Your Phone as

a Personal
Emergency
Beacon

©istockphoto.com/ayo888

A Portable GSM Base Station to Locate Lost Persons

A
ccess to emergency numbers such as 911 or 112 is generally universally
available to cell phone users. Nevertheless, emergencies may occur in
JORGE MUÑOZ-CASTAÑER, areas without cell phone coverage, for example, in remote areas fre-
PABLO COUÑAGO SOTO, quented by climbers or hikers. In this article, we describe the design,
FELIPE GIL-CASTIÑEIRA, development, and evaluation of a global system for mobile commu-
FRANCISCO JAVIER nications (GSM) base station that can be placed in a vehicle (car,
GONZÁLEZ-CASTAÑO, plane, helicopter, etc.) to locate a lost person with an active GSM phone. The
ISAAC BALLESTEROS, system includes the resources to provide a good estimation of the location of the
ANDREA DI GIOVANNI, and phone, allowing the rescue team to significantly narrow its search and to estab-
PABLO COLODRÓN VILLAR lish communication with the person where possible, as the system also provides
GSM coverage.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MIE.2015.2484922

Date of publication: 21 December 2015

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FIGURE 1 – An SBTS UAV.
Today, access to cell phones is
practically universal (according to
Eurostat, in 2006, the number of cell
phones in Europe exceeded the num-
ber of citizens). People use phones not
only to make calls but also as personal
entertainment devices such as camer-
as, music players, or gaming consoles.
With the advent of smartphones,
there are also popular applications
that support outdoor activities, such
as sport-tracking applications or navi-
gators. In this context, a phone is price-
less in the event of an emergency. One
example is a recent incident in which
a special firefighter rescue team was
searching for a man who had lost his
way in the mountains (near Madrid,
Spain). The team was in contact with
the man by phone, but he was unable
to give them his position, even though
he had a smartphone with a global
positioning system (GPS). Finally, the
firefighters were able to help the man
send his position using a common
application on the phone. This was a
noncritical incident involving a lost
person without injuries, with a GPS-
enabled smartphone, in an area with
good GSM coverage, and in contact
with the rescue team. However, even
in these highly favorable circumstanc-
es, the rescue team had problems
locating the lost person. It is there-
fore easy to imagine much worse sce-
narios: people without GPS-enabled
phones, nontechnical and elderly peo-
ple, injured people unable to use their
phone, etc.
It is quite probable that a lost per-
son will carry a phone that may be of
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■ December
use to search and rescue teams, but
we cannot (yet) assume that it will be
GPS-enabled or that the lost person
will be able to manipulate it or even
that there will be network coverage in
the area. This is particularly applica-
ble to extremely remote areas, where
accidents are more likely to happen.
The aforementioned considerations
led us to propose the sensing base trans-
ceiver station (SBTS), a system that can
be used to locate GSM cellular phones,
even in areas without GSM network cov-
erage. The system has been designed,
developed, and fully tested and can be
installed in a car, helicopter, plane, or
unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Figure 1
shows the UAV used in our tests. The
SBTS forces GSM phones to transmit in-
formation to triangulate their position and
also provides GSM coverage to establish
communication with the lost person.
In this article, we give a brief over-
view of the systems involved [technolo-
gy used for rescue and radio-frequency
(RF) location methods] and describe
the architecture, implementation, and
performance of the SBTS.
Related Work
Radio Beacons
Rescue professionals and cautious
mountaineers have taken advantage of
the latest technology advancements [1].
For example, personal locator bea-
cons (PLBs) are portable transmitters
that send emergency distress signals
to satellites. They are usually rugged
waterproof devices with long-lasting
batteries. They are inspired by the
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successful emergency position-indicat-
ing radio beacons (EPIRBs) that have
been in use for decades in marine envi-
ronments. PLBs and EPIRBs rely on the
same satellite network, deployed by the
international Cospas-Sarsat program
[2], which detects alerts and distrib-
utes them to the appropriate ground
segments. Most PLBs built since 1997
are also able to transmit their GPS po-
sition, increasing their precision.
There are other devices that pro-
vide communication for emergency and
nonemergency communications, such
as the SPOT Satellite GPS Messenger
(which uses a privately operated net-
work of satellites and requires an annual
subscription fee), satellite telephones,
or even conventional radio services
(General Mobile Radio Service, Citizens
Band, and amateur radio).
