Base station cell id. Locating GSM base stations

nik2166 12-05-2013 23:40

Hello everyone!

The tag in the car sends signals about its location in the following form:

MCC: 250
MNC: 02
LAC: 1E7E
CID: 4F0C
PW: -73
T: 0

Motorist 13-05-2013 12:46

Given:
MCC: 250 - Russia
MNC: 02 - Megaphone
LAC: 1E7E - location area
CID: 4F0C - station number

Let's try to apply magic:
("status": "ok", "balance": 17, "lat": 59.88155, "lon": 30.37293, "cid": "20236", "lac": "7806", "mnc": "02" , "mcc": "592")

The tower was found, it remains to find a typewriter. In the worst case, you will have to climb a circle with a radius of a couple of kilometers. But this is already without me.

TWU55 13-05-2013 10:29

Yes, more details please, Car enthusiast?

Motorist 13-05-2013 18:25

In fact, I used this site here. There is an unrealistic number of stations around the world.
http://ayauto.in/aypi/index.php/site/page?view=api
You can get a one-time token by mail, you can register and have 20 definitions per day for free. Only the data needs to be converted from hexadecimal to decimal.

jacker2000 13-05-2013 18:42

Hello everyone!
Tell me, is it possible to determine the real location of the base station of the cellular network (MegaFon, if that) according to the data provided online?
The tag in the car sends signals about its location in the following form:

MCC: 250
MNC: 02
LAC: 1E7E
CID: 4F0C
PW: -73
T: 0

That is, as I understand it, it points to the base station closest to itself.
I did not find it in Google ... maybe I was looking in the wrong place ((

tell me how did you get the initial data?
I saw something like this when I entered the technical menu on my Siemens M35 back in 2003

Motorist 13-05-2013 19:08

When we hung up a directional antenna, we used Netmonitor for android.
https://play.google.com/store/...etmonitor&hl=ru
It should have analogues for all platforms.

nik2166 14-05-2013 12:34

quote: tell me how did you get the initial data?

nik2166 14-05-2013 12:40

That's what you need!

jacker2000 14-05-2013 15:30

quote: Originally posted by nik2166:

excellent, I was looking for this link !!!
entered the coordinates of the BS - and here you have a link to Yandex-maps !!!
That's what you need!

Tell me, where did you get the data from?

nik2166 14-05-2013 21:52

As I say, the SIM card is sealed in the anti-theft device, tied to my phone.
I am sending SMS with the team - he writes me the coordinates of the nearest BS in the return SMS

BlackMoon 15-05-2013 11:15

This data can be obtained by a netmonitor in mobile phones (which exactly, dig in the network) or GSM-modules.

In trackers / signaling, this data is transmitted if it is not possible to determine the coordinates by GPS.

unname22 19-06-2013 10:02

Don't be hopeful.
The megaphone is such a mess.
I just worked for their contractors for a while. This is zvizdets, we were looking for these bases, all infa is given out, but they themselves do not really know where they have what.
The site may well be located a couple of blocks from the designated location. And this happened more than once.

Tower detection is not a criminal activity, but a fairly common task in remote regions and villages where the quality of coverage is poor. How to understand why it takes better from this post than from that gate? The following tools and sites can help you navigate.

Of the English-language services, perhaps the best is opensignal.com, where you can choose the operator and the required location. The map does not display towers, but shows coverage areas. Of the Russians, I can recommend netmonitor.ru - its database contains a lot of information about operator towers.

Some applications for Android are also interesting. For example, OpenSignal displays a map of cell towers and Wi-Fi points (places with poor connections are also marked on the map), has a built-in compass and a speed checker.

Another interesting utility is Netmonitor. It can monitor GSM and CDMA networks, shows information about the signal level, contains a database of cell towers, supports devices with multiple SIM cards, and can also keep a log in CLF or KLM format.

Please note that Netmonitor has limitations when working on devices from some manufacturers. On smartphones Motorola, LG, Samsung, Acer and Huawei, the list of neighbors may be empty, and on Samsung devices, moreover, the signal strength may not be displayed.

I would also recommend the GSM Signal Monitoring application, which allows you to work with GSM, UMTS and LTE networks. It displays the change in signal strength on the graph and shows the neighboring cells (only in GSM networks). There is a data rate monitor and the ability to track connection status, connection standard, cell and current zone identifiers (LAC / RNC / TAC) and received signal strength (RSSI, as well as RSRP for LTE).

Knowing the data of the base station, you can punch it through the xinit.ru website and get information about its location. In large cities, it does not hurt to try to find folk maps with the location of the towers, but you should understand that the towers belong to different operators. Plus, base stations are installed not only on poles, but also on rooftops.

Published 22.04.2015 by Johhny

One of the first questions that arises when you are connecting to the mobile Internet is the question of the location of the base station of the operator of your choice in order to point your antenna in its direction. It is advisable to find out the exact coordinates of the tower and the relief to it in order to understand whether it makes sense to use the tower to receive a signal. Services and various android applications do not give the exact coordinates of the BS, tk. based on measurements and their mathematical processing. In this case, the error can reach several kilometers.

