Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

UAVs for Wi-Fi Receiver Mapping and Packet Sniffing with Antenna Radiation Pattern Diversity

  • Published:
Wireless Personal Communications Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The paper introduces an innovative way of exploiting aerial robotics or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in the communication field which adds up a wider angle of applications to the already vast use of this new technology. Since IEEE 802 Wi-Fi technology is popular and widely used nowadays (in smartphones, laptops, access points, smart TVs etc.), performance reducing interference caused by having any two or more close-by 2.4 GHz networks on the same channel can occur especially in highly dense populated urban areas. We design an aerial robot (UAV) with a powerful Wi-Fi receiver along with high gain antennas and some other equipment enabling it to operate as a so called Passive sniffer, listening to all Wi-Fi traffic in range and extracting network information along with GPS coordinates and illustrate the results on Geographical maps using Wi-Fi Triangulation Techniques. Having such capabilities on an autonomous aerial robot enables geographical packet analysis and the observation of widespread traffic, plus the ability to analyse and graph the areas with coverage and locate the highly crowded areas with higher interference. Therefore finding solutions to mitigate this undesirable performance degrading interference.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Abraham, J. D. (2016). Giskismet—Wireless recon visualization tool. https://github.com/xtr4nge/giskismet.

  2. Cheng, C. M., Hsiao, P. H., Kung, H. T., & Vlah, D. (2006). Performance measurement of 802.11a wireless links from uav to ground nodes with various antenna orientations. In ICCCN

  3. Fan, H., He, G., Tao, S., & Xu, H. (2013). Weighted centroid localization algorithm based on improved rssi ranging. In Proceedings 2013 international conference on mechatronic sciences, electric engineering and computer (MEC), pp. 544–547. doi:10.1109/MEC.2013.6885124

  4. Foundation, P. S. (2016). The Python language reference—Python 3.5.2 documentation. https://docs.python.org/3/reference.

  5. Kolar, V., Razak, S., Mahonen, P., & Abu-Ghazaleh, N. B. (2010). Measurement and analysis of link quality in wireless networks: An application perspective. INFOCOM IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops, 2010, 1–6. doi:10.1109/INFCOMW.2010.5466673.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Kuschnig, R., Yanmaz, E., Kofler, I., Rinner, B., & Hellwagner, H. (2012). Profiling ieee 802.11 performance on linux-based networked aerial robots. In Proceedings of the Austrian Robotics Workshop, Graz, Austria, p. 8

  7. Midrio, M., Boscolo, S., Sacchetto, F., Someda, C. G., Capobianco, A. D., & Pigozzo, F. M. (2009). Planar, compact dual-band antenna for wireless lan applications. IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, 8, 1234–1237. doi:10.1109/LAWP.2009.2035647.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Patil, S., & Zaveri, M. (2012). Localization in wireless sensor network: A distributed approach (pp. 467–476). Heidelberg: Springer . doi:10.1007/978-3-642-31513-8_48.

  9. Raymond, E. (2016). The architecture of open source applications (volume 2): Gpsd. http://www.aosabook.org/en/gpsd.html

  10. Valavanis, K.P., Kontitsis, M. (2007). A historical perspective on unmanned aerial vehicles (pp. 15–46). Dordrecht: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-6114-1_2.

  11. Wang, J., Urriza, P., Han, Y., & Cabric, D. (2011). Weighted centroid localization algorithm: Theoretical analysis and distributed implementation. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 10(10), 3403–3413. doi:10.1109/TWC.2011.081611.102209.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Wireless, K. (2016). Kismet, a wireless network scantool. http://kismetwireless.net/.

  13. Zanetti, G. P., & Palazzi, C. E. (2010). Non-invasive node detection in IEEE 802.11 wireless networks. In Wireless Days (WD), 2010 IFIP, pp. 1–5. doi:10.1109/WD.2010.5657729.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Information Technology, POLITEHNICA University of Bucharest, Splaiul Independentei, nr. 313, Sector 6, 060042, Bucharest, Romania

    Abdussalam A. A. Alajmi, Alexandru Vulpe & Octavian Fratu

Authors
  1. Abdussalam A. A. Alajmi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Alexandru Vulpe
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Octavian Fratu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alexandru Vulpe.

Ethics declarations

Funding

This work has been funded by UEFISCDI Romania under grant no. 20/2012 “Scalable Radio Transceiver for Instrumental Wireless Sensor Networks - SaRaT-IWSN”.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Alajmi, A.A.A., Vulpe, A. & Fratu, O. UAVs for Wi-Fi Receiver Mapping and Packet Sniffing with Antenna Radiation Pattern Diversity. Wireless Pers Commun 92, 297–313 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-016-3851-2

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-016-3851-2

Keywords

Search

Navigation