Which app do you use to scan/debug GSM/CDMA cellular tower signal strength?

Summary of the freebie app selected after a few days of testing.

I've dumped the freeware version of Network Signal Info because it kept hanging, and opted to use as my primary real-time app "Network Cell Info Lite" (The best logging app was NetMonitor).

One nice thing about Network Signal Info payware is that it reports not only the current (aka registered) cell, but also the neighbor cell strengths.

Here are some screenshots of today's scan to help you see what it reports.

The good news is that I've brought my signal strength in the mountains, miles from the nearest T-Mobile tower, up from around minus ninety to minus one hundred decibels to consistently better than minus fifty-five to minus sixty-five decibels (which is astounding!).

Here are the results of a scan this morning from my new "gsm" folder:

In this scan are the unique cell tower identification numbers:

The second tab shows the ever-changing raw data in text format:

While the third tab shows a time-sequence graph showing consistency:

There are multiple plots of multiple types of signal strengths:

And a quick table of DATA ON/OFF connection percentage statistics:

You can export the entire database in multiple file formats:

And there is a nice summary page of the device & sim card information:

I may end up getting the payware if I can't find a freeware app that reports the neighbor cell strengths, which would also be useful information.

But there are plenty of freeware apps to explore, e.g., this MIT app:

This is a question and initial observation for Jeff Liebermann.

QUESTION: Does a cellular booster propagate the original cell tower identification? (Or does the boosted signal have its own cell tower identification number?)

OBSERVATION:

1. I can range my cellular signal strength by almost half a million times:
   formatting link

1. I ran an experiment, starting with a stead very good signal strength:
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2. Then I unplugged, one by one, the two micro towers in my house:
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Interestingly, when I unplugged the router-connected micro tower, I could see the unique cell tower ID change immediately to a set of cell towers that are known to be within a few miles of me.

Yet, when I unplugged the cellular booster, the signal dropped, but the cell towers simply went to a much larger set of cell towers, some of which are known to be ten or fifteen miles away. However, I could still see the set of towers in the prior step in the makeup.

My initial assumption (which needs to be tested) is two fold: a. It seems the router-connected micro tower has its own unique cell id. b. It seems the booster may simply propagate the "real" cell tower cell id.

Does that make sense?

I haven never cared to check. If I unplug the t-mbile cellspot, my signal in the basement drops significantly and I lose calls.

I don't care which tower or micro tower I am connected to.

So? Who cares?

That's all that matters.

--
The real American folksong is a rag -- a mental jag A rhythmic tone for 
the chronic blues

You keep thinking of an Android App. This is a hardware based direction finder that has a built in computah to do the number crunching. No smartphone or Android gizmo involved. Therefore, I won't be selling apps on the Play Store.

"Google Play app revenue up 82% in Q4 2016, 60% growth for the App Store" Google Play store collected $3.3Billion in revenue. Last year, the split was 70% Google and 30% developer. Therefore the developers collected about: $3.3 billion / 0.7 * 0.3 = $1.4 billion This year, the split is 85% Google and 15% developer, which indicates that Google is getting greedy, developers were making to much money, or both.

Blundering onward, the Play store has 2.6 million apps available. About half are free, so that's 1.3 million apps. Average revenue per app would be: $1.4 billion revenue / 1.3 million apps = $1,100 revenue/app/year Not enough to support product development.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

I dialed #878# and got: "Welcome to Verizon Wireless. Your call cannot be completed as dialed..."

Nice article. I think there is a way of extracting the sector but I don't know what it might be and am too lazy to work it out right now. My leaky roof and irate customers come first.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

the average isn't what matters. a quality app can be *very* profitable.

Nice app, but it does NOT show the lat-long of the local Verizon cell site. See attached screen grab: Celltracker for Android 5.0 on a Moto G v1 phone running Android 5.1. Note from the screengrab that the GPS is on and running. The "WIFI Lat-Long" is the location of my house, not the local cell site. I don't know where my Lat-Long came from (probably Google Maps database).

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

So can a lottery ticket, and it's easier to develop. Cheers, -- tlvp

--
Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP.

Why me?

