Attention based multi-component spatiotemporal cross-domain neural network model for wireless cellular network traffic prediction

Wireless cellular traffic prediction is a critical issue for researchers and practitioners in the 5G/B5G field. However, it is very challenging since the wireless cellular traffic usually shows high nonlinearities and complex patterns. Most existing wireless cellular traffic prediction methods lack the abilities of modeling the dynamic spatial–temporal correlations of wireless cellular traffic data, thus cannot yield satisfactory prediction results. In order to improve the accuracy of 5G/B5G cellular network traffic prediction, an attention-based multi-component spatiotemporal cross-domain neural network model (att-MCSTCNet) is proposed, which uses Conv-LSTM or Conv-GRU for neighbor data, daily cycle data, and weekly cycle data modeling, and then assigns different weights to the three kinds of feature data through the attention layer, improves their feature extraction ability, and suppresses the feature information that interferes with the prediction time. Finally, the model is combined with timestamp feature embedding, multiple cross-domain data fusion, and jointly with other models to assist the model in traffic prediction. Experimental results show that compared with the existing models, the prediction performance of the proposed model is better. Among them, the RMSE performance of the att-MCSTCNet (Conv-LSTM) model on Sms, Call, and Internet datasets is improved by 13.70 ~ 54.96%, 10.50 ~ 28.15%, and 35.85 ~ 100.23%, respectively, compared with other existing models. The RMSE performance of the att-MCSTCNet (Conv-GRU) model on Sms, Call, and Internet datasets is about 14.56 ~ 55.82%, 12.24 ~ 29.89%, and 38.79 ~ 103.17% higher than other existing models, respectively.