Wireless point to point signal strength monitoring tool

[gARetH baBB]

On Tue, 17 Jun 2003, Jouni Malinen wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 17, 2003 at 10:51:36AM +0200, Ricardo Galli wrote:
>
> > What I assume is that the number is lineal to dBM, there are still two usages
> > (I didn't check them in last version, in previous versions, before november
> > 2002, there was a bug):
>
> Yes, and of course the number seem to be different on different firmware
> versions and probably different card models.. I haven't been able to
> find good Intersil document or knowledge base article that would
> describe the all possible conversion functions.

I think you should just forget about trying to convert to dBm/mW, or any
form of units.

I was playing with iwconfig txpower yesterday, 0mW (-infinity/-212etc dB)
would give me the minimum (but certainly not off - I suppose if you can't
turn the tx side of the radio off on it's own without also effecting the
rx side of the radio then this is unavoidable) and 1mW (0 dB) and above
would give me the maximum output ...

To actual get anywhere I had to use -ve dB values with -20 odd giving me
roughly 50% output (about 12mW for this card), obviously completely bogus
conversion.

I think you should just use 0 to 100 completely unitless and use that as a
basis for what you write to the register - a similar thing when reporting
rx strength.

This was a ZoomAir 4105 with 1.5.6.