Beacons without satellite assistance
may also help to locate persons. When
activated, Cospas-Sarsat PLBs also trans-
mit a distress signal at 406 MHz and a
complementary 121.5 MHz homing sig-
nal, which search and rescue teams can
radio-triangulate. Similar devices are
used to locate persons trapped in ava-
lanches. These transceivers operate at
457 kHz. Logically, the rescue team is not
expected to be far from the trapped per-
son in such cases.
Clearly, the systems discussed so
far can effectively reduce the time tak-
en to rescue a person in case of emer-
gency, but, unfortunately, they are only
used by professionals or highly skilled
mountaineers [3]. “Normal” people also
experience emergency situations. It is
not uncommon to read about hikers
or elderly persons losing their way in
extreme or rural areas. This only high-
lights the potential value of a system
capable of interacting with universal
personal communication devices.
Locating GSM Devices
Location is inherent to GSM technology.
GSM networks need to know at least the
location area identity, that is, the group
of cells that can be paged to estab-
lish a communication or to signal the
phone or mobile station. This location
information has many uses, including
intelligent handover, efficient channel
allocation, and many other features.
 As early as 1994, the U.S. Federal Com-
munications Commission required
wireless carriers in the United States to
provide the location and calling num-
ber of mobile phones that dialed 911,
and, in 1996, it requested wireless car-
riers to improve their location accuracy
to 125 m 67% of the time [4]. Technol-
ogy has improved greatly since then,
satisfying these requirements and trig-
gering interest in location-based ser-
vices (LBSs) [5]. LBSs can be used to
adapt information services to specific
contexts, such as gaming, advertising,
billing, and social networking. Addition-
ally, automotive telematics and public
transport systems can also benefit
from the centralized location and navi-
gation systems supported by existing
communication networks [6].
Location techniques can be classified
into two categories: network-based tech-
niques and handset-based techniques
[6]. The former do not require the user
terminal to cooperate. They are nonintru-
sive, as they identify the location of the
handset from measurements performed
by the infrastructure. Conversely, in
handset-based techniques, the handset
measures the different signals that it re-
ceives and determines its own location
or sends this information to the network.
The main advantage of network-based
techniques is that neither software nor
hardware modifications are necessary in
the handset, even if it is old or lacks ad-
vanced features. The simplest method
is cell-ID positioning [7], which consists
of determining the cell that is providing
coverage to the phone. Its accuracy is
low, but it can be improved with other
methods [8], such as timing advance, in
which GSM devices calculate the round-
trip between the terminal and the BTS,
estimating the distance in between. In
addition, triangulation can increase posi-
tioning accuracy by measuring the signal
transmitted by the phone in different lo-
cations or by reading the measurement
reports (power level received from the
serving cell and the neighboring cells)
that the phone sends to facilitate hando-
ver decisions (this information is required
for regular GSM operation and was not
originally intended for location purposes).
In handset-based techniques, the
phone detects the signal transmitted
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by two or more BTSs or satellites. For
example, enhanced observed time
difference [7] measures the time dif-
ference of arrival between the beacon
carriers of several BTSs.
GSM transmissions can be located
using commercially available devices,
such as those produced by Honeywell
[9], Rohde & Schwarz [10], and Proxi-
mus [11]. Table 1 summarizes some rel-
evant figures related to this equipment.
Rohde & Schwarz devices, for example,
are much more accurate than Proximus
devices, but the latter can operate while
moving. Since these commercial devices
process GSM signals as electromagnetic
waves at the physical layer, they can-
not exploit network information from
upper protocol layers. As we describe
next, since the SBTS implements the full
GSM stack of a base station and decodes
all messages exchanged, it can fully in-
teract with a cellular phone. Therefore,
the phone can be forced to send signal
bursts at will, and it can be identified
univocally. Commercial devices such
as those mentioned previously cannot
support these features, which make the
SBTS better suited to search and rescue
missions. As a byproduct, and unlike
previous approaches, our system can
also send SMSs or call the target phone.
Embedded GSM Base Stations
In the past, GSM station hardware re-
quired considerable space and energy
to operate. Nowadays, however, by ap-
plying software-defined radio (SDR)
technologies, it is possible to implement
small GSM stations using embedded
systems composed of a software GSM
stack and SDR-capable hardware. Open
software projects exist for GSM stacks,
the two main ones being OpenBTS [12]
and OsmocommBB [13]. The OpenBTS
implementation offers a standard Third-
Generation Partnership Project air
TABLE 1 – RELEVANT FIGURES OF COMMERCIAL DIRECTION FINDERS.
