Indonesian Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Vol. 21, No. 1, January 2021, pp. 296~304 ISSN: 2502-4752, DOI: 10.11591/ijeecs.v21.i1. pp296-304  296 Journal homepage: http://ijeecs.iaescore.com Validation of android-based mobile application for retrieving network signal level Kehinde A. Adeniji 1 , Nazmat T. Surajudeen-Bakinde 2 , Olusegun O. Omitola 3 , Adedayo Ajibade 4 1,3,4 Department of Electrical/Electronics and Computer Engineering, Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti, Nigeria 2 Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, University of Ilorin, Nigeria Article Info ABSTRACT Article history: Received Jun 10, 2020 Revised Aug 11, 2020 Accepted Aug 25, 2020 In recent years, the evolvement of mobile devices which perform sophisticated functions have been on the rise. Mobile applications which solved engineering challenges are now available due to the high computational capabilities, large random access memory and storage location of the mobile devices. An Android application called signal detect, which measures network signal strength value from 2G-4G received on an android mobile device has been developed using android app development environment called Android studio. Validation becomes necessary because different readings were obtained on smartphones with different specifications. Two validation techniques were used to validate the data obtained. To know the efficiency of the application; a field strength meter was used to compare the readings received on the mobile device with the meter. It was observed that there is a time lag on the received values of the mobile device to the field strength meter. Therefore, a moving average technique was used to correlate the two data which increased the correlation coefficient to about 0.85. Keywords: Android application Correlation coefficient Received signal strength Smartphone Validation This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA license. Corresponding Author: Adeniji Kehinde Adetunji Department of Electrical & Electronics and Computer Engineering Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti, Nigeria Email: kehindeadeniji@ymail.com 1. INTRODUCTION In the 21st century, communication system applications are utilized in the day-to-day activities of human lives, these include telecommunication, terrestrial television, transportation (maritime & air), military and security. Communication system engineering applications have evolved from the era of line telegraphy, radio telephony to real-time communication through the use of sophisticated smartphones that can perform various tasks including online shopping, cloud gaming, financial processes, controller, measurements and mapping etc [1-4]. Contemporary smartphones are versatile portable computers-on-chip that exploit the flexibility conferred on them by the existence of operating systems in this case Android that manages and controls operations of the smartphones depending on the architecture. Simple push email and web services were the definition of smartphones application some years back but now have geared up with applications which need data networks to perform its functions [5]. Therefore, smartphones are usually managed by the combination of different network frameworks of computing, sensors and communication systems [6, 7]. In Africa, especially in Nigeria, the services provided by the network infrastructure of service providers do not meet the specified standards set by both local and global regulators [8]. As most network signals received by smartphones often fall short of what can be classified as good quality of service (QoS) in terms of signal strength, resource distribution, connection and traffic control, security, call drop rates, data