A Beginner’s Guide To Signal Blackspot

Signal Blackspot
Signal Blackspot
Signal Blackspot
Signal Blackspot

The term ‘signal blackspot’ refers to an area where the cellular reception is low because of factors except for the distance between the device and tower. It affects similarly to what you will face when your phone is at an excessive distance from a cellular tower. The effects of it are related to issues including the following.

  • Dropped calls
  • Digital noise or garbling-like sound when on a phone call
  • Not being able to hear the other person in the conversation
  • Reduced mobile data speed
  • More battery use
  • Internet timeout

What Causes A Blackspot?

When you are wondering how to get better cell signal, chances are your mobile device is in this spot. There exist numerous reasons for it, and some of these causes are mitigable by entities not visible to the cellular network, such as its operator to name one.


The main reason for the issues is the geographical terrain. Light waves and radio waves are involved in the electromagnetic spectrum, so these behave similarly in regards to obstructions. When an object is moved to the area in which a beam of light travels, there will be a shadow. Likewise, moving something to where radio waves’ travel will cause a cellular shadow, which contributes to a cell site visualizing it as a strong spotlight.

The more proximate a physical thing is to some surface, the shadow of it will be that much crisper. The further it is moved from that surface, the respective shadow will be that much fuzzier. This effect occurs due to ‘knife-edge diffraction’, a phenomenon in which an abrupt obstruction makes radio waves bend towards the shadowed area. For your information, how much an electromagnetic wave bends rests on the frequency of it. The lower that frequency is, the more the wave will bend.

Obstructions Not Related To Terrain

One of the main contributing factors in channel fading is objects that lie along where radio wave transmission occurs. Physical obstructions such as trees and buildings might act similarly to terrain, according to their degree of penetrability. Objects also make an environment where transmissions bouncing off physical things at a sharp angle produce the so-called multipath signal reflections. Having moved further beyond the distance needed for straight line wave transmission, cellular signals would face a delay. For a simple signal receiver, the aforesaid travel would be interference.