MODEL R&S DDF007
Size 192 × 320 × 62 mm
Weight 3.5 kg
Frequency range 20 MHz to 6 GHz
Measure error ±2° with 95% accuracy
December
interface and presents user devices as
Internet session initiation protocol (SIP)
points. The OsmocommBB implementa-
tion includes all GSM BTS and base sta-
tion controller (BSC) layers. Regarding
SDR hardware, of particular interest are
the products of Ettus Research [14] (in
particular, the Embedded Series, which
includes radio and processing capabili-
ties) and Fairwaves [15], already pre-
pared for OsmocommBB and OpenBTS.
Other companies with interesting prod-
ucts are Nuand LLC [16] and Sysmocom
GmbH [17]. The aforementioned devices
and stacks, combined with additional
hardware, could be used as building
blocks to create a system similar to the
one presented in this article.
Portable GSM Station
and Location System
In this section, we will describe our
location-sensing device. It is impor-
tant to note that a complete field sys-
tem will be composed of at least one
of these devices, which we call SBTS
base stations, in addition to a ground
console called the SBTS console or
console. In the console, SBTS base sta-
tion data are processed to present the
field operator with a fusion of the loca-
tions achieved so far, superimposed
on a map. The console, in turn, sends
back to the UAVs new points at which
to take a location measurement. There
is thus real-time feedback between the
SBTS base stations and a human opera-
tor. Figure 2 shows a screenshot of the
console’s graphical interface. This ar-
ticle focuses on the SBTS base station,
which we refer to as the SBTS system or
SBTS for short.
To save battery use, GSM phones
do not transmit continuously unless
there is an ongoing call; this means that
a completely passive location system
that listens for GSM signals to locate
R&S DDF05A PROXIMUS DF-500
436 × 192 × 460 mm 400 × 400 × 220 cm
16 kg Information not available
20 MHz to 3 GHz GSM850/900/1800/1900
1° RMS rural and suburban area ±10°,
urban area ±20°
UTC
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FIGURE 2 – An SBTS console graphical interface.
devices is not feasible for search and
rescue missions. We therefore decided
to implement a completely functional
GSM BTS. With this system, there is full
control of the signaling between the
phone and the network, and it is even
possible to force the phone to transmit
at any time, even in areas without GSM
coverage (GSM phones do not trans-
mit radio signals while searching for
available networks). We use an array of
OMAP SoC
ARM Core
DSP Link
DSP Core
uPP
Processing FPGA
TX FPGA
RX1 FPGA
Aurora
RX2 FPGA
RX3 FPGA
RX4 FPGA
FIGURE 3 – An SBTS hardware architecture.
antennas for receiving incoming signals
from the terminals (uplink signals). With
these inputs, we calculate the angle of
arrival (AoA) of the signals. With differ-
ent measurements taken from different
positions, it is possible to triangulate the
location of the phone, and, by mount-
ing an SBTS on a vehicle, such as a car,
plane, helicopter, or UAV, measurements
can be taken from different places in
short time frames. As the SBTS can
DAC RF Chain
ADC RF Chain
ADC RF Chain
ADC RF Chain
ADC RF Chain
control the exact moment at which a
phone transmits a signal, it can match
measurements with specific device iden-
tities [determined by their International
Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI)]. As a
fully functional BTS, the SBTS allows the
rescue team and the lost person to com-
municate as well. It also includes a mod-
ule that detects existing GSM networks
and configures transmission frequen-
cies to avoid interference.
The core of the system is an SDR plat-
form with six field-programmable gate
arrays (FPGAs) for signal processing
tasks, combined with an advanced RISC
machine (ARM) core running the control
software and the higher layers of the GSM
stack. The AoA is measured with an array
of four antennas. The signals are digitized,
and the phase difference of the four sig-
nals is combined by applying the parallel
decomposition (PADEC) algorithm [18]
to estimate the position of the mobile
phone. This AoA estimation could be re-
placed with simpler approaches, for ex-
ample based on the RSSI of the incoming
signal, which is already calculated in the
GSM stack. However, we selected the AoA
approach because of its faster conver-
gence to a good estimation of the location
of the phone. Alternative antenna con-
figurations with higher directivity would
require extending flight time, which is un-
acceptable in our target scenario.
