecessary fields and properly labeling
required fields. Coordinates, base elevation, and tower height were the most important
fields to focus on. Next was to export the file as a CSV so that it was able to be loaded
into ArcMap and placed at points using the coordinates. Adding the CA county shapefile
gave some reference to the points. A 30 km buffer around Los Angeles county was
used to select all the towers within and near Los Angeles County that had the capability
to provide coverage to Los Angeles County. The next step was to download DEM tiles
from USGS that covered the entire region of interest, merge the tiles into one DEM, and
resample the pixels to 90 m in order to facilitate the visibility tool. After doing so, the
data preparation was complete.
The final step was to run the visibility tool four separate times: once for the
current coverage, and three times for the proposed improvements. Each time the input
parameters were as follows: Surface Offset - 1.755m (human height), Observer
elevation - tower base elevation, Observer offset - tower height, outer radius - 30,000m.
The variables for the proposed improvements were: a 10m increase to tower height, a
5km increase to tower range (outer radius), and adding three additional towers. After
completing the four visibilities, converting each raster to a polygon shapefile, dissolving
the polygons by number of towers in range, and generating statistics for each situation,
this paper found increasing tower range by 5km provided the largest range increase by
about .5%.
Current Coverage 10m Height Increase 5km Range Increase 3 Additional Towers

56.97% 58.39% 60.42% 59.93%

While the 5km increase provides the largest increase in coverage,

telecommunication companies may want to consider the three additional towers
improvement at well. This analysis found that certain urban areas such as Downtown
Los Angeles, East Los Angeles, and Pomona lacked a large amount of coverage. While
the 5km increase would improve the county as a whole, it may be more useful to focus
on areas that need the coverage the most instead of rural areas.
 Projected Cell Tower Coverage

Figure 1. Current Cell Tower Coverage.

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Figure 2. Projected: Increase Height by 10 m.
Percent Coverage
Coverage Existing Tower Fig 1. 5945 Sq Km or Fig 2. 6093 Sq Km or
56.97 % 58.39 %
Data Sources: USGS Elevation Products, UCLA GIS Geoportal, FCC Database

No Coverage Proposed Tower Fig 3. 6305 Sq Km or Fig 4. 6190 Sq Km or

60.42 % 59.93 %

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Figure 3. Projected: Increase Range by 5 km. Figure 4. Projected: Add 3 Towers.
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0 20 40 80 Kilometers
NAD 1983 UTM Zone 11N Cartography by Austin Gates
 Recommended Coverage Improvement

Cartography by Austin Gates

Proposed: Increase Cell Tower Range by 5 kilometers.

5
Legend

NAD 1983 UTM Zone 11N

No Coverage
Coverage
Max Coverage
Cell Tower
CA County 0 12.5 25 50 Kilometers

39.6%

60.4%

Data Sources: FCC Database, UCLA GIS Geoportal, USGS Elevation Projects