Mobile Telephone Mast Signals Usable As Radar 15
caveman writes "In this article at ElectronicNews.com, BAE systems have joined forces with Roke Manor Research (part of Siemens) to further develop a method of using mobile telephone base station signals as a form of radar, capable of detecting periscopes, boats, and aircraft up to several kilometers offshore, as well as detecting vehicles and people moving into and out of areas within range.
The company doesn't say exactly how accurate the system will be, but they have a similar system which calculates height which is accurate to ten meters. The parts necessary to build a receiver cost about $3000, which is extremely cheap as radar systems go."
mobile phone warfare (Score:2)
"Sir, we have spotted what may be the periscope of a Verizon class submarine on radar!"
accuracy (Score:2, Funny)
Is that 'accurate to a height of 10 meters' or 'accurate to within 10 meters of the actual height.
The english language is so vague... language of the english or, um, nevermind...
Celldar (Score:2, Informative)
Slashdot Press-Release Propogation (Score:2)
Telegraph (London), June 12, 2001
THE PENTAGON justifies the $2 billion price tag of each of its stealth aircraft by pointing to their ability to elude enemy radar. But a new invention by a British scientist could turn mobile phones into the perfect stealth aircraft locators--rendering the billion-dollar planes useless.
The Roke Manor scientists discovered that telephone calls sent between mobile phone masts detected the precise position of stealth aircraft with great ease.
"We use just the normal phone calls that are flying about in the ether," said Peter Lloyd, head of projects at Roke Manor Research at Romsey in Hampshire. "The front of the stealth plane can't be detected by conventional radar, but its bottom surface reflects well."
Mobile telephone calls bouncing between base stations produce a screen of radiation. When the aircraft fly through this screen they disrupt the phase pattern of the signals.
The Roke Manor system uses receivers, shaped like TV aerials, to detect distortions in the signals. A network of aerials large enough to cover a battlefield can be packed into a truck.
"It's remarkable that a stealth system that cost $60 billion to develop is beaten by 100,000 mobile phones," Lloyd said. A rough version of a similar system might have been used in Serbia to shoot down an American F-117 stealth fighter near Belgrade during the Kosovo campaign.
Re:Slashdot Press-Release Propogation (Score:1)
Re:Slashdot Press-Release Propogation (Score:2)
re: or serbia (Score:3, Interesting)
or china, who claimed something similar a few years ago. from this [exn.ca] 1999 article:
The Chinese appear to have turned things around. Their new Passive Coherent Location system allegedly tracks fluctuations in normal or civilian broadcasts, which function at a different frequency, and looks for distortions, reports Newsweek.
Re:Slashdot Press-Release Propogation (Score:1)
Now.. that charged-plate armour that the DSTL came up with.. now that's clever... http://www.dstl.gov.uk/press/01-07-02.htm
(Well it impressed me)
tracking people (Score:3, Interesting)
But according to the article, it could also be used as a people tracker. Such as the people moving through a parking lot as mentioned in the article. Track them going to the car park, track them breakin in to cars, track them going to dispose of their ill gotten gains and track them trying to escape whem the police turn up to arrest them.
Given the processing power available today on the sorts of computers a government can afford, it ought to be possible to keep track on a fair portion of people living in the urban areas of the world... at least while they are outside, and especially when they are in highly reflective objects like cars. Something some governments will no doubt relish. Something many other people will be very wary of.
This all depends on whether it could be made to track in a person in a crowd of people or a specific vehicle in traffic. Maybe it'll allow missing individuals to be tracked from the last known point to wherever they have ended up.
I wonder if enough detail can be gained from the return signals to actually identify the person. Maybe the frequencies used are too low for much more than determining the build of the person being tracked. On the other hand, anyone who has seen themselves on an ultra sound based scanner in hospital will know that considerabel detail may be seen with frequencies well below 0.9 to 1.8 Ghz.
And due to the fact the radio signal is there whether you are being tracked or not, there is no way to know if someone is watching your movements or not.
This is... (Score:2, Interesting)
What surprises me is that it would work with something with as intentionally small a radar cross-section as a stealth aircraft (with electronic counter measures to boot).
2.4GHZ or 900MHZ? (Score:1)
Not like it maters; no one calls me anyways.
are there cell phone masts in the areas needed? (Score:1)