As noted previously, phones without
network support do not transmit, so we
force them to transmit signaling mes-
sages to join our GSM network by an-
nouncing our own BTS. It is then possible
to identify the terminal from its IMSI, and
also to take control of the communica-
tion. Once the mobile phone is linked to
the BTS, a human operator or an auto-
matic system can command the system
to perform AoA measurements. After
some measurements (at least two), it
will be possible to obtain a rough estima-
tion of the location of the mobile phone,
and its accuracy will improve with sub-
sequent AoA measurements performed
from different geographic positions. As
shown in Figure 1, a plane is an advanta-
geous platform on which to install our
system because of its continuous move-
ment and because it is easier to reach
places with a direct line of sight between
the phone and our station.

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 Hardware Architecture
Figure 3 shows a schematic diagram of
the SBTS hardware, and Figure 4 shows it
installed on a UAV. It is built on six rugge-
dized boards mounted on an aluminum
chassis specifically designed for small
UAVs. The boards are interconnected
through a 3U-VPX backplane providing
different intercommunication buses,
such as Aurora [19] and joint test action
group (JTAG). We chose this architecture
over simpler and cheaper commercial,
off-the-shelf options because ruggedized
hardware was necessary to pass the
aeronautical certifications required to
deploy our system on an aircraft.
Each processing board contains
a Virtex-6 FPGA and an Omap L138
system-on-chip that includes a gen-
eral-purpose processor (GPP) and a
digital signal processor (DSP) in the
same chip. The GPP and the DSP com-
municate through a shared memory
mechanism, handled with the Texas
Instruments DSPLink library [20].
The FPGA is connected with the DSP
through a universal parallel port, pro-
viding a complete path to move infor-
mation between the GPP and the FPGA.
There are four receiver boards
equipped with RF chains that down-
convert and digitize the signal received
by the antennas. Each board provides
a stream of in-phase and quadrature
(IQ) components of the intermediate
frequency (IF) signal. Among other op-
erations, the FPGA in each board con-
verts the signal down to baseband and
applies different filters. The resulting
stream is sent to the processing board.
There is a single transmission board
that receives information from the
FIGURE 4 – SBTS hardware installed on a UAV.
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processing board and transmits it in the
desired channel of the GSM band. An
external power amplifier improves sig-
nal coverage. The transmission board is
directly connected to the four reception
boards through four in-phase paths to
transmit a sinusoid tone (in a configu-
rable frequency), which is used to cali-
brate the reception boards and correct
possible phase misalignments. Table 2
shows a selection of physical param-
eters of the hardware platform.
Software Architecture
An SBTS is a complex distributed system
in which each board includes its own
software layer. The processing board
contains the most relevant software
that defines the operation of the system.
As this board alone contains a GPP, an
FPGA, and a DSP, it is also a complex dis-
tributed system. In the next section, we
describe its functionality. It is divided
in modules that are implemented in the
three programmable devices, making it
flexible and expandable. Figure 5 shows
the module layout and the interconnec-
tions between the modules.
Control
The control module is one of the most
relevant SBTS components. Its main
function is to manage the system. It
reacts to messages received from a
ground station connected through a
wireless data link, as well as from on-
board modules. The log/supervision
module receives status messages,
saves relevant information on a file,
and redirects selected messages to the
ground station to monitor system sta-
tus and detect possible failure during a
December
2015 ■ IEEE
mission. The attitude and heading ref-
erence system (AHRS) module receives
data from GPS and attitude sensors, al-
lowing estimation of the real position
and attitude of the array antenna. This
information is crucial for calculating
the location of a phone.
GSM
The GSM stack module implements func-
tions of GSM layers 1, 2, and 3. It sends
and receives data from a lower-layer
component running on the processing
FPGA, which implements the Gaussion
minimum shift keying (GMSK) modula-
tor and demodulator. It also implements
an SIP/real-time protocol (RTP) inter-
face used to transmit signalization and
voice to the ground station. This allows
a ground station softphone to establish
voice communications with the mobile
phones connected to the UAV through
the data link.
Geolocation
Because of the nature of the GSM pro-
tocol, a mobile phone does not main-
tain continuous communication with
the BTS. Instead, the mobile phone
issues a request and is assigned a logi-
cal channel (a number of time slots in
a physical radio channel) to commu-
nicate with the BTS for a specific task.
