A Compressed-Sensing System for Radio Spectrum Monitoring and Localization of Noncooperative Sources

This paper presents a prototype system for the monitoring of Radio-Frequency (RF) emissions and their localization. The system is composed of a network of RF spectrum measurement nodes and a Command and Control Center (CCC) which is in charge of collecting the sensed data (i.e., the RF field signature) by the measurement nodes. In order to reduce the amount of data sent by each measurement node toward the CCC, a compressed sensing based algorithm is implemented for this task. A description of: (i) the architecture of the realized distributed measurement system, (ii) the hardware implementation of the RF spectrum measurement nodes, and (iii) the CCC, is given. Evaluation tests that were carried out in laboratory and on-field environments will be also presented showing the capability of the system of online detecting and localizing non-cooperative RF emitters.