What's the strongest signal you've measured?

The strongest that I measured was -28 dB on US Rte 40, east of Reynoldsburg, OH. The towers were just south of the highway. Verizon CDMA 1,900 Mz, Samsung SCH A310


[The worst was -111 dB on Route 9 north of Wappinger Falls, NY.]

 

-42dB in Rosemount MN on VZW 800MHZ CDMA, but that was just playing around, give me time I will probably find better.

 

Using CellTrack ( CellTrack Link) ( a Symbian OS App which tracks cell sites and measures dB signal strength), I'm getting -77 dB on my Nokia N-Gage running on Vodafone UK (GSM 900/1800).

I'm located in the Kensington/Chelsea area of Central London. I've gotten higher readings of up to -90 dB on my N-Gage when using it on E-Plus (GSM 1800) in Germany.

 

You know...i was just going to ask this question...so ill ask another one. Whats the highest db level you can use to make a call? Also, how come my sanyo has 4 out of 4 bars, but the db level is in the high 80's?

 

Strongest so far I've gotten since putting the new version of CellTrack on my Nokia 3600 is -77, this is at my house on Forsythe Dr in Redwood Valley, CA using Cingular (well, actually it's Edge Wireless's towers, but they have a sharing agreement thing up here with them), I will try it out over the next few days as I travel around Nor Cal (Willits, Laytonville, Rio Dell, Scotia, Eureka, Arcata, McKinleyville, Blue Lake, Korblex, Hoopa, Williams, Willows, Anderson, Cottonwood, Red Bluff, Redding and Weaverville) and report back.

 

What a funny coincidence that we both got the exact same reading using CellTrack

 

Lol yeah, I just noticed that, hmm, maybe it's a sign, time to hit the lottery

 

yeah, sorry for wording that poorly. I you got my question right. I saw yesterday a db -45...standing under a sprint tower. The weakest signal ive had was -111 in my garage.

 

-46

 

Yes

But -111 was the lowest signal I have seen with a connection. Once the level reaches -115, the phone begins cycling through PCS and AMPS and then back to Cellular. If I am looking at the debug screen, it does not say "no service". But no conection is possible. This was at the bar of the Best Western on Route 9, Wappinger Falls.

 

The strongest on my Samsung SCH-411 (Verizon) was -36 dBm, with an Ec/I0 of either 03 or 02. This was on a highway in the Detroit area several years ago... could've been Southfield Fwy. (M-39) coming up on a very short Verizon monopole I've been meaning to inspect. The best Ec/I0 I've ever gotten was 01, and it was brief, while driving right past the Verizon tower in Milford, MI.

On Nextel, the strongest I saw was -38 dBm standing outside a party store in St. Clair Shores, MI. I'm 99% sure the antennas were on the side of the roof of a hotel across the road. Interestingly enough, the measured signal quality was only in the low 20s (>= 28.00 is four bars, 27.99 to about 24.00 is three, etc.) and thus the phone only read between two and three bars. Nextel phones are strange like that.

Unfortunately, there seems to be no easy way to make a Motorola V66 or even a Nokia 5190 show me measurements like that, so the T-Mobile network still has that bit of mysticism to me. Indeed, this is one of my biggest disappointments now that I've been with them for a few months. My Nokia 5165 (AT&T TDMA) only shows readings up to -55 dBm or so. I understand these phones won't display readings higher than that.

Can someone provide me with some insight as to what kinds of numbers you'd get while (stupidly) climbing an active tower? While I'm absolutely sure of the dangers of spending any amount of time perched in the middle of an active cellular antenna array, I'm not sure of the kind of numbers I'd see in field test mode. It sure wouldn't make the calls any clearer -- if anything, I'd imagine it might confuse the base station controller somewhat.

 

On Sunday I climbed the hill behind our development. The top was 620 feet (according my iQUE) which is about 400 feet higher than my house. This is no where near a tower, but the hilltop has an unobstucted few of the Edna Valley and thus clear line of sight to all the nearby towers.

I got signal strengthes between -51 and -54 dB on the hilltop.

 

I beat it the other day, I got -63 next to Ridgewood Ranch on Hwy.101 (where Seabiscuit came from, and is buried at) on the Laughlin Grade just a few miles south of Ridgewood Summit (highest elevation on Hwy.101, 1953 feet), in comparison, Verizon has NO signal there, nor does US Cellular, way to go Cingular and Edge Wireless!!

