Cell ID
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

A GSM Cell ID (CID) is a generally unique number used to identify each base transceiver station (BTS) or sector of a BTS within a location area code (LAC) if not within a
GSM network The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such as ...
. In some cases the first or last digit of CID represents cells' Sector ID: * value 0 is used for omnidirectional antenna, * values 1, 2, 3 are used to identify sectors of trisector or bisector 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 (216 − 1) on GSM and CDMA networks and from 0 to 268,435,455 (228 − 1) on UMTS and
LTE network In telecommunications, long-term evolution (LTE) is a standard for wireless broadband communication for mobile devices and data terminals, based on the GSM/EDGE and UMTS/HSPA standards. It improves on those standards' capacity and speed by usi ...
s.


Cell ID databases and services

A number of commercial and public Cell ID databases and services are available:


See also

* Base transceiver station *
Field test mode Field test mode (FTM) or field test display (FTD) is a software application often pre-installed on mobile phones that provides the user with technical details, statistics relating to the mobile phone network and allows the user to run hardware tests ...
*
E-CellID Enhanced Cell ID, E-CellID, or E-CID is a positioning feature introduced in rel9 E-UTRA ( LTE radio). The UE reports to the network ( ESMLC) the serving cell ID, the timing advance (difference between its transmit and receive time) and the IDs, est ...


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)
Base Station Numbering Schemes
- Discussion of cellular repeater numerology GSM standard