CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iphoneumts
luksmir
luksmir

Reputation: 3154

How to retrieve signal quality measures in iPhone?

In particular I would like to retrieve:

1. RSSI (received signal strength indicator)
2. RSCP (signal level), 
3. SC (Scrambling Code) and 
4. EcNo (Signal To Noise Ratio)

Which API function from iPhone SDK can help me to retrieve these values.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2515

Answers (1)

user1725145
user1725145

Reputation: 4042

Further to your comment above, there is also a GetSignalStrength function referenced among the private functions here.

But if you use one of these GetSignalStrength functions how do you know what you are really getting?

I can't find any documentation, but I would question the assumption that it will always be RSSI.
There is no standard for calculating the number of bars that are shown on a screen. However, there is a standard for calculating the network strength, when the mobile phone decides whether or not to move over to another cell.

For GSM, this standard is RSSI.
For UMTS, it is CPICH RSCP.
For LTE, it is RSRP.

Therefore, if you have 1 single function, that purports to return RSSI in all cases, I ask myself whether it will actually return RSCP when on a UMTS network, and RSRP when on an LTE network. In other words, is it a fudge that over-simplifies the true case?

The 3GPP AT command AT+CESQ (defined here) retrieves network strength. It has parameters that allow for any of the three network types, and you would expect that if you are currently registered on a UMTS cell (for example), that it would return UMTS parameters only. But I can't see any evidence of an equivalent way to get all the data across iPhone APIs.

The next obvious question to ask would be "Can I use that AT command on the iPhone?" Someone has asked that on StackOverflow here. I don't know if AT+CESQ is supported on the iPhone.

Upvotes: 2

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