Published on Aug 15, 2016
The sniffer is a small base station, it includes transceiver section. It should operate at a frequency that is much different from the frequency of the current cell in which the operation of detection is being carried out. Some of the main important things are the frequency that has to be generated by the transceiver section is around 900MHz range which is a VHF range and it is necessarily to design the oscillator circuit for that frequency range .
Another important is the cooling that has to be provided to the circuit while designing the circuit that is to be operated at 900MHz range of frequency. Hence proper design of base station is an important thing in the design of the sniffer. Mobile phones as well as the base station has low power transmitter is also transmitting at low power. The transmitter of the sniffer has to be a low power transmitter. This helps in the process of reducing the interference of the device with the devices that are in the other cells.
The sniffer is basically a transceiver that works in the frequency which is in the special unused range that is operated by the service provided or it can designed to operate at a frequency that is of much different frequency than the one that is being used by the nearby cells as there may be possibility of interference by the device with the devices in the nearby cells. The working for the device is as follows.
The fig 2 &3 shows the working of the sniffer ; as given in the fig2 it gives the normal operation of the mobile with the base station and there is a BTS that acts as a middle man in the process of communication between the mobile and the MTSO which is popularly known as MSC or Mobile Switching Centre .There is always a two way communication between devices and before the establishment of the communication the authentication of the SIM card that has the IMSI or the International Mobile Subscriber Identifier
.This IMSI number helps in the authorization of the user. The second authentication is the authentication of the handset, which is done in EIR or the Equipment Identifier Register. This register is located at the MSC and it contains the IMEI number of the lost handset and if the signal is obtained from the normal one then the two way communication is established. The IMEI of the lost mobile phone number once has been reported to the service provider, who keeps in track of the record of lost mobile phones.
The MTSO or the MSC which keeps in track of all the mobile phones with IMEI number and the IMSI number has the information of the lost mobile phones location which means the location of the cell where the lost device is because of the two way communication with the device the BTS of the lost device is known to MSC. From this information regarding the cell in which the device is located the sniffer device is introduced.
After the information regarding the IMEI number of the lost device is provided by the MTSO or MSC .This is then fed into the sniffers main memory the sniffer's located in particular cell gets into action of detecting the lost device. The sniffer uses a frequency that is different from the one that is being used by the base station and the located nearby cells .The base station disconnects the connection with the lost mobile phone, as there is a request regarding this action from the EIR part of the MSC.
This causes the lost device to search the BTS to get locked with since each base station does not have authorization capability the lost device send appropriate connection request signal. Now when the sniffer device is being deployed and this device has in built authorization capability the lost device finds the sniffer to get itself locked to the frequency of the sniffer .
As stated this proposal is about the detection of lost mobile phone and for this purpose we are designing a new device called the Sniffer. The sniffer device has to be designed precisely and size should be reduced for easy mobility for the purpose of detection. The device can be called as a mobile base station that includes the following important components:
1. Sniffer base station
2 .Unidirectional antenna
3 .Tracking software
The sniffer is a small base station, it includes transceiver section. It should operate at a frequency that is much different from the frequency of the current cell in which the operation of detection is being carried out. Some of the main important things are the frequency that has to be generated by the transceiver section is around 900MHz range which is a VHF range and it is necessarily to design the oscillator circuit for that frequency range .Another important is the cooling that has to be provided to the circuit while designing the circuit that is to be operated at 900MHz range of frequency.
Hence proper design of base station is an important thing in the design of the sniffer. Mobile phones as well as the base station has low power transmitter is also transmitting at low power. The transmitter of the sniffer has to be a low power transmitter. This helps in the process of reducing the interference of the device with the devices that are in the other cells.
Though the transceiver in a sniffer plays an important role in the detection of the mobile phone but however it is the directional antenna that has a major role in the design of the transmitter. The directional antenna acts as the eyes for the sniffer for the purpose of the detecting the lost mobile phones. Hence the proper design of the directional antenna is required. Antenna is a device which works at specified frequencies range for transmitting or receiving the data signal. In general, antennas transmit power depending on lobe pattern which varies from one antenna to the other. The lobe pattern is a two dimensional diagrams that is used to show radiation pattern. Radiation pattern of directional antenna
In addition to this it is necessary that the transmitter should be a low power transmitter. The Gain and directivity are intimately related in antennas. The directivity of an antenna is a statement of how the RF energy is focused in one or two directions. Because the amount of RF energy remains the same, but is distributed over less area, the apparent signal strength is higher. This apparent increase in signal strength is the antenna gain. The gain is measured in decibels over either a dipole (dBd) or a theoretical construct called an Isotropic radiator (dBi). The isotropic radiator is a spherical signal source that radiates equally well in all directions. One way to view the omni directional pattern is that it is a slice taken horizontally through the three dimensional sphere.
The graphical representation of Radiation pattern of the unidirectional antenna is shown in figure. The spherical co-ordination system has three main components for the pattern representation and they are (R, _ , _ ) .The shape of the radiation system is independent of R, as long R is chosen to be sufficiently large and much greater than the wavelength as the largest dimension of the antenna. The magnitude of the field strength in any direction varies inversely with R. A complete radiation pattern requires the three dimensional representation. The other factors that are to be taken into account during the development of the antenna for the sniffer should be the gain and the directivity .As these features have a greater effect while designing the antenna.
The gain of the antenna is defined as the ability of the antenna to radiate the power in a particular direction. The power radiated per unit area in sany direction is given by the pointing vector and is equivalent to E2/_2 W/m2