what is this

[FoxKat]

You have done some incredible (geekish) investigative work. It may very well be that your situation is related to a Cellular Repeater that's in the camp ground.

There are two additional possibilities here. One is that the repeater has a strong outgoing signal but crappy incoming (due to a poorly tuned antenna or mal-aligned directional one. The second possibility is that the repeater itself is a junk brand. Wilson makes the best from what I hear, but there are other "knock-off" brands that have given lots of trouble.

I own a 3G Wilson repeater but never installed it. It's sitting in a box in my family room, antenna, cable, box, powersupply, just waiting for me to climb up and strap it to the chimney.

 

[SallyC]

You have done some incredible (geekish) investigative work. It may very well be that your situation is related to a Cellular Repeater that's in the camp ground.

Freakin' tourists! :biggrin:

 

[FoxKat]

That is a good idea. I would think though that I would get better signal than 3G 3bars or 4G 1-2 bars from something that close. 14 blocks away driving. 10 blocks by the way the crow flies.

Not necessarily. These are "low power" towers, for many reasons, not the least is it's right over the heads of the parishioners, and usually smack-dab in the middle of a residential district. It's much simpler to get an approval for such a low power installation and low altitude, than it is to get a monster full-power tower approved. Just think if the city council meetings and residents shouting about their children getting cancer.

Also, many smaller cell sites will provide better "saturation of signal" in a densely populated community, and will also handle more simultaneous calls to the MTSO, since each one has its own leg to the switch. See below (*the solid and dotted line combination running from each tower to the MTSO)

View attachment 50788

 

[SallyC]

There are two additional possibilities here. One is that the repeater has a strong outgoing signal but crappy incoming (due to a poorly tuned antenna or mal-aligned directional one. The second possibility is that the repeater itself is a junk brand. Wilson makes the best from what I hear, but there are other "knock-off" brands that have given lots of trouble.

I own a 3G Wilson repeater but never installed it. It's sitting in a box in my family room, antenna, cable, box, powersupply, just waiting for me to climb up and strap it to the chimney.

So their repeater is puking out my reception because 1) it's hogging all the bandwidth for the campers and/or 2) it's got a crappy incoming? Not sure how #2 would affect me, but #1 seems really possible.

It might be the reason I couldn't lock onto the tower I could see, even when I was right by it. I was still pointing at the one back a few miles in the campground.

 

[FoxKat]

Number 1 would affect you in the sense that the repeater is meant for nearby repeating of the cellular signal. If the receiving antenna on their end can't "see" you, and yet the transmitting antenna can be "seen" by your phone, your phone may try unsuccessfully and repeatedly to make a handshake with the repeater. It may even successfully connect every so often when conditions are right, but lose the connection shortly thereafter, again getting RILD upset. Also it would not be the repeater hogging bandwidth for the campers, it would be the campers hogging the bandwidth of the repeater. The repeater is connected in one of two ways.

It can be connected via FIOS (Fiber Optic), and would be running off of the FIOS service at the campground, or it can be an active repeater, where it uses the signal from a local cell tower that its elevated antenna is pointed at (thereby robbing that tower of connections for you), and then "repeating" that Radio Frequency Transmission (amplifying it) to the campers at ground level by the 2nd antenna located on a building side or short pole somewhere on the ground.

Number 2 is a very real possibility as well. Some of these repeaters are able to carry many calls (upwards of 256), others can only carry a few (5-10). If it's a crappy repeater that only handles 5 calls, and there are 5 people in their trailers having long communications, it would jam up the repeater and prevent you from connecting.

 

[FoxKat]

It might be the reason I couldn't lock onto the tower I could see, even when I was right by it. I was still pointing at the one back a few miles in the campground.

This may be the campground using up the available connections to the tower you were next to, and your phone was actually connected to that tower via the campground! :blink: Since you would "appear" to the tower as though you were connected to the other site, and the other site's connection would have been coming from the tower, there would be no immediate or apparent benefit to release the "lease" to the connection from the tower to the campground, which would release your lease, only to reinstate it directly.

 

[SallyC]

Okay, well it sounds like I must accept my lowly lot in life as being a non-camper....or rally my HOA into FIGHTING BACK!!!:yeahbaby01: We'll get our own relay booster and point it at the tower - we're up on a hill so maybe we'll get a better grip on it. Then we'll all leave our phones on so as those silly campers leave the area we'll grab any open bandwidth before new campers arrive! NEVER SURRENDER!!!:icon_ lala:

 

[FoxKat]

This is all purely hypothetical, mind you! :icon_eek:

 

[SallyC]

This is all purely hypothetical, mind you! :icon_eek:

Got to love a man who knows his limitations. :biggrin:

 

[FoxKat]

Okay, well it sounds like I must accept my lowly lot in life as being a non-camper....or rally my HOA into FIGHTING BACK!!!:yeahbaby01: We'll get our own relay booster and point it at the tower - we're up on a hill so maybe we'll get a better grip on it. Then we'll all leave our phones on so as those silly campers leave the area we'll grab any open bandwidth before new campers arrive! NEVER SURRENDER!!!:icon_ lala:

That's the spirit!! :icon_ devil:

:icon_ nana: to the campers:beer2:!