Often, the tower coordinates can be established by studying operator coverage maps, terrain, Google and Yandex maps, as well as the opportunities they provide to view photographs and panoramas of the studied area. I must say that BS on the map can not always be found. There may be many reasons for this - the maps are outdated, the BS is located on the roof of the building and is simply not visible on the map, the tower is small, etc.

BS parameters are unknown. Kostroma region

Given: coordinates 57.564243, 41.08345, the village of Kuzminka in the Kostroma region.
The task is to determine the exact coordinates of the BS to which you can connect to receive a 3G signal. We will consider the search for BS in steps.

Step 1. Analysis of coverage maps.

We will use the well-known service yota-faq.ru/yota-zone-map/, which presents the coverage areas of four operators, except for Beeline. I note here that the Beeline coverage presented on their off-site is almost impossible to use - as a rule, a continuous coverage is shown there, which does not take into account the terrain. The most interesting from the point of view of connection are the coverage areas of Megafon and MTS. You can see this for yourself by opening the service, pasting coordinates into the search bar and switching operators.

Megaphone coverage area:

MTS coverage area:

From the analysis of the Megafon coverage area, we see that 3G BSs are most likely located in the directions of Krasnoe, Sukhonogovo, Lapino (on this scale, Lapino's map is not visible, it is southwest, approximately where the P-600 mark is).

The coverage area of ​​MTS is more interesting. Here we also consider the direction to Sukhonogovo and Krasnoe. But Red is a more interesting option, because there is 4G coverage. The distance to Krasny is about 10 km, if MTS distributes 4G at a frequency of 1800 MHz, that is, there is every chance to establish communication with one of the MTS BSs located in this settlement.

Step 2. Study of the terrain.

The relief up to Red is not easy, but quite penetrable. To assess the relief, we will use the service https://airlink.ubnt.com. If this is your first time on this site, then first you will need to go through a free registration procedure. After opening the service, scroll the slider down to the end and enter the initial data in the lower right corner, as shown in the following figure.

I usually first enter the same coordinates in both windows, and then I start to move the purple label to the points of interest to me, where the BS can presumably be located. In this case, the relief, line of sight and the approximate size of the Fresnel zone are displayed in the upper right corner of the screen.

For our coordinates, we have:

Checking the relief in other "suspicious" directions showed that the relief there is much worse. Thus, we decided on the direction and at the same time chose the operator - MTS.

Step 3. Clarification of our choice using the "Quality of Communication" service

The service opens at the following address https://geo.minsvyaz.ru. In the search line, we set the name of the village Kuzminka, switch the view from 4 windows to one-window mode, scale the map to a convenient size and get for the MTS operator:

We see that our choice is correct, because according to the measurement database of users of this service, Krasniy does indeed have good 4G coverage from MTS.

Let's zoom in on this map and see that the most likely location of the tower (or towers) is Sovetskaya and Okruzhnaya streets.

Step 4. Explore the area using Google and Yandex maps.

These maps have a useful tool for exploring the area - panoramas and photographs of the area. Google maps have much more panoramas of various areas than Yandex, so you often have to use Google when looking at panoramas. On the other hand, Yandex has more photos taken in different places, and besides, Yandex maps are usually more relevant for Russia. In this regard, you have to use both services. Google maps and services are used here.

So, we found out that we need to consider two streets in Krasnoye in search of BS. We launch Google maps, enter the approximate coordinates of st. Sovetskaya (or street name) and we get:

Street view is on here, the street we need is highlighted in blue on the map. You can get a panorama of the street by clicking the mouse anywhere on the blue line. Moving in this way along the street to the north, we find the first BS near the post office:

And finally, not far from the intersection of Sovetskaya and Okruzhnaya streets, a third tower is discovered, the highest one found:

We return to the map and find the shadow of this tower in the place where the photo points:

We mark this place on the map with the mouse and get the exact coordinates of the BS:

Let's summarize some of the results of our research. With the help of information obtained from analysis of coverage areas, custom measurements of signal strength in the area of ​​interest to us, and study of the area from photographs and panoramas, we were able to find three base stations and their exact coordinates in a city that we have never been to. The question of which operator the found BS belongs to remains open, since the answer to it requires additional research. The easiest way is to drive along the route and measure the BS parameters using some android application that gives MNC, MCC and signal strength. Some of these applications are presented here.

The BS parameters are known. Suburb of Penza

As you know, a number of android applications, as well as the HiLink-type modem interface and the MDMA program can give BS parameters, with the help of which known services and applications can give approximate BS coordinates, which makes it easier to find specific BS coordinates on maps. Let's consider a specific example from the forum, the example is based on

Distance to the tower is approximately 4800 meters:

As can be seen from our study, the error in determining the BS coordinates obtained using the xinit.ru/bs service is very significant - it is almost 2 km. Such errors are common for all services based on user measurement databases, but there are no other services available.

Conclusion

The presented technique, based on the use of widely available cartographic tools, does not always, but quite often, allows us to find the exact coordinates of the BS. Significant assistance in determining whether a BS belongs to a particular operator is provided by services that provide information on the parameters of the BS and its approximate coordinates.