Upon completion of this task, the chan-
nel is released, and the mobile phone
remains in idle mode, monitoring BTS
broadcast channels and looking for in-
coming events such as voice calls or
text messages. For this reason, it was
necessary to implement a mechanism
that would allow the system to obtain
the signal from the mobile phone at the
desired time. This is achieved by gener-
ating fake events that force the terminal
to request a dedicated channel and by
TABLE 2 – SELECTED PHYSICAL PARAMETERS
OF THE HARDWARE PLATFORM.
Size 143 × 168 × 215 mm
Weight <8 kg
Power 80 W
Transmission power 4W
RF channels 1x Tx, 4x Rx
Frequency range 890–960 MHz
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 Ground Station
Control
RF Control
FIGURE 5 – An SBTS software architecture.
sending a few messages to make the
necessary measurements.
A calibration procedure prevents
phase deviations produced by the RF
chains of the different channels. AoA esti-
mation is implemented as two layers. The
first layer runs on the FPGA and performs
the calculations to measure the phase
difference between the four reception
channels, compensating impairments
detected during the calibration process.
The second layer runs on the GPP, and
its main functions are to receive requests
from the ground station (including text
messages and voice calls), generate a
triggering event for the mobile to emit
a signal, and read the first-layer calcula-
tions to estimate the angle of incidence
FIGURE 6 – An SBTS on the roof of a car.
54 IEEE licensed
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■ December
GSM Stack AOA Module
AHRS Comm Module
DSP TX DSP RX
GSM Buffer AOA Estimator
GSM Mod
IQ Samples IQ Samples
Output Intput
of the signal arriving at the antenna ar-
ray, between −p/2 and p/2 radians.
Signal Processing
Signal processing operations are im-
plemented in the FPGAs. The system
includes six of these: one per satellite
board (four receivers and one transmit-
ter) and a larger one on the process-
ing board. The four reception boards
obtain the signal directly from the RF
subsystem. The signal received by the
antennas is downconverted to IF and
then filtered and digitized by an analog-
to-digital converter. The digital signal
is then sent to the FPGA as a stream of
IQ samples in IF, which is converted to
baseband and properly filtered before
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Ground PC
Log/Supervision
GPP
Bite Scanner
DSP
GSM Demod
FPGA
it is passed on to the FPGA in the pro-
cessing board.
The transmission board receives
binary bursts from the processing
board, modulates this data, and sends
the signal to the antenna. The FPGA lo-
cated in this board receives messages
containing the binary data of the GSM
bursts to be transmitted. This data are
processed by the GSM modulator. The
baseband signal is then sent to the dig-
ital-to-analog converter, converted to IF
for filtering, and moved to the desired
transmission frequency for transmis-
sion by the antenna.
The FPGA in the processing board
implements three processing blocks.
The first is the AoA block, which re-
ceives signals from the four reception
boards and computes phase differenc-
es to estimate the angle of incidence of
the incoming signals. The second block
is the GSM demodulator. This receives
a signal from one of the reception
boards and applies a GMSK demodu-
lator to obtain its binary content. The
demodulated bursts are sent to the DSP
and then to the GPP to be processed by
the upper layers of the GSM stack. The
third block is a buffer for the GSM trans-
mission path. It saves GSM bursts com-
ing from upper layers and ensures that
each burst is transmitted in the correct
order and at the correct time.
 Validation and Tests
We performed an extensive battery of
tests to validate and improve the SBTS
system. The first tests, designed to vali-
date the correct operation of the AoA al-
gorithm, were performed in an anechoic
chamber and the results were satisfac-
tory. During additional tests in our labo-
ratories, we observed the importance
of correct synchronization between the
components implemented in the differ-
ent processors and FPGAs. It was also
necessary to optimize the usage of the
internal data buses to avoid congestion.
In addition, the indoor environment re-
vealed the influence of multipath on po-
sitioning error. Even though the system
was conceived to work outdoors, where
the power of multipath components is
much lower, we introduced improve-
ments to ensure the highest-possible
multipath resilience. For example, we se-
lected the signal component where mul-
tipath is less likely to happen. The SBTS
can obtain a good estimation of the AoA
Legend 0 500
Phone Real Location
Estimated AoA Polygon
Most Probable Location Area
UAV Location
FIGURE 7 – The estimated and actual location (with coordinates) of the GSM terminal in one of the tests with an SBTS installed on a chairlift at
Formigal ski resort.
