Signal Transmitter Localization using Low-cost SDR receivers

Abstract

The popularity of wireless communications is growing every year and with it the possibility of threats in the electromagnetic spectrum increases. One of the key aspects to stop these attacks is to be able to localize where the threat is coming from. Current commercial products make use of expensive hardware and GPS-based synchronization techniques to perform geolocation. In this thesis, we propose a network architecture based on low-cost, GPS-free Software-Defined Radio (SDR) receivers that localizes a signal transmitter in a collaborative manner. We perform evaluations on different components of the architecture such as receiver imperfection correction, reference signals and multilateration approaches. Our results indicate that signal transmitter localization is feasible with the architecture proposed even using low-cost radio receivers.