Remote Detection of a Frequency Jammer Operating in the Down Link of a Cellular System

The authors propose a novel method to evaluate the interference conditions in a cellular network. The method takes advantage of the signal strength and quality measurements available at a Base Station. Measurements from both up-link and down-link are jointly processed to remotely detect the presence of a medium-range frequency jammer and other situations involving abnormal interference levels, as a malfunctioning of the power control algorithm, a bad radio optimization and planning or an outer interference, among others. The proposed method can be adapted to any cellular system. In this paper we focus on its application to GSM/GPRS system. We include some experiments where real cell data recordings were analyzed.