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if the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is at least
10 dB (the required SNR for GSM is 9 dB
[21]) and the relationship between the
direct signal and the (possible) multipath
replicas is at least 12 dB.
In a second stage, we performed func-
tional tests in outdoor environments. We
used a set with an SBTS Base Station and
an SBTS console without generation of
optimized waypoints, since we were in-
terested in the performance of the base
SBTS. First, an SBTS was installed on the
roof of a car (Figure 6). The system took
AoA measurements as the car traveled
along a road, with the phone in a static
position. This setup allowed for long
tests, as the power source was the car
itself. The tests were performed in the
surroundings of the University of Vigo in
Spain (coordinates: 42.17064, −8.67580).
This is a terrain with low hills, trees, and
disperse large buildings with classrooms
and offices. From the different estimated
angles and the position of the vehicle,
it was possible to determine the area in
1,000 m
December
2015 ■ IEEE
which the phone was likely to be locat-
ed, even using the downgraded console.
Next, we performed tests with the
UAV shown in Figure 1, flying over a user
in the countryside of Zaragoza, Spain,
near an airdrome on flat terrain with no
trees (coordinates: 41.79228, −8.4800).
This location was very convenient as it
permitted performance tests in a real but
system-friendly scenario. The antennas
were placed on the belly of the vehicle.
As in the previous case, the results were
satisfactory. Table 3 shows the quality of
the estimated angles of incidence in the
second stage for a range of commercial
cell phones. Note that AoA qualities were
comparable for the two types of vehicles.
Finally, in a third stage, we performed
product tests in real-life environments.
First, SBTS was installed on a chair-
lift at Formigal ski resort (coordinates:
42.79596668, −0.417060729) near the Span-
ish–French border. This is a high moun-
tain landscape. Figure 7 shows one of the
tests in this scenario. AoA measurements
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 AoA accuracies. In all cases, the SBTS was
TABLE 3 – a HISTOGRAM OF AOA
capable of estimating the location of the
MEASUREMENTS VERSUS ACCURACY phone satisfactorily.
(±5°, ±10°, AND ±15°) IN THE CAR AND Next, an SBTS was installed in a he-
UAV-BASED SBTS TESTS. licopter that flew over the mountains
±5° ±10° ±15° north of Madrid (coordinates: 40.940981,
Car test 65% 82% 86% −3.482764) an isolated hilly area.
UAV test 57% 80% 90%
Figure 8 shows one of the tests in this
scenario. Again, the real location of the
phone was estimated to be inside the
taken at different SBTS positions were area with the highest location probabil-
used to calculate the area in which there ity. Table 5 shows the quality of the es-
was a high probability of finding the timated angles of incidence. As in previ-
phone (shown in red in F­ igure 7). In Formi- ous tests, the results were satisfactory.
gal, we also tested cases where the phone The variations in the quality of the
was under a body and buried under the results obtained in the different outdoor
snow. Table 4 shows the corresponding tests are due to the changing conditions
TABLE 4 – a HISTOGRAM OF AOA MEASUREMENTS VERSUS ACCURACY (±5°, ±10°,
AND ±15°) IN THE FORMIGAL CHAIRLIFT TESTS.
±5° ±10° ±15°
Phone buried in snow (−1 m)/phone 65% 82% 86%
under a body
Phone buried in snow (−2 m) 57% 80% 90%
between scenarios. The tests took place
on different terrains with completely dif-
ferent vehicles. It should be taken into
account that the quality of each mea-
surement depends on multiple factors.
The AoA technique, for instance, is more
accurate if the cellular signal is perpen-
dicular to the antenna array and if mul-
tipath effects are low. We claim that the
results were satisfactory in all tests, but
exact performance varied greatly de-
pending on the scenario.
Conclusions
We have created a completely func-
tional location system, called an SBTS,
based on the AoA of received signals.
An SBTS turns commercial GSM termi-
nals into powerful personal emergency
beacons. The system is small enough
to be mounted on a UAV and allows the
location of lost persons even in remote
areas without GSM coverage. The SBTS
supports communication between the
rescue team and the lost person and

0 250 500 750 1,000 m

Legend
Phone Real Location
Estimated AoA Polygon
Most Probable Location Area
UAV Location

FIGURE 8 – The estimated and actual location (with coordinates) of the GSM terminal in one of the tests with an SBTS installed on a helicopter flying
over Guadarrama Mountains (Madrid).

