How To Solve Your Wireless Connectivity Problems

By Brian Albright, Field Technologies magazine

Addressing wireless connectivity problems will require reliable diagnostic tools, well-designed applications, and network performance data.

Dropped calls are frustrating, but connectivity issues are much more serious if you are a police officer trying to check a license plate against an online database, a merchant trying to complete a credit card transaction on a mobile device, or a field technician attempting to download critical information to repair a piece of equipment.

Solving connectivity problems can be one of the most frustrating aspects of a mobile deployment. There are a number of things that can cause connectivity problems. Network coverage is an ongoing issue, and the carriers are still in the process of building out their networks beyond large metropolitan areas. Changing network conditions can also lead to dropped sessions. “This can be a result of poor received signal strength (RSSI), reference signal received power (RSRP), interference as indicated by signal to noise ratios (SiNr), reference signal receive quality (RSRQ), and changes in latency,” says Joe Savarese, CTO of NetMotion Wireless.