Mobile 5.0 Wireless

So, I figure there must be some way to get the mobile 5.0 wireless
signal strength as an exact percentage, and I KNOW there is some way to
get the noise level. If anyone could help me out it would be greatly
appreciated, right now I've tried using the OpenNetCF stuff and have
gotten signal strength in other terms, just not an exact percentage,
i've also gotten the percentage in multiples of 20 from my the SDK for
my device, but I want percentage as a number 0-100% Can anyone help?

Paul
Tue Jul 18 16:12:59 CDT 2006

There's no such thing as an exact percentage. How powerful is the
transmitter? If you don't know, there's no way you can come up with a
percentage. That's why you get dB, which *is* the signal strength.
Clearly, your device has assumed a maximum transmit power for the
transmitter and is using the five cut-offs for the various signal strengths
(Low, Good, etc.), to generate a faked-up percentage. You could do the
same...

Paul T.

"DougMcKenzie" <getzce@rose-hulman.edu> wrote in message
news:1153256098.466624.42190@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> So, I figure there must be some way to get the mobile 5.0 wireless
> signal strength as an exact percentage, and I KNOW there is some way to
> get the noise level. If anyone could help me out it would be greatly
> appreciated, right now I've tried using the OpenNetCF stuff and have
> gotten signal strength in other terms, just not an exact percentage,
> i've also gotten the percentage in multiples of 20 from my the SDK for
> my device, but I want percentage as a number 0-100% Can anyone help?
>

DougMcKenzie
Wed Jul 19 10:41:26 CDT 2006

How about noise level, you wouldn't know how to get that, would you?
There is an app that came with the device that shows noise level in
dBm, but I'm not sure how they get it.

Paul
Wed Jul 19 11:04:20 CDT 2006

That's not provided via a standard interface that I've ever seen (and the
WZC interfaces are *all* undocumented, for that matter). If, on your one
device, it exists, then you'll have to use the API for that one device to
get it. I'm unsure what you're planning to use that for, however. If
you're trying to use an ordinary device with a WiFi radio in it to build a
diagnostic tool for WiFi networks, I think you're barking up the wrong
tree...

Paul T.

"DougMcKenzie" <getzce@rose-hulman.edu> wrote in message
news:1153323686.134061.245800@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
> How about noise level, you wouldn't know how to get that, would you?
> There is an app that came with the device that shows noise level in
> dBm, but I'm not sure how they get it.
>

DougMcKenzie
Wed Jul 19 12:49:49 CDT 2006


I am aware that there may be no way to get a completely precise measure
of signal strength as a percentage, just because of the nature of
wireless devices. I would however like to find a way in which I could
retrieve a percentage that is reasonably accurate. There is however,
an application running on this Symbol device running WM 5.0 that gives
me signal level, noise level, and transmit power in mW. I believe I
could use this to achieve my goal, however I can't figure out how they
get these numbers. I don't believe it to be any code done by Symbol,
since their libraries don't offer near this kind of information. I
kind of suspect it is a Microsoft thing, since it is located in the
Windows folder. If anyone knows how to get this info off of a WM 5.0
device, I would greatly appreciate your help.

Paul
Wed Jul 19 13:09:05 CDT 2006

Again, there are various transmit powers on access points, so you can't do
that unless you know what the transmit power of the AP is. You can look at
the code in OpenNETCF SDF 1.4, which I wrote much of the wireless code for
to see what dB values correspond to Excellent, Very Good, etc. and just call
"Excellent" 90% and scale the others from there. The transmit power given
by the Symbol card driver is for *that* card, not for the incoming signal's
transmit power. You can't use that (well, you can, but it would be wrong).

Symbol's driver for their wireless chip is doing it, I'm sure. There's no
standard way to get that information, defined by Microsoft for CE that I can
find, though. No, sorry, it's not a Microsoft thing; Symbol is displaying
that information. *Everything* is in the Windows folder, so you can't infer
anything from that. You'll have to ask Symbol how to get it. It might be
an OID that their wireless driver responds to or there might be an API call
provided specifically by them. There is an OID for transmit power, if you
want to query that, OID_802_11_TX_POWER_LEVEL. I have no idea what
parameters you'd pass with that or what the return value would mean, of
course. The cards that I have driver source for don't support that OID.

To summarize, there's no standard way to make it work with all WM5 devices.
For your specific device, it's OEM-dependent, so it's theoretically possible
that you can get it, with suitable documentation from Symbol.

Paul T.

"DougMcKenzie" <getzce@rose-hulman.edu> wrote in message
news:1153331388.938138.59460@m79g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
>
> I am aware that there may be no way to get a completely precise measure
> of signal strength as a percentage, just because of the nature of
> wireless devices. I would however like to find a way in which I could
> retrieve a percentage that is reasonably accurate. There is however,
> an application running on this Symbol device running WM 5.0 that gives
> me signal level, noise level, and transmit power in mW. I believe I
> could use this to achieve my goal, however I can't figure out how they
> get these numbers. I don't believe it to be any code done by Symbol,
> since their libraries don't offer near this kind of information. I
> kind of suspect it is a Microsoft thing, since it is located in the
> Windows folder. If anyone knows how to get this info off of a WM 5.0
> device, I would greatly appreciate your help.
>