Tracking Cellular Phones with UAV's.

Abstract

The use of cellular phones has become widespread. It is predicted that cellular phone use will soon become almost as high as normal land-line telephones. The ability to track these phones has obvious advantages for intelligence gathering. The problem with tracking these phones is that their use is intermittent and they are very low power emitters. The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV's) could help in the detection of these signals. They would extend the capabilities of a ground unit. Once these signals have been detected, the best algorithm for tracking to the intermittent and noisy nature of the received signals. The extended Kalman filter is used because of the nonlinearities present in the system. The exploitation of cellular signals by using UAV's and the extended Kalman filter is an important framework for future use of UAV's in unconventional ways. This thesis explores the use of UAV's to exploit' cellular emissions and locate the caller. The time difference of arrival (TDOA) of emissions is the main method of tracking using the Kalman filter. Further research and directions of interest will be proposed.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 1995
Accession Number
ADA301710

Entities

People

  • Michael P. Fallon

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Autonomy

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Algorithms
  • Emission
  • Filters
  • Intelligence Collection
  • Kalman Filters
  • Mobile Phones
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
  • Vehicles

Readers

  • Adaptive Control and Estimation with Uncertainty in Dynamic Systems.
  • Aerial Unmanned Vehicle Swarm Micro Periodontal Dentistry.
  • Radio communications and signal processing.

Technology Areas

  • Autonomy
  • Autonomy - UAVs