Design of an UAV Equipped With SDR Acting as a

GSM Base Station

Tomislav Radišić,1 Mario Muštra, 2 Petar Andraši 3
1, 2, 3
University of Zagreb, Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences, Vukelićeva 4, HR-10000 Zagreb, Croatia
[email protected]

Abstract—Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are popular in easily reachable by a rescue team. UAV-based GSM base
many fields of application because of their flexibility and a rather stations built using SDRs were developed only in recent years
low price. UAVs are a cheap solution for surveillance and and are still being researched and perfected for use in real
detection of people after hazardous events. In this paper, we deal environments [7]. Besides the SDR and processing unit, the
with the ability of UAVs to be used not only as a detection, but proposed UAV platform is equipped with a standard video
also as a communication tool for establishing communication camera and a thermal camera able to operate in low-visibility
between a person in need of rescue and a rescuing team. The environments.
proposed solution should be capable of visual detection using
standard and thermal video cameras, allowing detection in low- The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2
visibility environments and situations. Besides visual detection, we we describe setup of the UAV capable of carrying necessary
decided to investigate the possibilities to implement a solution equipment. Section 3 is devoted to the implementation of a
which allows us to establish communication with the person in GSM base station using SDR. In Section 4 we present results of
need of rescue using mobile network without the available the field trials. Finally, Section 5 brings conclusive remarks and
infrastructure. The proposed system should provide guidelines for further work.
georeferenced video in visible and thermal spectrum to pinpoint
the place of interest for the rescuing team and allow II. SETUP OF THE UAV
communication through an ad-hoc GSM network using UAV as a
base station. UAVs available as so-called ready-to-fly platforms are very
Keywords— detection, GSM, rescue, SDR, UAV popular because they come as preassembled platforms capable
of modification for different purposes. Large manufacturers,
I. INTRODUCTION which have their proprietary line of equipment, covering all
hardware for UAVs, have tendencies to build low-customizable
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) recently became very flight controllers and navigation devices. For that reason, we
popular due to the recent development of controlling, chose to develop the entire UAV which could be utilized for
navigation, and imaging hardware. They are being used in different purposes. This will allow us to carry larger payload
different fields and provide a good and cheap solution to handle and install different navigation devices used to gather precise
difficult tasks which required more complex systems. There are information about location of the UAV as well as provide us
many possible usages of UAVs, from aerial imaging, mapping, with georeferenced imagery and video captured during flight.
surveillance, search and rescue, to delivery of goods. UAVs can
be operated in two ways, by an operator on the ground which A. Construction of the UAV
directly sees the UAV or has video information through an For the platform we decided that the best choice is a
onboard camera, or UAVs can have a preset flight plan and use hexacopter because it is possible to be used in urban areas and
satellite navigation systems to follow some preset flight plan. there are many available solutions on the market. Dimension of
Certain research in operating UAVs in Non-Line-of-Sight the platform is 960 mm, which presents a span between two
(NLoS) environment propose usage of mobile networks to opposite motors. This large platform can carry around 10 kg of
transport controlling signal for UAV Teleoperation [1] or to payload having a total takeoff weight of more than 20 kg. For
perform remote sensing of an area [2]. Properties of mobile propulsion we used 0.85 kW motors and the built hexacopter
networks can be used for different detection and localization has possibility to utilize batteries of different capacities, which
purposes as well. One possible use is detection of the source of influence flight time and maneuverability of the UAV. With a
signal originating from a mobile phone. Location of a mobile battery pack of 22 Ah built as 6 cells in series (6S) we can
phone can be interpreted as the location of a person in need of achieve 15-20 minutes of flight time. For the flight controller,
rescue or a person with which is necessary to establish we decided to use PixHawk 2.1, an open-source flight
communication, when there is no mobile network coverage. controller capable of controlling UAVs with up to 8-motors.
Plenty of research in the field of usage of UAVs capable of
detecting mobile network signals was conducted in recent years B. Navigation System
[3-6]. UAVs are generally equipped with Global Navigation
In this paper we try to investigate possibility to use Satellite Systems (GNSS) integrated module which is in close
software-defined radio (SDR) capable of operating as a GSM interaction with the flight controller. This kind of setup allows
base station mounted on an UAV to communicate with a person precision in flight of around couple of meters because accuracy
where there is no mobile network coverage and person is not to determine the location of single-frequency GNSS modules is

