Enabling both normal wifi and wifi hotspot to get RSSI values of wi-fi hotspots

Question

I want an android phone to have both 'normal wi-fi' and 'portable hotspot' turned on at the same time, so that I will be able to get the RSSI values of wireless networks as well as involve in an hotspot connection.

Scenario:
4 rooted android phones in CyanogenMod (2-Nexus One, 2-Galaxy S2; consider A,B,C,D).
Kernel version 2.3.3 in all the phones
Portable wi-fi hot spot enabled in all the phones.

I wrote an application to find the RSSI values of available wireless signals. But as the phones(A,B,C,D) are using wi-fi hot spot, the normal wifi does not turn on. Either wi-fi hot spot can be on, or normal wi-fi can be on. i.e. If each phone(A,B, C and D) have a wifi hotspot created(AH, BH, CH, DH), then I am not able to use my application, as normal wifi connection needs to be turned on to find the wireless networks.

So I want the phones to scan available wireless networks with portable wi-fi hot spot enabled. Is there a way to do this.?

Answer 1

What you probably want is your phone work as adhoc and as an AP at the same time I guess it's called bridging http://compnetworking.about.com/cs/wirelessproducts/f/apbridgingmode.htm I don't think that at first android phones support the adhoc mode at all yet. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1932150/can-android-do-peer-to-peer-ad-hoc-networking The bridging is only possible for normal wifi routers not for android phones. Routers also support WDS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_distribution_system There's no such thing as WDS for android phones yet AFAK.

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hope it clarifies the matter abit. thanks.

Answer 2

Related: Can we use an Android phone as a Wi-Fi repeater?

The answer is basically no. It's theoretically possible, at least with some Wi-Fi chips, but the software needed is fairly involved. Some Android phones do support ad-hoc mode, but bridging is the problem as Sergey indicates. I don't know of anything that's been ported to / written for Android to do this, since it would probably involve altering proprietary drivers (pretty hard without the source code).

Answer 3

Few Android phones support WiFi<->WiFi tethering (bridging). Samsung Galaxy S7 [Edge] is one such phone. The feature may be intentionally crippled on the models distributed through carriers, but the unlocked version works like charm.