How to get the location of the cell tower (base station) connected to my device

[Adeel]

Hi Dev team,

I have my Thingy91 deployed and running. I wanted to know how could I locate the base station that my device is connected to. I have the information of MCC, MNC, TAC, Cell ID. 

I wanted to know how if there is a way that I could use this information to get the location of the base station. 

Regards,

Adeel.

[Øyvind]

Hello Adeel, 

Do you mean the physical location of the base station? I dont' think this is possible. There is an AT command Neighboring cell measurement and report (AT%NCELLMEAS). This starts neighboring cell measurements and reports the channel parameters with a result notification when the measurements are finished.

Kind regards,
Øyvind

[Adeel]

Hi Oyvind,

I wanted to have the feature that is present in the LTE link monitor, such as the image below.

Could you let me know how is this info obtained, that is shown in the link monitor.

Also, I am using NB-IoT and wanted to know the location of my cell tower. 

Its possible to get the location of the current cell I am connected to when I use LTE-M using a 3rd party software like : https://opencellid.org

But it is unable to show me the location when I am connected to NB-IoT. I wanted to know if there is any other software as such available to view or locate the NB-IoT cell towers ?

Regards,

Adeel.

[Adeel]

Hi Oyvind,

I did have a look at that sample and I was able to get the TAC, Cell ID, MCC; MNC information. 

I have the location of my device but what I was trying to get is the location of the NB-IoT cell tower that I am connected to, or something like a coverage map that you have in the LTE link monitor.

I am unable to find the NB-IoT cell tower location using the 3rd party software. It only has LTE tower specific location.

Regards,

Adeel.

[Øyvind]

Hello Adeel, 

In LTE Link Monitor http://locationapi.org/ is used to provide the map. This should also be possible with nRF Cloud, using single cell location. Have a look at the nRF Asset Tracker (Asset Tracker v2) documentation on cell geolocation, which describes how to use nRF Cloud's geolocation API or Third Party API.

Kind regards,
Øyvind

[Adeel]

Hi Oyvind,

Thanks for the links. I had a look at it and it seems useful. Will try that out. 

However, I am facing 1 issue wherein I am unable to locate my cell in the 3rd party API when its connected to NB-IoT.

With LTE-M, I am able to locate the cell tower using : https://opencellid.org/#zoom=18&lat=48.154429&lon=11.466856 , 

My MCCMNC is :26201 (Germany), TAC : 52015, Cell ID : 26512650, when using NB-IoT. Could you help me locate the cell tower location with these details through this 3rd party application ?

Regards,

Adeel.

[Markus Tacker (he/him)]

Do you have the area ID for this cell as well? It's needed for nRF Cloud api.nrfcloud.com/v1

[Adeel]

Do you mean the physical id of the cell ? Its : 258 I think.

This is the information of my cell tower connection:

Current cell:
2021-10-21T11:27:45.781Z DEBUG modem << I: MCC: 262
2021-10-21T11:27:45.782Z DEBUG modem << I: MNC: 001
2021-10-21T11:27:45.786Z DEBUG modem << I: Cell ID: 26512650
2021-10-21T11:27:45.787Z DEBUG modem << I: TAC: 52015
2021-10-21T11:27:45.789Z DEBUG modem << I: EARFCN: 3740
2021-10-21T11:27:45.792Z DEBUG modem << I: Physical cell ID: 258

Regards,

Adeel.

[Markus Tacker (he/him)]

nRF Cloud Cell Location service only supports LTE-m right now.

It can be resolved using UnwiredLabs to 

{
    "status": "ok",
    "balance": 100,
    "lat": 48.126672,
    "lon": 11.562104,
    "accuracy": 7572,
    "fallback": "ncf"
}

[Adeel]

Hi Markus,

Thanks. Is this the location of the cell tower or of my device ? I am connected using NB-IoT.

Regards,

Adeel.

[Markus Tacker (he/him)]

The location is a circle with a radius of 7572 m and the center at 48.126672 / 11.562104 (which is the location of the cell tower). Your device is most likely within this circle.

[Adeel]

Hi Markus,

Great. This is exactly what I want, but I wanted to know how did you get it and is it possible to have a code that views the data like this ? Like having a circle showing the coverage like in the LTE link monitor.

I was really interested in having something like how the LTE link monitor has.

Regards,

Adeel.

[Markus Tacker (he/him)]

I used the Unwired Labs API: https://unwiredlabs.com/docs#geolocation

I've implemented this in the web application for the nRF Asset Tracker: https://nordicsemiconductor.github.io/asset-tracker-cloud-docs/saga/docs/app/CellGeolocation.html ... and you can find the source code on GitHub. Get started here: nordicsemiconductor.github.io/.../GettingStarted.html