Server Link Lines

When looking at the coverage from an area study, it is often helpful to have a graphical illustration of the transmitter site sectors that are 1st, 2nd and 3rd servers for any given point in your area study display. The status bar can display the signal levels and ID’s of these servers, but the server ID alone is often not a convenient indicator of where the server is, especially if you have a complicated system with many servers, or geographic features like hills or valleys that may block signal from nearby sectors. In these cases, the strongest server may not be the closest, even though the area study shows good coverage in that area.

The Server Link Lines feature shows a connection from the current mouse location to the three strongest calculated servers. These lines are “rubber band” lines; i.e., as you move the mouse pointer across the map, the server link lines automatically and immediately move and change, instantly updating the connections to always show the three best servers.

When you select this item on the View menu, you will be presented with a dialog box that lets you select which of the three server link lines you want to display and the style of that server link line. Different colors make it easy to distinguish which is which.

As an example, in modern cellular systems, the cell sites are often sectorized so that the Most Likely Server from a given mobile location may actually be two or three sectors that occupy the same physical location, depending of course, on power levels, directional antenna gain patterns, CDMA pilot power settings, etc. When two or three servers are at the same physical cell site location, the server link lines will connect the same physical location on the map. In such cases, you may not see three distinct server link lines even though you have chosen to display all three. Since the lines are on top of each other, the only color your will see is the color of the line that appears on top (drawn last) which would be the highest level link line.