I would like to start a new project in which i need to detect the presence of a mobile phone in a area. I have been investigating the resources available in the SDR community and i see two vias: detect gsm/lte packets or detect power sent by the mobile phone.
Packet detection:
I find gr-gsm and openlte: project that can detect mobile cells but i don´t know if they can detect broadcast packets from the mobile phone.
Power detection:
I also consider the possibility of detecting the power of the mobile phone using a power scanner but i see that the bandwidth is limited and as the gsm/lte signals are burst, i see difficult to detect them with the scan times that for example i see in the RTLSDR Scanner application.
I am a little bit lost: ¿can someone advice me or give me any idea to detect a mobile phone within an area?
Thanks,
Julen
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Basic approach (technology agnostic) is apply power threshold in the uplink bands.
Better approach is technology specific. For LTE, you would first identify the dominant cells in the area and their configuration - the corresponding uplink carrier and bandwidth, as well as the PCI and PRACH configuration.
Then, probably the best way to detect UE in the area is to scan the uplink carrier for PRACH preambles. However, you would need hardware to scan all operators and all carriers in the same area.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Hi all,
I would like to start a new project in which i need to detect the presence of a mobile phone in a area. I have been investigating the resources available in the SDR community and i see two vias: detect gsm/lte packets or detect power sent by the mobile phone.
Packet detection:
I find gr-gsm and openlte: project that can detect mobile cells but i don´t know if they can detect broadcast packets from the mobile phone.
Power detection:
I also consider the possibility of detecting the power of the mobile phone using a power scanner but i see that the bandwidth is limited and as the gsm/lte signals are burst, i see difficult to detect them with the scan times that for example i see in the RTLSDR Scanner application.
I am a little bit lost: ¿can someone advice me or give me any idea to detect a mobile phone within an area?
Thanks,
Julen
Basic approach (technology agnostic) is apply power threshold in the uplink bands.
Better approach is technology specific. For LTE, you would first identify the dominant cells in the area and their configuration - the corresponding uplink carrier and bandwidth, as well as the PCI and PRACH configuration.
Then, probably the best way to detect UE in the area is to scan the uplink carrier for PRACH preambles. However, you would need hardware to scan all operators and all carriers in the same area.