On Tue, 09 Jul 2019 09:00:56 +0100, druck wrote:

> Cell networks have far more sophisticated switching, and even they make
> what seems to be non-optimal signal strength decisions so as to reduce
> the amount of tower switching. I used to look at Open Signal map which
> showed me which tower I was connected to while travelling on the train.
> The towers we pretty regular spaced along that track, but instead of
> switching to the next soon after it became closer than the current one,
> it often used to hang on to the current one, until well past the next
> one.
>
A long time back I was on a contract at Vodafone, capturing and storing
Call Detail Records, so am aware that switching a phone to another mast
is relatively expensive in network terms. As far as I know there is only
one switching algorithm used by all the cells in a network, so it will
probably not be optimised for a phone moving at constant velocity along a
relatively slowly changing vector as it does on a train: most phones will
show a more complex movement pattern especially when you take account of
signal strength variation in a city, and under these conditions there may
well be an advantage in only switching as a phone starts to go out of
range of its current mast rather than switching as soon as it comes in
range of the next mast.


--
Martin    | martin at
Gregorie  | gregorie dot org

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