Abstract
As the licensing and deployment of Long term evolution (LTE) systems are ramping up, the study of cellular activity in LTE systems is essential to better understand the spectrum needs and make informed decisions on mobile device (population) density over time. Currently, there are limited mechanisms to non-intrusively monitor mobile device density in real-time. Cellular carriers such as AT&T and Verizon harvest such data through their cell towers; however, this data is proprietary and the carriers restrict access due to privacy concerns. In this paper, we present a system that passively monitors the cellular activity and senses the mobile device density from collected LTE radio measurements without requiring private user information or provider support. This information can be extracted from the downlink control information messages in the LTE physical layer protocol. Downlink LTE radio signals are measured in our locality and analyzed to provide real-time insights to the cellular activity and mobile device count.
