A hexagon is an effective way to represent data related to circular wave propagation, such as cell tower strength or noise pollution. Closely approximating circles, hexagons include edge data better than if rectangles were used. Hexagons also fit together well across a space.
Location Intelligence SDK for Big Data provides API for assigning locations to hexagons and aggregating the data in the hexagons for further analysis. The com.pb.hadoop.core.hex package contains classes for working with hexagons and retrieving information about them. Refer to Geohash Aggregation for details about using the API.
The API provides an interface that assigns a hexagon and ID to each location and that ID is used to aggregate the data associated with the hexagon.
One important hexagon parameter is the hexagon level. This, along with the longitude and latitude of a record, is used to get the hexagon or its ID for the location.
The hexagon level refers to a hierarchy of hexagons that divide the earth's surface. Level 1 refers to the whole earth. Subsequent levels divide the previous level evenly into smaller units. The smaller the number, the higher the level and the larger the hexagon size. These hexagons form a fixed network with each hexagon having a specific unique identifier (ID).
Location Intelligence SDK for Big Data supports Levels 1 through 11, with level 9 as the default. Level 9 consists of hexagons with an edge distance of approximately 56 meters at the equator. It will generate each hexagon with a unique and consistent ID at a given level for the same longitude or latitude.