Signal power pattern-based location detection and cell placement

Systems and methods identify placement areas for small cells in a macro cell network environment. A network device collects user equipment (UE) received signal strength measurements for wireless access stations concurrently visible to one or more UE devices and designates signature areas based on groupings of the concurrently visible wireless access stations. The network device identifies time intervals with high RAN usage; extracts, from network data for the identified time intervals, traffic data for each signature area over incremental periods and a number of concurrent UEs for each signature area over the incremental periods. The network device ranks the signature areas based on the extracted uplink traffic and the extracted number of concurrent UEs; and selects a target signature area for small cell placement from the ranked signature areas.