Cambridge Digital Communications Assessment Model¶
The Cambridge Digital Communications Assessment Model (cdcam) is a decision support
tool to quantify the performance of national digital infrastructure strategies for mobile
broadband, focussing on 4G and 5G technologies.
Citations¶
- Oughton, E.J. and Frias, Z. (2017) The Cost, Coverage and Rollout Implications of 5G Infrastructure in Britain. Telecommunications Policy. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2017.07.009.
- Oughton, E.J., Z. Frias, T. Russell, D. Sicker, and D.D. Cleevely. 2018. Towards 5G: Scenario-Based Assessment of the Future Supply and Demand for Mobile Telecommunications Infrastructure. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 133 (August): 141–55. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2018.03.016.
- Oughton, E.J., Frias, Z., van der Gaast, S. and van der Berg, R. (2019) Assessing the Capacity, Coverage and Cost of 5G Infrastructure Strategies: Analysis of The Netherlands. Telematics and Informatics (January). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2019.01.003.
Statement of Need¶
Every decade a new generation of cellular technology is standardised and released. Increasingly, given the importance of the Internet of Things, Industry 4.0 and Smart Health applications, both governments and other digital ecosystem actors want to understand the costs associated with digital connectivity.
However, there are very few geospatial open-source tools to help simultaneously understand
both the engineering and cost implications of new connectivity technologies such as 5G. Hence,
cdcam has been developed to address this key research need.
Applications¶
cdcam has already been used to test the capacity, coverage and cost of 5G infrastructure in
Britain (Oughton and Frias 2018, Oughton et
al. 2018) and the Netherlands (Oughton et
al. 2019).
The model is one of several infrastructure simulation models being used in ongoing research as part of the ITRC Mistral project to analyse national infrastructure systems-of-systems, using scenarios of population change generated by simim and connected by a simulation model coupling library, smif.
Setup and configuration¶
All code for cdcam is written in Python (Python>=3.5) and has a number of dependencies. See
requirements.txt for a full list.
cdcam is available on PyPI. To install, run:
pip install cdcam
Using a virtual environment¶
To set up a virtual environment follow the code below:
python -m venv cdcam
cdcam/bin/python cdcam/bin/pip install -r requirements.txt
cdcam/bin/python cdcam/bin/pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
cdcam/bin/python cdcam/bin/pip install cdcam
cdcam/bin/python cdcam/bin/pip install pytest pytest-cov
pytest --cov-report=term --cov=cdcam tests/
Using conda¶
The recommended installation method is to use conda, which handles packages and virtual environments, along with the conda-forge channel which has a host of pre-built libraries and packages.
Create a conda environment called cdcam:
conda create --name cdcam python=3.7
Activate it (run this each time you switch projects):
conda activate cdcam
First, install optional packages:
conda install fiona shapely rtree pyproj tqdm
Then install cdcam:
pip install cdcam
Alternatively, for development purposes, clone this repository and run:
python setup.py develop
Install test/dev requirements:
conda install pytest pytest-cov
Run the tests:
pytest --cov-report=term --cov=cdcam tests/
Background and funding¶
The Cambridge Digital Communications Assessment Model has been collaboratively developed between the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford, the Networks and Operating Systems Group (NetOS) at the Cambridge Computer Laboratory, and the UK’s Digital Catapult. Research activity between 2017-2018 also took place at the Cambridge Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge.
Development has been funded by the EPSRC via (i) the Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium (EP/N017064/1) and (ii) the UK’s Digital Catapult Researcher in Residence programme.