Hi All,

I developing an android application and need some help computing the *signal quality* for the following network: gsm, umts (3G), and LTE (4G).

I did some research and found the following to be interested:

The EC/IO is a measure of the quality/cleanliness of the signal from the tower to the modem and indicates the signal-to noise ratio (the ratio of the received/good energy to the interference/bad energy). It is measured in decibels (dB).

I also found this http://developer.android.com/reference/android/telephony/CellSignalStrengthGsm.html for the gsm network But I am wondering which function should I use for 'signal quality' of the gsm network or maybe I should do some computation with one of these method..

Any help/guidance is appreciated!


eric007

 

or does this method getGsmBitErrorRate() from here: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/telephony/SignalStrength.html represent the signal quality?

 

I am no expert, but I have listened to a lot of bits.

There are good quality bits and bad quality bits. But, that's just because I could hear every bit.

Your bits are too fast to use "quality". Only there presence means anything.

I did not read your links, but I would guess that the bit error rate would be a excellent way to judge signal "quality" for a fast digital signal.

At least as far as the tuned receiver is concerned. Other un-tuned receivers, could disagree with that "quality" definition.

If your talking transmitter signal, "quality" is a lot more involved.

 

I am no expert, but I have listened to a lot of bits.

There are good quality bits and bad quality bits. But, that's just because I could hear every bit.

Your bits are too fast to use "quality". Only there presence means anything.

I did not read your links, but I would guess that the bit error rate would be a excellent way to judge signal "quality" for a fast digital signal.

At least as far as the tuned receiver is concerned. Other un-tuned receivers, could disagree with that "quality" definition.

If your talking transmitter signal, "quality" is a lot more involved.

Thanks for at least reply to my thread!

I am referring to the signal quality received by the phone...

 

Ok, Eric, I looked over your links. Being that most phones already have a signal strength indicator, I would suggest using the get error bit rate function.

You might want to compare it to signal strength. The graph would be interesting.

 

I can't do the math, but I can tell you it exists. I worked at a place where the signal was intentionally attenuated and the the error bits were counted to compare with the predicted number of error bits.

 

Does anybody know a function (method) that returns the signal quality for UMTS and LTE networks or how to compute it?

 

My current problem is that I still have limited knowledge of how gsm, umts, and lte networks work... once I grasp all these concepts I will be good