Well, this irked the hell outta me since 1, either no one knew what it was, or 2, no one cares....
But if you would care to know... the ASU number beside -dBM on your miui phone is:
Called Active Set Updates. and what this is (in non technical terms) is the number of other transmitting towers that you *may* be connected to at the same time. It's used as a "soft transfer" mechanism when you are travelling. because obviously, you won't stay on the same tower, in a long transit say down a highway, or metro. So the ASU will transfer your call from tower to tower along your path without dropping your call.
One link I found put it this way:
The main idea of a soft handoff scheme is to ensure that there is connectivity with the old base station while the new base station has been assigned to take control over the communication link. This way at a given instant of time we have the mobile maintaining a constant communication link with at least one base station simultaneously ensuring a non disrupted call activity.
Which leads me to my next possible non answer....
Why does my ASU always say 0, but I don't lose signal when making an extended call as I travel 30 miles towards home in the evening.
Granted, this conversation probably means nothing when comparing prices of teacups in china (pardon the pun) but i figured since we like to tinker with our phones we'd want to know whyyyyyyyyyyyy?
LOL
Linky link:
http://www.utdallas.edu/~torlak/wireless/projects/krishna.pdf