 

All hail to GSM too

 

Viva la GSM! I got back last night from a 3 day trip with my dad to do some work, we took 101 from Redwood Valley to Arcata, then 299 to Williow Creek, then 96 to Hoopa, then back to Arcata, then on 299 to Weaverville and Redding, RR Ave to Anderson, 5 to Red Bluff, 99 to Yuba City, 20 from there to Hwy.101, then on 101 to my house, and the ONLY place my Verizon phone had a signal where my Cingular didn't was a short stretch around Whiskeytown Lake, other than that, I had awesome service on my Cingular Nokia 3600, even in some EXTREMELY remote areas of the mountains! Sorry Verizon, but in Lake, Mendocino, Humboldt, Del Norte and Trinity Counties, you don't rule the roost.

 

I have a Samsung N300 how do you do a field test for that phone, any code you might have so I can give you some strong DB tests!

 

Try Steve Crow and use the steps to get into the debug menu for the N200.

Usually Samsung does not change the menu structure within a series of phones. For example: the A310 and A530 VZW phones share the same programming steps. So you can try the N200 debug menu access.

Good luck.

 

Well, with my old digital 3360 from a while ago, the weakest signal I've gotten with a reading is -115 dB in my town (and the call actually lasted for a whole 30 seconds) and the strongest signal I've ever pulled is a -54 dB in NYC (not sure where, I don't remember).

I wish I knew how to get the dB reading on my phone, does anyone know how to get into test mode on the T720? It's not the basic *3001#12345# that I'm used to on Nokia phones. Do you need some type of special SIM or something? Or is there a code for the T720 also?

 

How do you get into the test mode on a Nokia 3590???

 

Look up several posts. Steve Crow my have something.

 

We all know what we mean in this thread, but:

Those numbers in field mode are correctly expressed in dBm not dB. dBm is an absolute reference, dB is not. Saying a signal is at -54 dBm means it is 54 dB below 1 milliwatt of received power at your cell.

Expressing in dB is like your teenager saying he turned down the stereo -20dB, but your neighbors can still hear it a mile away.....its only relative.

Bobolito: I also suspect that phones have some RF overload protection in them: I doubt that the dBm meter will ever go higher then some set value.....and it may be different for various phone models. I don't recall ever seeing my Nokia's ever going as high as - 20 dBm.....do you know if this is the case?

P.S. In TDMA the Nokia display range is only -113 dBm to -51 dBm according to
TDMA field test

 

-12dbM, Verizon Wireless, on south cobb dr at gann rd, about 200 yards from their tower, A-band CDMA.

drops to around -60dDM to -77dBM at my house, in my bedroom, about 1.33 miles away

SouthernLINC is around -88dBM, according to my Motorola R2600 communications system analyzer, monitoring their 863MHz signal. They are a high site SMR, and their nearest site is in downtown Smyrna (about 3.2 mi away). Used nothing more than a 6" piece of wire for an antenna (should be a 1/2 wave at 800, a 1/4 wave on UHF)

Nextel...out of the three channels I could find doing spectrum analysis and the FCC's ULS data, they hovered around -76 to -83dBM, not sure what was coming from where (no data on the ULS under system info??)

other carriers at my home:

Sprint PCS (PCS1900) is a robust -22dBM, their tower in my backyard (practically) helps alot, before that, they were like -100dBM at best

Cingular TDMA (B band around here) measured at -58dBM, on an old Motorola Star-Tac 7790.

The only GSM I could test was T-Mobile (using an old Nokia) at -103dBM. They dont work in alot of residential atlanta though so this isn't surprising.

Metro PCS....does work any where around here. they suck.

Could not get the old Nokia to find AT&T's GSM network....know they are here....will mess with it later.

 

-40 something on Verizon. If I am pretty close to the tower. I have never seen a reading in the 30's or 20's and I have been under a Verizon tower, 200 feet away, etc. Just didn't think it'd show something that good. Of course it could have been my LG 510 or 4400. I miss field test

 

I can't find anything on the GSM protocol. For my Nokia 6340i in TDMA mode the range is -113 to -51dBm in 2 dB increments (yes, dB).

The same phone in GSM mode bottoms at -108dBm..........this morning I got -41dBm about 300 feet from a tower. It moves in 1 dB increments.

So the protocol is different.

NOTE: in GSM mode, the phone switches to TDMA around -108, but the meter will read down to -113dBm.