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I am enroute to create an app that finds nearest venues. I already have another SO question on this regard.

I don't have any experience with such features, and some of the concepts are not being very obvious to me. So, I have been thinking that I am not taking things on right direction.

I have seen in number of places with both GIS and in case of mobile towers, the range is calculated in polygons. I have also been reading a bit about Haversine Formula, and it appears it does not use Polygon, it is basically two-point distance (from my understanding).

Why use Polygon for reference ?

Why is circle not used for this ?

How does Haversine formula integrate with this polygons concept ?

#Copied : Original question in SO as refered by Nate

PolyGeo
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Kishor Kundan
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    This thread is probably collecting downvotes because it seems to be based on a lack of the most basic GIS concepts - in this case the geometry types (point, line, polygon) which are explained in a GIS for beginners text. – underdark Mar 15 '13 at 06:43
  • I have already pointed that out in my question I don't have any experience with such features, and some of the concepts are not being very obvious to me. So, I have been thinking that I am not taking things on right direction. – Kishor Kundan Mar 15 '13 at 06:54
  • Cross-posted as https://stackoverflow.com/q/15330711/820534. – PolyGeo Feb 02 '22 at 09:17

2 Answers2

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No need to use Haversine Formula for mobile towers. The range is very small compared to earth's size, so it won't make a difference.

I'm not sure what you mean by "range in polygon". If you mean the serving areas of mobile towers, it's a Voronoi Diagram. The areas are polygons because the edges are equal-distance lines between adjacent towers. The signal can go (much) further, but the phone is looking for the closest tower.

Mr.Koala
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    I'm afraid tower ranges are much more complex topic than simple Voronoi diagrams. There is load balancing an all kinds of other issues to consider. – underdark Mar 15 '13 at 07:09
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You could probably get a good primer for GIS at http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/gisfiles/index.html .

edit: link (in 2022): https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business-government/tools-support/gis

til_b
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