Physical Layer Network Mapping Tool

Status: Active

Dates: 2024-05-01 to present

Anyone who has deployed networked sensors in the field can attest to how inaccurate wireless networks maps often are. Motivated both by the use cases of understanding a location’s network connectivity prior to deployment and debugging sensors unable to connect to the network during deployment, I am in the process of designing a portable network measurement and mapping tool.

This system is composed of a Beaglebone Black that configures and collects signal strength data from a software defined radio, storing the associated data on an SD card. It also collects periodic location data through a GPS chip, allowing the user to automatically measure connectivity data and tie it to a physical location. In order to span mutliple technologies (WiFi, LTE, satellite, LoRa, etc) and not be tied to a single provided (ie. AT&T or Verizon), this device is passive and only collects physical layer information, tuning to specific frequencies and bandwidths to measure how strong and variable that RF signal is. I piloted some data collection in Madagascar in 2024 and encountered some challenges that I am in the process of addressing.

The next step for this process will be measuring how well the collected PHY layer data maps to conventional network measurements, namely throughput, for specific technologies to determine how well the collected data indicates the quality of a sensor deployment at that site.

A picture of me in Madagascar gathering data with the network mapping tool, which is located in the very fashionable orange fanny pack