By "booster" are you referring to a bi-directional amplifier like products from Wilson: or Wi-Ex (zBoost)? I so, they repeat exactly the original signals both incoming and outgoing. What you hear is the tower ID. The device does not generate any new data or belch a new tower ID.

However, if you're referring to a Femtocell or similar internet connected microcellular device, the answer is yes, they do have their own unique ID.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

How far away do you think the strongest (or nearest) T-mobile cell tower is located from your test location? Any possibility that one of your neighbors might have a T-mobile microcell box that you're hearing? I'm suspicious of the rather strong tower signal.

Back of the envelope calculation: +27dBm Estimated transmit power from the cell site +10dB My guess of the panel antenna gain -53dBm Receive signal level from your test.

Path loss = 27 + 10 + 53 = 90dB Calculating the distance where the path loss would be -90dB at 700MHz: is about 0.7 miles or about 4,000 ft. The cell tower would need to be rather close to your location for that to work. Like I said, I'm suspicious of what you're measuring.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Certainly, technically competetent iOS users have tried over the years...

Even iOS app developers have tried...

What do you know that they don't know?

You are perfectly correct in that simply unplugging a single micro tower will likely cause the signal strength to "fluctuate".

The signal strength, however, can easily be similar since it fluctuates normally anyway, e.g., all my neighbors also have micro towers (basically everyone has them out here).

Worse, when I unplug my booster, it takes about fifteen minutes for the cell signal to set itself up, and, even then, it seems that the booster simply "passes through" the cell tower ID it is boosting (I need to research that further though). So, unplugging it in order to figure out if I'm connected to it, is problematic.

However far worse than that, when I unplug my router-connected micro tower, it takes multiple hours for the thing to set itself up. T-Mobile says that it can take up to two hours, but I found out that it takes even longer than that, as last night I literally fell asleep before the thing started taking on my cell phone.

I had to look at the log file in the morning.

BTW, for Jeff Liebermann, I found another app that logs the connections, so, that's three apps which log all the towers connected to, only one of which (NetMonitor) allows you to modify how that log appears (which is a nice feature) to the user in real time.

Some logs save as text, others as CSV, so I'll write up separately for you and others to benefit, which apps were best for logging the cell tower IDs.

Most people don't care which tower they're connected to; however, if they were debugging their connection, they'd start to care.

In my case, T-Mobile only allows one device, which is what I found out when the second device tried to use the same 911 address as the first device, so, they "may" ask for one of the devices back (I had asked for a third device, but that is currently out of the question).

If I have to give one device back, it is helpful to know which device worked best, and for that, waiting two or more hours between tests is crazy when I can just look at the unique cell id of the router-based device to tell if that's what I'm connecting to.

If my good signal strength is actually due to my neighbor's micro tower, how would I know?

If I have to send back one device to T-Mobile, which device would I send back?

Not really. If T-Mobile wants one of their devices back, which one do I give them?

and have succeeded:

whooosh.

Thanks Jeff for installing that app, which isn't on F-Droid or Google Play, so we both took a risk in doing so (I'm not sure how to ameliorate that risk, but that's the topic of a different Android thread).

I've only used that MIT CellTracker for a day, so take everything below with a grain of salt but look at this screenshot first:

That MIT CellTracker app does appear to list two GPS locations:

1. Where you are
2. Where the connected tower is

That first GPS location it probably gets from our GPS receivers, while the second GPS (which it calls "NMAP") location is likely from a lookup database.

Sometimes it says "NMAP NOT FOUND" as your photo shows, but other times it says "NMAP" and then the GPS location and height of the tower in meters.

What I don't like about this MIT CellTracker is that it reports signal strength in ASU and not in Decibels (yes, I know, it can be converted).

However, what I like about this MIT CellTracker non-Google-Play app is I can see, visually, the documented cell towers bouncing around, even when I use my signal booster micro tower.

Here's an edited example of what a user might see of that bouncing:

I'm on Android 4.3 Samsung Galaxy S3, T-Mobile, in the boonies near you.

After two days, I've whittled down the good freeware to 4 applications:

Yosemite West.

