An SDR platform using direction finding and statistical analysis for the detection of interferers

Abstract

Radio frequency monitoring has gained a lot of research interest in spectrum management as it ensures an accurate and valid usage of the spectrum at both national and international levels while providing a protection of legal spectrum allocations against interference resulting from illegal use. Illegal repeaters are installed by end users, without the consent of authorities, because they are considered to be a cheap solution to the low signal strength problem. As these devices are not controlled by the operator, they transmit using a high power, thus jamming the useful signals and degrading the link's quality. In this paper, we propose and develop a Software Defined Radio (SDR) tool for the detection and localization of illegal transmission in both 3G and 4G networks. In our approach, we implement a direction finding tool on the Universal software Radio Peripherals (USRPs) and complement it with statistical analysis tool for the 3G network. Extensive lab and field test results show the high accuracy of the developed platform yet with a reduced cost.