You never know what you&rsquo;ll find in Lenexa. </p><p>Walk into a store-front office off Strang Line Road and in the back is a 15-foot cube-shaped chamber built in France and designed to keep out the RF signals used in communications. </p><p>Lining the cube&rsquo;s interior are $60,000 in foot-tall pyramids of blue foam. At the center, atop a 6-foot chunk of cone-shaped white foam, sits a cell phone nearly surrounded by an array of 64 antennas.</p><p>The only thing missing is the soundtrack from &ldquo;2001: A Space Odyssey.&rdquo; But there&rsquo;s no need for music. This is business. </p><p>The chamber is part of a testing laboratory, and chances are the cell phone model you&rsquo;re using made a stop there before becoming available to the public. </p><p>Technicians in the 6,500-square-foot office and laboratory use industry and carrier standards to put the telephones through a gamut of tests, including ones for their ability to receive and transmit signals. A small acoustic booth tests the quality of sound from a phone&rsquo;s ear piece and microphone. Other tests include laboratory checks on battery performance and field testing the phones while in a minivan traveling around the Kansas City area.</p><p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;re one of the many cogs to get a cell phone to market,&rdquo; said Chris Hiesberger, director of Midwest operations for SGS Wireless. &ldquo;We ensure that the phones are working properly.&rdquo;</p><p>SGS is a global testing and certification company with 56,000 employees worldwide in 1,000 offices. It has laboratories in Lenexa and San Diego. The Lenexa office has 20 employees.</p><p>How the laboratory ended up here has a lot to do with Hiesberger, an electrical engineer. His career includes stints at King Radio, Garmin and eventually Sprint PCS, where he became familiar with what it took to get cell phones certified before they were offered by a carrier such as Sprint.</p><p>International cell phone manufacturers would have to fly in as many as 40 employees to help get a phone certified. So why not, figured Hiesberger, have a business to shoulder that work?</p><p>&ldquo;It was an opportunity,&rdquo; he said.</p><p>He approached Wireless Test Systems, a San Diego company that was already involved in some testing for wireless products. He offered to establish a Midwest office to do the testing he had in mind, and they agreed. He began by working out of his home with two employees. The business moved into its current office in 2005, and the next year Wireless Test Systems was bought by SGS.</p><p>The tests are typically meant to see whether cell phones meet some precise standards. Phone batteries are tested over two weeks, for instance, to see whether they can provide the necessary energy in temperatures ranging from -4 degrees to 176 degrees &mdash; and in 95 percent humidity. </p><p>The star of the laboratory is the cube chamber, where the ability of a phone to send and receive signals is tested. Inside are the foam pyramids that keep signals released inside for the tests from ricocheting. The cell phone being examined, with testers using a laser to place it at the exact center of the foam pedestal, stands alone as RF signals &mdash; electromagnetic waves used in communications &mdash; are sent into the chamber while computers monitor and record the phone&rsquo;s performance. </p><p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the critical link,&rdquo; said Hiesberger, referring to a cell phone&rsquo;s signal sensitivity.</p><p>Years of test results produced this tip for the use of cell phones, especially in places with weak reception: Put the top edge of the earpiece against your ear with your thumb and fingers on the sides of the phone. That allows a clearer path for the signal.</p><p>The various tests typically take a day or two to complete, including the field testing in a Honda Odyssey minivan, which travels along a selected route in the Kansas City area that includes valleys. </p><p>There&rsquo;s been a tweak in the field testing. The minivan at times idles in neighborhoods while some tests are completed, which police found more than interesting because the van is often filled with cell phones and laptop computers. So now the van doesn&rsquo;t go out without a sign that says cell phone testing is in progress.