I looked at the maps for all four carriers for that area. Only Verizon has coverage there. Remember, this area used to be served by a local carrier, Golden State Cellular, which did a very good job of covering remote areas. Verizon bought them. T-Mobile has no coverage in Yosemite, not even in Yosemite Valley, and does not allow roaming. Sprint roams onto Verizon. AT&T has native coverage in Yosemite Valley. Oddly, the AT&T map shows two small patches of coverage.

Yosemite West is technically just outside the park boundary but the only access is from within the park. There are a lot of rental houses and condominiums in that community so it's a popular area for lodging, especially in the winter since it's much closer to the downhill ski area and the majority of XC and snowshoe trails, than Yosemite Valley, Wawona, or Fish Camp.

Throughout California, once you leave the urban and suburban areas, you definitely want to have at least an AT&T phone, and preferably a Verizon phone. Ditto for Oregon. We were up in Bend and out in the area west of town at Tumalo Falls, and there was only Verizon coverage (probably also U.S. Cellular coverage). T-Mobile coverage is very spotty. Part of the problem of course is the PCS frequencies need a lot more towers to cover the same area as the cellular frequencies. Another advantage of Verizon is that their using CDMA which is more robust and has greater range.

It's MMAP, not NMAP. MMAP (Mobile Message Access Protocol) is a protocol for sending SMS messages over the internet:

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Oooops. My eyes! They suck! That's the main reason I wish the iOS iPads could do some of this stuff. I can't *see* the little screen on my S3!

Thanks. I appreciate the correction.

Another thing I appreciate is that you researched the NetMonitor app, which does logs *better* than all the other apps did! a. NetMonitor logs are the most customizable

b. GSM Signal Monitoring has great csv logs b. CellTracker logs manually (by pressing the blue arrows)

They all do logs differently though; but what I like about NetMonitor logs is that you can *change* how the site appears in the real-time log.

So, for example, if a site shows up in NetMonitor originally as:

12345 54321 6789 California, USA, Santa Cruz, CA 95060

You can change that to something that makes sense to you, such as:

12345 54321 6789 1555 Soquel Dr. tower, north facing alpha sector

Or even just the one line:

1555 Soquel Dr. tower, north facing alpha sector

And, in all subsequent logs (real time or post mortem), it will show up that way for you (or so it seems) with an asterisk in front (it seems).

In summary, all three apps listed above do logs differently, but the app you suggested for logging does them the best because they're just a bunch of numbers if you can't change them to indicate something more meaningful to you (such as the sector or the street location) in real time.

I got a similar message, but for T-Mobile (your call cannot be completed as dialed, or something like that). But I didn't know if it was just T-Mobile or not.

Thanks for running that test for Verizon.

Speaking of leaky roofs, I can't believe the rain we've been having! I am sick and tired of rain, mudslides, & road closures near the summit! We're getting a windy storm tomorrow too! (Brace yourself!).

I have completed my initial tests on the Android free apps though. I know I'm done with the first phase when I've uninstalled all the apps that irk me.

I'm left with these four, each of which does something nice that the others don't do as well.

While some of these apps do wifi scanning, I keep a separate folder for the best freeware wifi scanners, as shown below:

If folks want to save time, you can't go wrong loading just one or more of those four best freeware apps (in my tests anyway) for cellular debugging.

Network Cell Info Lite, version 3.30:

Netmonitor, version 1.2.15:

MIT CellTracker:

GSM Signal Monitoring, version 4.02:

You'll also want this, but I put it in my WiFi folder instead: WiGle WiFi Wardriving (which also reports cellular towers):

Unfortunately, the freeware version of Network Signal Info crashed a lot so I uninstalled it, but if it works for you, it's also very good. Network Signal Info, version 3.63.01:

If you want log files, you are limited to these three, in order: a. NetMonitor logs are the most customizable

b. GSM Signal Monitoring has great csv logs b. CellTracker logs manually (by pressing the blue arrows)

As always, I hope these detailed summaries and research and tests help others now, and in the future. Of course, if you have improvements, please share!

I've seen those pictures before since they were in the references I already cited.

Where is the unique cell ID in those pictures?

There is only one "cell id" and it's simply the number 388, which isn't a unique cell id in any sense of the word.

What do you know that nobody else on iOS knows?