A Cross-Instrument Reliability Analysis of Tems Pocket and Nemo Analyze in 4G LTE Walk Testing

Abstract

Walk test conclusions are only as trustworthy as the instruments that produce them, yet studies rarely test whether two measurement tools yield the same verdict on the same network. This study evaluates the cross-instrument reliability of Tems Pocket, analysed in TEMS Investigation, and Nemo Handy, analysed in Nemo Analyze, by measuring the 4G LTE networks of Telkomsel and XL Axiata along an identical route at Cimory Dairyland, a hillside tourist area in Gowa Regency, South Sulawesi, and comparing their classifications of RSRP, RSRQ, SINR, RSSI, and throughput. The two chains agreed strongly on the spatial distribution of every parameter, both locating the weakest signal in the same vegetated southwestern sector, but diverged on absolute category percentages, most sharply for RSRP, where one chain classified 80.34 per cent of a route as poor while the other classified the majority as normal. The novelty of this study is a reliability rule derived from this pattern: walk test conclusions are trustworthy at the level of spatial pattern but not at the level of absolute percentage from a single instrument, so multi-tool corroboration and the reporting of spatial rather than absolute findings should be standard practice, particularly when instrument condition, such as the ageing of the Tems Pocket unit used here, cannot be assumed equal.