bkil vs. programming

The following article illustrates various cases of radio signal propagation. It helps you understand why moving your indoor antenna only a few centimeters could drastically improve reception. This analysis is from 2005, however radio propagation rarely follows trends - instead it dully stays the same every year. HDTV Primer: Choosing a mounting site See the linked site for more great illustration

I've just realized that stock Android 2.1 on the U20i (so called "mimmi") discovers Wifi networks by  passive scanning , and only sends out a few probe requests as an acceleration in case of opening the network list menu after waking up. On the other hand, it seems that both Pulse mini (Huawei U8110 with Android 2.1) and Mango (Xperia mini pro SK17i with Android 4.0.4) use normal active scanning. Common wisdom tells you that passive scanning potentially uses more power. This can happen because the receiver's low noise amplifier and processor can use as much power as the transmit circuit. This is especially plausible because maximum transmit power usually shouldn't exceed 100mW anyway (actually 20dBm EIRP ) which is in the ball park of the wireless chip's total consumption already, let alone the whole chipset or mobile device. Active probing involves sending out a probe request on each channel and listening for a response for a limited short interval. I guess...