Skip to content

Hardware and Firmware : What is Cellular Modem Signal Strength?

Updated 

Answer

The value of this status data is the absolute modem signal strength, measured in dBm.

The modem will report its current signal strength in -dBm, for example, -110.20 dBm. The GO firmware rounds this to an integer and takes the absolute value, so the corresponding 3426 log would be 110.

The "lower" the number the stronger the signal. For example, a 3426 log of 98 is stronger than 101.



Additional Notes

Depending on what network the modem is connected to, the signal strength is measured in a different way. For example, a 4G signal strength of 110 is average. However, for the 3G network, 110 is extremely weak, and you're most likely going to see something in the range of 70-90 (which is extremely strong for 4G).

Related Questions

We have added Radio Access Technology (RAT) to indicate which network the device is registered to.Because of this, it is currently not beingdisplaying correctly in MyGeotab as the measurement is being recognized as one reading instead of two.This is being patched in 2104, to separate the reading types and correctly indicate device connection strength, as well as network type.