Network Survey

Network Survey turns an Android phone into a wireless survey tool. Pick what to survey, pick where the data goes, and press Start survey. One survey, one Start and one Stop.

What it records

• Cellular: serving and neighbor cells for GSM, CDMA, UMTS, LTE and 5G NR, including carrier aggregation


• Phone state: what the radio is doing


• Wi-Fi: access points, with channel, security and 802.11 standard


• Bluetooth: Classic and BLE devices, with company names and Find My trackers


• GNSS: GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou, QZSS, IRNSS and SBAS satellites


• Call records: calls, texts (SMS and MMS) and cell tower changes, saved to log files

Where the data goes

Turn on one destination or several at once:

• Log files: CSV files on the phone


• NS Analytics: uploads to your team's workspace


• MQTT stream: JSON records to your own broker (for example Mosquitto), with TLS and QR code setup


• gRPC stream: records to your own gRPC server


• Community databases: OpenCelliD and BeaconDB

Message formats: messaging.networksurvey.app

NS Analytics

NS Analytics is the web analytics companion for Network Survey data. Connected phones upload their records to your workspace, so nobody copies files off phones. See your surveys on one map, open an analysis page for each record type, and export the raw records. Connect a phone by scanning the QR code on your workspace's Devices page. It is a separate web service: networksurvey.app/analytics

And more

• Signals: live Cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GNSS views, including AGC and C/N0 trends


• Map: towers from OpenCelliD and BTSearch, and the points your NS Analytics and Community database surveys covered, colored by signal strength


• Watchlist alerts when a saved Wi-Fi network is seen


• Cellular tools, PLMN lookup, OUI lookup and Wi-Fi spectrum


• Saved setups, light and dark themes, and nine accent colors


• Managed configuration (MDM) per record type and destination, and an Intent API

Permissions and privacy

Location is needed because every record needs a position, and Android requires it to scan Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Background location is requested only if you turn on Start survey automatically. This build has no Firebase, analytics or crash reporting. Privacy policy

Some anti-malware apps flag Network Survey because it can read SMS. It never sends texts and installs nothing. The SMS and call log permissions are used only for Call records (text events and the other party's number) and are asked for only when you turn Call records on, or set a survey that records them to start automatically. Both are optional: without them Call records still logs calls and tower changes. More on GitHub

Open source (Apache 2.0): github.com/christianrowlands/android-network-survey. Manual: networksurvey.app/manual. Requires Android 8.0 or later.

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