In a recent thread, I asked about ways to boost my cell phone reception from a fixed location. Well, I ended up building a circular waveguide antenna optimized for 1900 MHz (i.e. a “cantenna”…thanks to spingears for pointing me in the rigt direction). It seens to work pretty well…I’ve definitely improved my signal. But there’s stil room for further improvement.
Because this antenna is linearly polarized and fairly directional, it’s a little picky about aiming. I figured having my driven element oriented vertically would be best, because I thought cellular signals were vertically polarized. Well, to my surprise, it seems to work better sideways. But I can’t entirely prove it, because I don’t have fancy analysis hardware to see what my phone is seeing.
But I do have a piece of sophisticated hardware that is capable of receiving the proper band of microwave radiation and giving me feedback: my phone. I just need to enable it in a more advanced way. What I’d like is some software that would give me some high-fidelity, real-time information on my signal strength. The normal cell-phone bars are pretty much useless; since there are only four of them, the resolution is lacking. They don’t update fast enough, and there’s no sense of useful scale.
I guess I’m looking for software something like NetStumbler, which would give me that raw, live, signal strength reading, but for my GPRS signal instead of WiFi. Does such a program exist? Does WM5 even make that data available to programmers in any useful way?
Finally, if antenna aiming software doesn’t exist for WM5, is there a better way to maximize my signal…or am I stuck with trial and error?