978-1-7281-3227-3/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE

31

Authorized licensed use limited to: Universidade Federal dos Pampas (UNIPAMPA). Downloaded on June 07,2024 at 18:58:30 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 2-5 m. To increase this accuracy further, we decided to use
Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) upgrade to the standard GPS
positioning system. Using RTK we can extract coordinated of
an UAV equipped with RTK receiver to the level of couple of
centimeters.
III. GSM BASE STATION USING SDR
Software-defined radios became very popular because of
their low price and high capabilities to mimic expensive
hardware through software implementations. To simulate
behavior of a GSM base station we used LimeSDR, capable to
operate in 900 MHz spectrum. GSM is the oldest, but still
available and maintained digital mobile communication system.
Although mobile communications reached 5 th generation and
4G systems are widely available, GSM is still being used a lot
as the most robust of technologies. It is limited in data-transfer
rates but it offers possibility to establish communication with Figure 1. Current GSM Base Station Hardware.
very low signal power of -102 dBm [8]. Because of that
The GSM base station was built around UDOO X86 Ultra
property, and rather easy implementation, we decided to use
single board computer, Fig. 2. It was chosen because it provides
GSM as the base technology for communication using SDR
relatively high performance in a small form factor and weight
mounted on the built UAV.
of only 130 g. UDOO X86 Ultra is powered by a quad-core
A. Hardware CPU Intel Pentium N3710 running at up to 2.56 GHz with 8
On the hardware side, an UAV-mounted GSM base station GB of dual channel DDR3L [9]. It also has USB 3.0 interface,
was built from commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components, important for fast throughput of data from the LimeSDR. The
mainly the aforementioned LimeSDR, UDOO X86 Ultra single computer draws up to 3 A of current at 12 V. For the prototype
board computer, antennas, power supply, cables, connectors, GSM base station, the computer was enclosed in a light-weight
enclosures, and mounting braces. custom made plastic case.

First proof-of-concept prototype of the base station

hardware set-up is visible in Fig. 1. In future iterations a range
of improvements will be implemented, mainly to improve the
detection range. Our main design goals in the long term are:
· Low mass – since the base station is mounted on the
UAV it was very important to reduce the mass of the
system as much as possible to reduce the negative
effects on UAV’s flight endurance.
· Low power consumption – electric-powered micro- and
mini-UAVs suffer a significant reduction in flight
endurance with any additional components that are
powered from the same batteries.
· High flexibility – being able to change the frequency
and decode different types of signal is the main
advantage of the SDR approach and in the future work
Figure 2. UDOO X86 Ultra.
it can be leveraged to enable tracking and analysis of
other types of signals besides GSM. 100 mm
· High RF range – by increasing the range at which a
mobile station (MS) can be detected it will be possible
to increase the search area without need to recharge the
UAV or replace its batteries. In this stage of
development, we did not yet attempt to optimize the
range.
· Ease of use – the system should be easy to integrate
with other UAVs and SDR equipment. While this goal
is not in focus at this stage of the development, early
steps are made to ensure that the final system will
satisfy this requirement.
Figure 3. LimeSDR.

