Seeing the Airwaves – QCsuper

Recently we were on a project and our RAN guy was seeing UEs hand between one layer and another over and over. The hysteresis and handover parameters seemed correct, but we needed a way to see what was going on, what the eNB was actually advertising and what the UE was sending back.

In a past life I had access to expensive complicated dedicated tooling that could view this information transmitted by the eNB, but now, all I need is a cellphone or a modem with a Qualcomm chip.

QCsuper is a super handy tool that gives access to the Diag interface on Qualcomm chipsets. That’s the same interface QXDM uses, but without the massive headache and usability issues that come with QXDM, plus it puts everything in Wireshark to make it super easy to view everything.

You can see RRC, NAS and even the user plane traffic, all from Wireshark.

I’ve tested this with a rooted Xiaomi Pro 12 and a Quectel modem in a M.2 to USB adapter.

This is really cool and I’m looking forward to using it more in the field, or just if I’m bored on the train scanning the airwaves!

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