Vehicle detection and classification using LTE‐CommSense

Abstract

We demonstrated a vehicle detection and classification method based on Long Term Evolution (LTE) communication infrastructure based environment sensing instrument, termed as LTE-CommSense by the authors. This technology is a novel passive sensing system which focuses on the reference signals embedded in the sub-frames of LTE resource grid. It compares the received signal with the expected reference signal, extracts the evaluated channel state information (CSI) and analyzes it to estimate the change in the environment. For vehicle detection and subsequent classification, our setup is similar to a passive radar in forward scattering radar (FSR) mode. Instead of performing the radio frequency (RF) signals directly, we take advantage of the processing that happens in a LTE receiver user equipment (UE). We tap into the channel estimation and equalization block and extract the CSI value. CSI value reflects the property of the communication channel between communication base station (eNodeB) and UE. We use CSI values for with and vehicle and without vehicle case in outdoor open road environment. Being a receiver only system, there is no need for any transmission and related regulations. Therefore, this system is low cost, power efficient and difficult to detect. Also, most of its processing will be done by the existing LTE communication receiver (UE). In this paper, we establish our claim by analyzing field-collected data. Live LTE downlink (DL) signal is captured using modeled LTE UE using software defined radio (SDR). The detection analysis and classification performance shows promising results and ascertains that, LTE-CommSense is capable of detection and classification of different types of vehicles in outdoor road environment.

Crowd Size Estimation Using CommSense Instrument for COVID-19 Echo Period

“…The description and working principle of an USRP N200 SDR platform can be obtained from [6,7]. The SDR was modelled as the CommSense prototype containing LTE receiver.…”

“…The concept of Comm-Sense was proposed and verified by the authors in simulation and with field-collected data for various indoor applications like indoor object detection, indoor localization and indoor occupancy estimation [6]. The system was also tested for outdoor vehicle detection and classification [7]. These give the confidence to apply the CommSense principle to perform outdoor crowd size measurement.…”

“…Fig.1(a) shows a simple version of the proposed system which uses a piece of single user equipment (UE)[6,7]. In this work, a single UE was considered for verification using practical data.…”

The Channel as a Traffic Sensor: Vehicle Detection and Classification Based on Radio Fingerprinting

“…In addition, radio jammers could be used to explicitly attack those systems. Sardar et al [45] furthermore present an unique approach, which implements the general idea of radiofingerprinting for long-range communication via Long Term Evolution (LTE). Their proposed Software Defined Radio (SDR)-based method entitled LTE-CommSense monitors the received downlink CSI the User Equipment (UE) side.…”