32

Authorized licensed use limited to: Universidade Federal dos Pampas (UNIPAMPA). Downloaded on June 07,2024 at 18:58:30 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 LimeSDR is a low-cost, open-source software defined radio
capable of full-duplex communication on two receiver and two
transmitter channels, Fig. 3. We used LimeSDR to provide
physical layer for communication with the mobile station (MS).
It is based on LMS7002M which is a field programmable RF
(FPRF) transceiver integrated circuit, capable of receiving and
transmitting at frequencies from 100 kHz to 3.8 GHz. The heart
of the LimeSDR board is Altera Cyclone IV field-
programmable gate array (FPGA) which has 40.000 logic
elements, 1134 kbits embedded memory and 116 embedded
18×18 multipliers [10]. Its main function is to transfer digital
data to a PC through the integrated USB3.0 connector.
LimeSDR comes with a software suite for programming and
configuring the FPGA, called LimeSuite. The board can be
powered by an USB port, in which case it uses up to 4.5 W of
power (maximum of 0.9 A at 5 V for USB 3.0), or by an
additional power supply (6-12 V), in which case it is limited at
25 W, though it is not expected never use that much in normal
operation. LimeSDR specifications show that the maximum
transmission power is 10 dBm [10], however that is true only
for the continuous wave at selected frequencies. At 900 MHz
the power output is around 6 dBm [11].
B. Software
On the software side, the base station runs on Ubuntu 18.04
LTS. The main set of programs implementing cellular network
infrastructure components was developed by Osmocom (open-
source mobile communications) project, Fig. 4. This project
aims to create free and open-source software implementations
for the GSM protocol stack and network [12]. It is very useful Figure 4. GSM Base Station Architecture.
for researchers because classic telecom vendors implement
network elements as paid proprietary hardware and software, · OsmoBSC – OsmoBSC is the Osmocom
without the ability to understand or modify them. implementation of a base station controller (BSC). It
All Osmocom software is available in source code form and implements an A-bis interface towards BTSs and an A
as a range of binaries precompiled for many architectures and interface towards a mobile switching center (MSC).
use cases. For our purposes we compiled everything from the OsmoBSC can be controlled over telnet virtual teletype
latest versions of source code. In addition to the base Osmocom (VTY) interface [15]. It can run in two modes, either as
libraries and other Linux dependencies, following are the main pure BSC which communicates with external MSC, or
Osmocom components we used: as network-in-the-box (NITB) which implements BSC,
MSC, Short Message Service Center (SMSC), and
· OsmoTRX – software-defined radio transceiver that Home Location Register (HLR). We used the NITB
implements the Layer 1, physical layer, of a base option for simplicity.
transceiver station. It is an additional layer which is
needed when the rest of the stack is used with SDRs · Osmo-SIP-connector – translates between mobile
and is used to convert raw data samples provided from network call control (MNCC) protocol and session
SDRs into User Datagram Protocol (UDP) bursts which initiation protocol (SIP) used by Asterisk.
can be read by OsmoBTS [13]. OsmoTRX can be run In addition to Osmocom stack, we used another very flexible
in a special mode which is tailored specifically for the and powerful software – Asterisk. Asterisk is a free and open-
LimeSDR (osmo-trx-lms mode). source software implementation of a private branch exchange
· OsmoBTS – OsmoBTS is Osmocom’s implementation (PBX) which we use to route calls between mobile phones. It
of a GSM base transceiver station (BTS). A BTS works offers a range of options which will be useful in further
as an interface between the radio interface (used for development.
communication between the mobile station and radio
transceiver) and a wired A-bis interface towards a base IV. FIELD T EST OF THE PROTOTYPE
station controller (BSC). It also implements the The main objective of the field test was to determine
network side of the Layer 2 of the radio interface, i.e. whether the created GSM base station will work in a real
the mobile version of the link access protocol environment. Secondary objectives were to test the range of MS
(LAPDm) [14]. detection, check the power consumption, and subsequently,
reduction in flight endurance. This enabled us to calculate the
area that can be covered by a single UAV during a single flight.

