Get signal level of the connected WiFi network

Question

Using wpa_supplicant 2.4 on ARM Debian.

Is there a way to get signal level, in decibels or percents, of the wireless network I’m currently connected to?

STATUS command only returns the following set of values: bssid, freq, ssid, id, mode, pairwise_cipher, group_cipher, key_mgmt, wpa_state, ip_address, p2p_device_address, address, uuid

I can run SCAN afterwards, wait for results and search by SSID. But that’s slow and error-prone, I'd like to do better.

The driver should already know that information (because connected, and adjusting transmit levels for energy saving), is there a way to just query for that?

This question is not about general computing hardware and software. I'm using wpa_supplicant through a C API defined in wpa_ctrl.h header, interacting with the service through a pair of unix domain sockets (one for commands, another one for unsolicited events).

One reason I don’t like my current SCAN + SCAN_RESULT solution, it doesn’t work for hidden SSID networks. Scan doesn’t find the network, therefore I’m not getting signal level this way. Another issue is minor visual glitch at application startup. My app is launched by systemd, After=multi-user.target. Unless it’s the very first launch, Linux is already connected to Wi-Fi by then. In my app’s GUI (the product will feature a touch screen), I render a phone-like status bar, that includes WiFi signal strength icon. Currently, it initially shows minimal level (I know it's connected because STATUS command shows SSID), only after ~1 second I’m getting CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-RESULTS event from wpa_supplicant, run SCAN_RESULT command and update signal strength to the correct value.

On the API level my code is straightforward. I have two threads for that, both call wpa_ctrl_open, the command thread calls wpa_ctrl_request, the event thread has an endless loop that calls poll passing wpa_ctrl_get_fd() descriptor and POLLIN event mask, followed by wpa_ctrl_pending and wpa_ctrl_recv.

And here's the list of files in /sys/class/net/wlan0:

./mtu
./type
./phys_port_name
./netdev_group
./flags
./power/control
./power/async
./power/runtime_enabled
./power/runtime_active_kids
./power/runtime_active_time
./power/autosuspend_delay_ms
./power/runtime_status
./power/runtime_usage
./power/runtime_suspended_time
./speed
./dormant
./name_assign_type
./proto_down
./addr_assign_type
./phys_switch_id
./dev_id
./duplex
./gro_flush_timeout
./iflink
./phys_port_id
./addr_len
./address
./operstate
./carrier_changes
./broadcast
./queues/rx-0/rps_flow_cnt
./queues/rx-0/rps_cpus
./queues/rx-1/rps_flow_cnt
./queues/rx-1/rps_cpus
./queues/rx-2/rps_flow_cnt
./queues/rx-2/rps_cpus
./queues/rx-3/rps_flow_cnt
./queues/rx-3/rps_cpus
./queues/tx-0/xps_cpus
./queues/tx-0/tx_maxrate
./queues/tx-0/tx_timeout
./queues/tx-0/byte_queue_limits/limit
./queues/tx-0/byte_queue_limits/limit_max
./queues/tx-0/byte_queue_limits/limit_min
./queues/tx-0/byte_queue_limits/hold_time
./queues/tx-0/byte_queue_limits/inflight
./queues/tx-1/xps_cpus
./queues/tx-1/tx_maxrate
./queues/tx-1/tx_timeout
./queues/tx-1/byte_queue_limits/limit
./queues/tx-1/byte_queue_limits/limit_max
./queues/tx-1/byte_queue_limits/limit_min
./queues/tx-1/byte_queue_limits/hold_time
./queues/tx-1/byte_queue_limits/inflight
./queues/tx-2/xps_cpus
./queues/tx-2/tx_maxrate
./queues/tx-2/tx_timeout
./queues/tx-2/byte_queue_limits/limit
./queues/tx-2/byte_queue_limits/limit_max
./queues/tx-2/byte_queue_limits/limit_min
./queues/tx-2/byte_queue_limits/hold_time
./queues/tx-2/byte_queue_limits/inflight
./queues/tx-3/xps_cpus
./queues/tx-3/tx_maxrate
./queues/tx-3/tx_timeout
./queues/tx-3/byte_queue_limits/limit
./queues/tx-3/byte_queue_limits/limit_max
./queues/tx-3/byte_queue_limits/limit_min
./queues/tx-3/byte_queue_limits/hold_time
./queues/tx-3/byte_queue_limits/inflight
./tx_queue_len
./uevent
./statistics/rx_fifo_errors
./statistics/collisions
./statistics/rx_errors
./statistics/rx_compressed
./statistics/rx_dropped
./statistics/tx_packets
./statistics/tx_errors
./statistics/rx_missed_errors
./statistics/rx_over_errors
./statistics/tx_carrier_errors
./statistics/tx_heartbeat_errors
./statistics/rx_crc_errors
./statistics/multicast
./statistics/tx_fifo_errors
./statistics/tx_aborted_errors
./statistics/rx_bytes
./statistics/tx_compressed
./statistics/tx_dropped
./statistics/rx_packets
./statistics/tx_bytes
./statistics/tx_window_errors
./statistics/rx_frame_errors
./statistics/rx_length_errors
./dev_port
./ifalias
./ifindex
./link_mode
./carrier

Answer 1

You can get the signal level of the connected wifi by wpa_supplicant cmd SIGNAL_POLL

The wpa_supplicant would return:

RSSI=-60
LINKSPEED=867
NOISE=9999
FREQUENCY=5745

The value of the RSSI is the signal level.

You can get the signal level of the connected wifi by wpa_supplicant cmd BSS <bssid>. About the bssid of the connected wifi, you can get from wpa_supplicant cmd STATUS.

https://android.googlesource.com/platform/external/wpa_supplicant_8/+/622b66d6efd0cccfeb8623184fadf2f76e7e8206/wpa_supplicant/ctrl_iface.c#1986

Answer 2

For iw compatible devices:

Following command gives the current station(aka AP) signal strength:

iw dev wlp2s0 station dump -v

If you need C API, just dig the source code of iw.

After a quick glance, the function you need is here

For broadcom devices, try search broadcom wl. It is close source, don't know if C API is provided.

Answer 3

just happened to stumble on this and noticed the comment about not being able to see hidden networks in scans and figured i'd address that in case it is still an unknown. if you add scan_ssid=1 in the network block in wpa_supplicant.conf you should see BSSs for the SSID of that network block in your scan results.

if you examine the SSID of the BSS object for each BSS returned by the scan you'll find it there.

SignalPoll() gives you what you want but...you can scan for hidden networks and see their BSSs.