RadioHound: A Pervasive Sensing Network for Sub-6 GHz Dynamic Spectrum Monitoring

TL;DR

RadioHound is a low-cost, wide-range spectrum sensing network designed to monitor sub-6 GHz wireless activity, with performance influenced by sensor deployment density and environmental factors.

Contribution

The paper introduces RadioHound, a novel pervasive sensing network with detailed hardware design and a model for optimal sensor deployment based on environmental conditions.

Findings

System performance depends on sensor density

Derived expression for sensor density based on environment

System effectively estimates RF power variation

Abstract

We design a custom spectrum sensing network, called RadioHound, capable of tuning from 25 MHz to 6 GHz, which covers nearly all widely-deployed wireless activity. We describe the system hardware and network infrastructure in detail with a view towards driving the cost, size, and power usage of the sensors as low as possible. The system estimates the spatial variation of radio-frequency power from an unknown random number of sources. System performance is measured by computing the mean square error against a simulated radio-frequency environment. We find that the system performance depends heavily on the deployment density of the sensors. Consequently, we derive an expression for the sensor density as a function of environmental characteristics and confidence in measurement quality.