33

Authorized licensed use limited to: Universidade Federal dos Pampas (UNIPAMPA). Downloaded on June 07,2024 at 18:58:30 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 To simplify the test set-up, base station was kept stationary initial test of the system proved its feasibility, although the
while the MS moved. The MS that was used in the test was the performance, especially in terms of RF range, is still lacking.
European version of the Samsung Galaxy S8 (Exynos based)
In the future work we will improve the link budget by using
which came equipped with Samsung Shannon 955 RF
transceiver. While specifications of the MS transceiver and better cables and antennas as well as an amplifier on the
transmission line. This should improve the RF range and
antenna are not publicly known, it is safe to assume that the
coverage area with small reduction in flight endurance (due to
transceiver is made to the GSM protocol standards (-102 dBm
sensitivity) and antenna gain is in the range typical for the amplifier using additional power). One of the possible further
improvements is using a directional antenna which could enable
planar Inverted-F antenna (PIFA) encased in the body of the
MS and held in random orientation, around -5 dBi. With this even further increase in range in combination with rudimentary
direction finding capabilities. Further testing will be performed
set-up, and knowing the general characteristics of the base
in areas with no GSM signal with intent of more closely
station hardware, expected range was calculated to be around
representing the intended use case.
500 m. Since range improvement was not the main objective of
this phase of base station development, these numbers are ACKNOWLEDGMENT
important only in terms of planned analysis and optimization of
the link budget which will be performed in future work. The work and research presented in this paper is supported
by NATO Science for Peace and Security Program through the
The test was performed on Absolute Radio Frequency project Bee4Exp (G5355).
Channel Number (ARFCN) 12 which is paired to downlink
frequency of 937.4 MHz and uplink frequency of 892.4 MHz. REFERENCES
Three features were tested: voice call, short message service [1] A. AbdElHamid and P. Zong, "Development of UAV teleoperation
(SMS), and connection attempts. Connection to the base station, virtual environment based-on GSM networks and real weather effects,"
voice calls, and SMS were all established, therefore the main International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences, vol. 16, pp.
463-474, 2015.
objective of the test was accomplished. Both voice call and
SMS were successfully used at distances of up to 85 m. [2] K. Daniel and C. Wietfeld, "Using public network infrastructures for
UAV remote sensing in civilian security operations," Technical
Connection between MS and BS was maintained at the distance University of Dortmund, Germany, 2011.
of up to 120 m. These ranges are significantly shorter than [3] V. Wolfe, W. Frobe, V. Shrinivasan, T.-Y. Hsieh, and H. M. Gates,
those calculated for theoretical range which implies significant "Feasibility study of tilizing 4G LTE signals in combination with
improvements in the link budget are still possible. However, at unmanned aerial vehicles for the purpose of search and rescue of
this point in development, the base station was not optimized avalanche victims (Increment 1)," University of Colorado at Boulder,
for range, therefore, such reduction in range was expected. Research Report, 2014.
[4] J. Munoz-Castaner, et al., "Your phone as a personal emergency beacon:
With base station power consumption being between 15 and A portable gsm base station to locate lost persons," IEEE Industrial
18 W, and main battery bus operating at 24 V, worst-case Electronics Magazine, vol. 9, pp. 49-57, 2015.
current draw was 0.75 A. Considering that the rest of the UAV [5] G. Li, X. Zhou, J. Yin, and Q. Xiao, "An UAV scheduling and planning
systems, motors mainly, draw almost 62 A in hover, it is method for post-disaster survey," The International Archives of
Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, vol.
obvious that the effect on flight range will be minimal (1.21% 40, p. 169, 2014.
range reduction). Aerodynamic effects were not taken into [6] T. Wypych, R. Angelo, and F. Kuester, "Airgsm: An unmanned, flying
consideration because of the small airspeeds this type of UAV gsm cellular base station for flexible field communications," in 2012
is capable of reaching. IEEE Aerospace Conference, 2012, pp. 1-9.
[7] S. Ó. Murphy, K. N. Brown, and C. J. Sreenan, "Cellphone localisation
It is also interesting to note that the UAV can land and using an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle and software defined
provide GSM signal until the battery is completely discharged. radio," in EWSN, 2017, pp. 254-255.
If, for example, 50% of the battery remains after landing, it is [8] 3GPP, "Technical Specification Group GSM/EDGE Radio Access
possible to provide GSM signal for almost 15 hours at that Network; Radio transmission and reception (Release 8) TS 45.005
location. Naive coverage area calculation can be performed by V8.8.0," ed, 2010, p. 184.
multiplying the flight range of the UAV (5250 m) with the RF [9] "UDOO X86 User Manual, v1.4," ed: SECO S.r.l., 2017.
range of the base station (120 m). This means that the UAV can [10] LimeSDR-USB hardware description [Online]. Available:
scan area of about 63 hectares or 0.63 km2. However, coverage https://wiki.myriadrf.org/LimeSDR-USB_hardware_description
area will be improved with the improvement of the RF range. [11] LimeSDR HF Performance [Online]. Available:
https://wiki.myriadrf.org/LimeSDR_HF_Performance
V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK [12] Intro: Osmocom Cellular Network Infrastructure [Online]. Available:
https://osmocom.org/projects/cellular-infrastructure/wiki
In this paper we presented preliminary design of an UAV-
[13] P. E. Pedrol, "OsmoTRX user manual," ed: sysmocom - s.f.m.c. GmbH,
based GSM base station that can be used for search and rescue 2018, p. 49.
operations in areas with no GSM service. By leveraging [14] H. Welte, "OsmoBTS user manual," ed: sysmocom - s.f.m.c. GmbH,
powerful COTS components and flexible open-source software, 2016, p. 61.
it was possible to rapidly develop and test the prototype. Our [15] H. W. Holger Freyther, and N. Hofmeyr, "OsmoBSC user manual," ed:
sysmocom - s.f.m.c. GmbH, 2018, p. 73.

34

Authorized licensed use limited to: Universidade Federal dos Pampas (UNIPAMPA). Downloaded on June 07,2024 at 18:58:30 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.