56 IEEE licensed
Authorized useelectronics
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magazine  Engineering
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TABLE 5 – a HISTOGRAM OF AOA MEASUREMENTS VERSUS ACCURACY (±5°, ±10°,
AND ±15°) IN THE MADRID HELICOPTER TESTS.
±5° ±10°
32.0% 57.5%
implements cognitive measures to avoid
interfering with existing networks.
This project was conceived for the
market from the outset. For this reason,
the electronics were designed to be cer-
tifiable for UAV or helicopter flights. The
SBTS was presented at the Fifth Interna-
tional Exhibition of Security and Defense
Technologies, HOMESEC 2013 [22], and
the International Aerospace Supply Fair,
AIRTEC 2013 [23].
Acknowledgments
This work has been partially funded
by project grants SBTS (IPT-430000-
2010-04) and COINS (TEC2013-47016-
C2-1-R), MINECO, Spain.
Biographies
Jorge Muñoz-Castañer (jorgem@­
gradiant.org) received his M.Sc. degree
in telecommunication engineering from
the University of Vigo, Spain, in 2006. He
is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree
in embedded systems and wireless net-
works. He has been a research and devel-
opment (R&D) engineer with the Informa-
tion Technologies Group, University of
Vigo, and he is currently an R&D engineer
with Gradiant, Vigo, Spain. His research
interests include embedded systems and
wireless networks. He has participated in
many projects in these fields.
Pablo Couñago Soto (pcounhago@
gti.vvigo.es) received his B.S. degree in
telecommunication engineering from the
University of Vigo, Spain, in 2009. Since
then, he has been with the Information
Technologies Group, University of Vigo,
as a research and development engineer.
His main areas of research interest are
embedded systems, wireless networks,
and mobile communications.
Felipe Gil-Castiñeira (xil@det.uvigo.
es) received his Ph.D. degree in telecom-
munication engineering from the Univer-
sity of Vigo, Spain. He is an associate pro-
fessor with the Department of Telematic
Engineering, University of Vigo. He is also
with Gradiant, Spain, as chief technical
officer in intelligent networked systems.
Authorized licensed use limited to: Francis Xavier Engineering College. Downloaded on February 27,2024 at 04:16:10
±15°
73.9%
His research interests include wireless
communication technologies, embedded
systems, and ubiquitous computing.
Francisco Javier González-Casta-
ño (javier@det.uvigo.es) is a full profes-
sor with the Department of Telematics
Engineering, University of Vigo, Spain.
He is also with Gradiant, Spain, as sci-
entific advisor. He leads the Informa-
tion Technologies Group, University of
Vigo. He has published over 70 papers
in international journals, in the fields of
telecommunications and computer sci-
ence, and he has participated in several
relevant national and international proj-
ects. He holds two U.S. patents.
Isaac Ballesteros (issacballestros@
centum-rt.com) received his M.Sc.
­degree in telecommunications engineer-
ing from the University of Zaragoza,
Spain, in 2005. Since 2010, he has been
working as a project leader in CENTUM
Research and Technology, where he
has led the SBTS project. Previously,
he worked as systems engineer for six
years on various communications and
electronic intelligence/communications
intelligence systems for several compa-
nies and for different international pro-
grams, such as Eurofighter Typhoon,
A330-MRTT, and Santiago (SCATER and
SCAPA), a new electronic warfare suite
for the Spanish Ministery of Defense.
Andrea Di Giovanni (andrea.­
digiovanni@centum-rt.com) received his
M.Sc. degree in electronics engineering
from the University of Perugia, Italy, in
2008. He has worked as a research and
development engineer in aerospace
companies. Currently, he is the systems
design leader in CENTUM Research and
Technology, Spain. The areas of his ex-
pertise are digital electronics and signal
processing.
Pablo Colodrón Villar (pablo.colo-
dron@centum-rt.com) received his M.Sc.
degree in electronic engineering from
the University of Vigo, Spain, in 2008.
He has worked for University of Vigo, in
the Electronics Technology Department,
and he is currently working for CENTUM
December
2015 ■ IEEE
Research and Technology, Spain. His
research interests include embedded
operating systems and field-program-
mable gate array signal processing. He
has worked in the fields of automotive
embedded operating systems, real-time
hardware image processing, and wireless
communication protocols.
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