RF Signal Tracker

The hand held, ad-hoc drive test app for the RF engineer on the go!

RF Signal Tracker is an engineering application for doing impromptu hand-held drive-tests with your Android phone. You can monitor the RF and WiFi signal strength as seen by the device as well as WiFi hotspots, describe a cell site's zone of coverage, identify changes in technology and handover points, and save and playback that data. Site locations can be loaded into a database via a CSV file or by long-pressing the map on a location to manually insert the site to the database. While many of the phone stats in the app can be displayed on the phone already (go to Settings -> About -> Status to see them). The advantage of this app is you can then map, record, analyze, and share that data in a meaningful way.

App features:

- Monitor data traffic bytes.

- XY Chart of RF and WiFi signal strength over time.

- Voice notification of signal strength & technology changes, handovers, open hotspots, and more!

- Insert notes into the RF data collected. Notes can be viewed & edited in Big Picture

- 'Drive Mode' screen showing just RSSI, Cell ID, and technology to view while driving

- Localized for French, Spanish (thank you Augusto!), Portuguese, and German.

- Map and record your color-coded RF signal strength as you travel.

- Wardriving. Collect WiFi access points and list mobile location at the strongest signal.

- Users can redefine site locations on the map.

- Playback, pause, jump to any part of recorded data.

- Share collected data and Maps with Twitter, Facebook, whatever you can share with.

- Sector coverage zones describing sector orientation and beamwidth.

- Sound and Vibration notification on handover.

- User-defined sites can be exported or imported for later use.

- A limited number of serving cells can be located through Google, OpenCellID.

- All sites located through Google or OpenCellID saved to a local database.

- Export recorded data to XML, KML (Google Earth), or CSV files.

- Import older recorded data for playback.

- Roaming and data states, data activity, CGI.

- WiFi MAC address, BSSID, supplicant state.

- WiFi network access points identified.

- EIRP/ERP and Free Space Loss calculators

- Big picture of entire drive test or site survey

- Auto-shutoff at minimum battery level set by the user

- Adjust GPS power settings

- App to SD card

*** Please keep those bug reports coming! If you crash and are given the option, please send in the report. I read them all. Or you can email directly at [email protected]

Known Issues:

- If a site appears off the coast of Africa it means that you are using Google's location service or OpenCellID and they cannot determine that cell's location (so it returns the location 0 deg Lat, 0 deg Lon). A new feature for version 2.2.9 is the ability to define your own site locations (add, move or remove) by pressing a spot on the map or a site icon. Users can do their own site surveys as they travel. This is a workaround for those who do not have access to site location data -- unless you are an engineer for a carrier, you won't have access to this data since site locations are generally considered proprietary.

- Background recording, where you exit the app after you start recording, will not register signal strength changes if the phone is in sleep mode (screen is blank). This is a "bug" in Android not the app. If the phone is not allowed to sleep, background recording is possible.

- BER, EVDO, SNR & Ec/Io may display -1. This is the number the Android OS is sending, sorry.

- The app is optimized for GSM service. CDMA devices are not completely supported. This is due to the lack of a CDMA phone (and contract) on my part, not anything specific to the technology. So if you have a CDMA phone be aware it has not been tested by me.

- Please remember you are using a phone, not a laptop. If you try to record hours worth of data, and/or play it back, unexpected things may happen.