Cell — ingress

Cells are subdivisions of the globe used to calculate regional scores. There is a total of 24 576 cells in the world each of which has a unique codename like e.g. AM01-CHARLIE-07.

Technology

The mathematics of cell devision comes from uses the S2 cell system; see their devguide for more information.

There are 31 S2-cell sizes, from "0" to "30", in the S2 system. Size "0", the largest level, divides the globe into 6 large chunks. Each size divides into 4 cells of the next level.
The normal Ingress cell, which divides the globe in 24 576 parts, is size "06" in S2-cell nomenclature.
There is evidence that Ingress makes use of lower S2-cell sizes. For example:
- Size "12" is used for deciding how Machina behaves. Because 4⁶ = 4096, we know there are 4096 size "12" cells in every size "06" cell.

Names

A Cell codename looks like "AM01-CHARLIE-07". It can be broken down int three parts:

Code of one of the six major zones (S2 cell size "0"):
- NR ("North zone")
- AM ("American zone") – this is what we have.
- AF ("African zone")
- AS ("Asian zone")
- PA ("Pacific zone")
- ST ("South zone")
Code of one of the 256 subareas (16 rows and 16 columns) of each major zone (S2 cell size "4"):
- 01 corresponds to the row number: the first row.
- CHARLIE corresponds to the third column. The nomenclature is alphabetical, following the NATO phonetic alphabet.
Number given to each of the 16 cells (4 rows and 4 columns) of each subarea (S2 cell size "6"):
- In this case, it's simply "07".