Characterization of mobile phone localization errors with OpenCellID data

We examine the publicly available OpenCellID database for the purpose of estimating the position of mobile devices along with the positioning accuracy in any given geographic region. We present a method coping with typical distortions and artifacts in the data to compute robust estimates of cell positions and localization error distributions. Applying the method to analyze different regions and mobile networks reveals that the localization errors follow a fat-tailed distribution with similar shapes and properties. We experimentally validate the approach using an independent set of GPS and cell ID data collected by 250 individuals over a period of several weeks. The localization error estimated from OpenCellID data agrees well with the experimental error distribution. While there are significant differences between urban and rural areas, we show that there is only a weak correlation between antenna density and empirical localization errors.