:icon_ rofl:

 

[stack494]

Droid 4

I have had my phone for a couple months with little battery issues, live in very good 4g area, and utilize an app to shut off data when display is off. I noticed last night and this morning my battery discharging quickly and little increase in charge while plugged in. Looking at battery usage, I see that RILD is at 55%. I've never noticed it in battery usage before. I did a reboot and battery is now charging and no longer running hot. FYI...Yesterday I used TuneIn Radio Pro for the first time with this phone, I also used the 'Car Mode' function of this app.

 

[SallyC]

Droid 4

I have had my phone for a couple months with little battery issues, live in very good 4g area, and utilize an app to shut off data when display is off. I noticed last night and this morning my battery discharging quickly and little increase in charge while plugged in. Looking at battery usage, I see that RILD is at 55%. I've never noticed it in battery usage before. I did a reboot and battery is now charging and no longer running hot. FYI...Yesterday I used TuneIn Radio Pro for the first time with this phone, I also used the 'Car Mode' function of this app.

Let me spare you the grief - it's not TuneIn or your Car Mode. Tomorrow you may use those same things and not have it at all. If you want to play around with OpenSignalsMap you may find a common tower (or lack thereof) that is your issue. It certainly is that for me. My apps don't change but my rild usage does - and it's always related to which tower I'm connecting to.

 

[kingmeow]

Can I join the party?

Hi Guys and Gals,

My first post and new to these forums. Guess what brought me on to this thread???? LOL!!!!!

I read through all 9 pages and FoxCat, you can thank SallyC for me registering! I admire her tenacity and spunk (are you an Engineer? (I am)) and the tremendous information on this thread about possible RILD causes. This thread is the most information I've found so far on the issue on the internet. I'm aware that there's one going on on the Motorola forum but the information is neither here or there.

I have had my Razr Maxx for about 2 months. For the past 10 years I'm a Blackberry guy, not that I like it but all my previous employers have given me one and I'm allowed to use it as my personal phone. Switching to a new job, I was given the choice of whatever I want. At times I travel a lot and running from place to place I don't need another stress inducer of constantly checking to see if I need to find an AC socket nearby. Thus my choice for the Maxx.

Since Day 1, I have been greatly enjoying the Maxx with it's super duper battery life but just a few days ago, I too noticed an "odd" battery reading. Looking into it, the dreaded RILD process went wild! It had the highest percentage of all apps, above Sysem and Kernal! I've tried clearing the cache, powering on/off, soft reboot and there seems to be no remedy patterns that I can detect. Of the 3, I think the powering on/off was the most successful though at times RILD would come back in an hour or two and other times it would not show up until the next charge cycle.

The past few weeks I have not been traveling so I work from home. I'm in a 4G area and live in a bedroom community outside NYC across the Hudson River in NJ. I'm not in the boonies by any means so signal is not an issue.

My phone is stock with no hacking or rooting and I have not installed any apps lately. (Well, I did install Open Signals - thanks SallyC! - and will be using it as a detective tool over the next few days.)

So for the past two weeks, this RILD has been giving me agita and caused some sleepness nights. Being an Engineer, I never give up - some people call that anal retentive but that's another topic for another day.

Lastly, although ICS was pushed to my phone by Verizon, I have been delaying the install due to some reports of lower battery life, signal strengths, etc. However, I did read elsewhere that ICS "cures" the RILD issue but there doeesn't seem to be a major consences that was absolutely the case.

So, sorry for my rambling and joiningg the party late. Since the last post is almost a month ago, I was wondering any updates on this issue? I'm going to try a few more scenarios to see if I can detect a pattern (probably not). What I have done in the interim is invoke Smart Action to turn off cellular data when I'm home - I connect via WiFi any way. Wondering if that would "cure" the RILD issue.

-Mike

 

[94lt1]

Hello and welcome to the forums.. :welcome:

DROID RAZR MAXXIMIZED!!!! PREPARE TO BE VANQUISHED!!!

 

[SallyC]

Welcome Kingmeow! You sound like the kind of thinker we like around here! I'm not an engineer, btw. I'm retired now but my background is a mixture of Nursing and IT work: Critical Care Nursing, Nurse Informaticist and Consultant for computerized medical record implementations. So kinda like an engineer in that you have to figure out how things work and how to fix them if they don't. :blink:

I'll be interested in hearing how your experiment turns out with turning off cellular data when you're home. I'm on wifi too but that did not solve my problem and OpenSources still showed me trying to connect across the lake even when on wifi. I believed that was because the phone was still looking for a tower so I could receive a call.

What I finally did was purchased a Network Extender on eBay (like this one, from this seller) and put it in my house - problem solved! Never had high rild again. And my battery life was back to being awesome again!

Btw, I also installed ICS - but weeks after the NE solved my problem - and love it. I can't say anything about it and rild since my problem was already fixed, but I do like it.

Congrats on your Maxx! I got my Razr before the Maxx came out but that's what I'd get if I were buying something now. Great phone!