A GSM Cell ID (CID) is a generally unique number used to identify each
base transceiver station
A base transceiver station (BTS) or a baseband unit (BBU) is a piece of equipment that facilitates wireless communication between user equipment (UE) and a network. UEs are devices like mobile phone
A mobile phone or cell phone is a portab ...
(BTS) or sector of a BTS within a
location area code (LAC) if not within a
GSM network.
In some cases the first or last digit of CID represents cells' Sector ID:
* value 0 is used for omnidirectional antenna,
* values 1, 2, and 3 are used to identify sectors of bisector or trisector antennas.
In UMTS, there is a distinction between Cell ID (CID) and UTRAN Cell ID (also called LCID). The UTRAN Cell ID (LCID) is a concatenation of the RNC-ID (12 bits, ID of the
Radio Network Controller
The Radio Network Controller (RNC) is a governing element in the UMTS radio access network (UTRAN) and is responsible for controlling the Node Bs that are connected to it. The RNC carries out radio resource management, some of the mobility managem ...
) and Cell ID (16 bits, unique ID of the Cell). CID is just the Cell ID. The concatenation of both will still be unique but can be confusing in some cellid databases as some store the CID and other store LCID. It makes sense to record them separately as the RNC ID is the same for many cells, the unique element is the CID.
A valid CID ranges from 0 to 65535 (2
16 − 1) on GSM and CDMA networks and from 0 to 268,435,455 (2
28 − 1) on UMTS and
LTE networks.
Cell ID databases and services
A number of commercial and public Cell ID databases and services are available:
See also
*
Base transceiver station
A base transceiver station (BTS) or a baseband unit (BBU) is a piece of equipment that facilitates wireless communication between user equipment (UE) and a network. UEs are devices like mobile phone
A mobile phone or cell phone is a portab ...
*
Field test mode
Field may refer to:
Expanses of open ground
* Field (agriculture), an area of land used for agricultural purposes
* Airfield, an aerodrome that lacks the infrastructure of an airport
* Battlefield
* Lawn, an area of mowed grass
* Meadow, a grass ...
*
E-CellID Enhanced Cell ID, E-CellID, or E-CID is a Positioning (telecommunications), positioning feature introduced in rel9 E-UTRA (LTE (telecommunication), LTE radio). The UE reports to the network (SMLC, ESMLC) the serving cell ID, the timing advance (diff ...
References
{{Reflist
External links
Combain Positioning Service- cloud service with API to locate wireless devices based on Cell-ID and Wi-Fi
LocationAPI by Unwired Labs- Location as an API service to locate devices with WiFi, Cell towers & IP
Mozilla Location Service- an open service which lets devices determine their location based on network infrastructure like WiFi access points and cell towers
CellMapper- cellular coverage and tower map
OpenCellID- an open source project, aiming to create a complete database of Cell IDs worldwide, with their locations
cellidfinder- Find the coordinates of any known CellID.
Navizon- cloud service with API to locate wireless devices using a global database of WiFi access points and Cell-ID locations
openBmap- a free and open map of wireless communicating objects (e.g. cellular antenna, Wi-Fi access points...)
- some information on Cell IDs in china
Mylnikov GEO- an open source API project. It lets get coordinates of mobile towers with no limits and absolutely free. (
Russian
Russian(s) may refer to:
*Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*A citizen of Russia
*Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages
*''The Russians'', a b ...
)
Base Station Numbering Schemes- Discussion of cellular repeater numerology
GSM standard