A poorly positioned or misconfigured cellular repeater can create areas of very low-level or fluctuating RF, forcing handsets to raise their transmit power, which produces rapid battery drain and dropped/failed calls. The first step is therefore to verify the handset-perceived signal strength (RSSI/RSRP) around the repeater and in the affected offices. If the repeater is oscillating, improperly isolated, or not amplifying the correct donor signal, the measured levels will immediately reveal the problem; other settings (WPS, channel, PoE power budget) do not influence handset transmit power in a cellular system.

A. WPS is a Wi-Fi security/configuration feature; it has no effect on cellular coverage or battery drain.

C. Channel frequency selection applies to WLANs; cellular repeaters automatically pass the licensed carrier bands—they are not manually “channelized” like Wi-Fi APs.

D. Power budget refers to electrical/PoE allocation for network gear; it does not determine RF amplification level experienced by user devices.

1. 3GPP TS 36.213 v16.3.0

§5.1 & §5.2: UE power control increases transmit power as path-loss (low RSRP) rises.

2. IEEE Communications Mag.

vol. 50

no. 6

2012

“Energy Drain in Mobile Devices due to Poor Signal Strength

” pp. 116-122

doi:10.1109/MCOM.2012.6211498.

3. Cisco Systems

“Design and Deployment of Bi-Directional Cellular Repeaters

” Tech. Note

§3 “RSSI/RSRP Measurement for Troubleshooting

” 2020.

4. University of Colorado EENG 4270 Lecture 14

“RF Repeaters and Distributed Antenna Systems

” slides 7-9: low repeater gain/oscillation leads to weak received signal and handset battery drain.