VISUALIZATION FOR TELECOMMUNICATIONS NETWORK PLANNING

Planning for growth in a telecommunications network is a difficult and labor intensive process. In the current planning process in NYNEX, network facilities are typically represented in large relational databases. There are few tools that allow planners to visualize tile current or future state of the network represented in these databases. The data has many interesting properties: it has a temporal component, it has a geographic component, and there is rich meaning embedded in the alphanumeric strings and in the combinations of records. The volume of data, especially for metropolitan areas, is enormous. Browsing the data currently requires one to write and execute database queries, and then manually analyze the results. This work focuses on tools that allow users to quickly create various types of static and animated visualizations of network data. The current implementation uses a simple but powerful programming language to describe the data and how it maps to the desired visual representation. Using a six degree of freedom input device and a keyboard, the user can navigate through time and space in the database. The system described is implemented on a Silicon Graphics IRIS workstation.