Drive Testing Engineer Means

Drive testing engineer is a method of measuring and assessing the coverage, capacity and Quality of Service (QoS) of a mobile radio network.

The technique consists of using a motor vehicle containing mobile radio network air interface measurement equipment that can detect and record a wide variety of the physical and virtual parameters of mobile cellular service in a given geographical area.

By measuring what a wireless network subscriber would experience in any specific area, wireless carriers can make directed changes to their networks that provide better coverage and service to their customers.

Drive testing requires a mobile vehicle outfitted with drive testing measurement equipment. The equipment are usually highly specialized electronic devices that interface to OEM mobile handsets. This ensures measurements are realistic and comparable to actual user experiences.

Drive test equipment typically collects data relating to the network itself, services running on the network such as voice or data services, radio frequency scanner information and GPS information to provide location logging.

The data set collected during drive testing field measurements can include information such as:

• Signal intensity
• Signal quality
• Interference
• Dropped calls
• Blocked calls
• Anomalous events
• Call statistics
• Service level statistics
• Quality of Service information
• Handover information
• Neighboring cell information
• GPS location co-ordinates

• Optimization and troubleshooting

• Optimization and troubleshooting information is more typically used to aid in finding specific problems during the rollout phases of new networks or to observe specific problems reported by consumers during the operational phase of the network lifecycle. In this mode drive testing data is used to diagnose the root cause of specific, typically localized, network issues such as dropped calls or missing neighbour cell assignments