User equipment identification from mobile high-speed wireless uplink channels

1. A method for identifying wireless devices, comprising:

positioning one or more radio frequency sensors within an electromagnetic environment wherein one or more user equipment devices are serviced by a base station;

receiving, at the one or more radio frequency sensors, wireless uplink signals transmitted from one or more of the user equipment devices to the base station;

generating data samples from the received signals;

computing frequency domain samples from the data samples;

partitioning the data samples in time and frequency to generate spectrum tiles;

statistically aggregating the spectrum tiles in a frequency domain to reduce a quantity of the data samples;

applying a clustering algorithm to the statistically aggregated spectrum tiles to determine clustered spectrum tiles;

identifying unique instances of the one or more user equipment devices from the clustered spectrum tiles; and

enumerating the identified unique instances of the one or more user equipment devices.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the wireless uplink signals comprise one of 4G, 5G, and LTE communications.

3. The method of claim 1 , further comprising statistically aggregating the spectrum tiles in a time domain to reduce a quantity of the data samples.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the statistical aggregation comprises rank statistics.

5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising identifying reference signals within the received wireless uplink signals.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising synchronizing common uplink signals among two or more of the radio frequency sensors.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the statistical aggregation reduces noise in the received wireless uplink signals.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the statistical aggregation reduces the quantity of data samples by a factor of 84.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the one or more radio frequency sensors comprise software-defined radio receivers.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining clustered spectrum tiles comprises blind clustering.

11. A system for identifying wireless devices, comprising:

one or more sensor antennas;

one or more radio frequency sensors configured to couple radio frequency signals from the one or more sensor antennas and generate data samples representing at least a portion of the radio frequency signals; and

a signal analysis system comprising one or more processing units, and one or more processing modules configuring the one or more processing units to:

identify, from within the generated data samples, uplink signals transmitted from one or more user equipment devices to a base station,

compute frequency domain samples from the identified data samples,

partitioning the identified data samples and the frequency domain samples into spectrum tiles,

statistically aggregate the spectrum tiles in a frequency domain to reduce a quantity of the frequency domain samples,

apply a clustering algorithm to the statistically aggregated spectrum tiles to determine clustered spectrum tiles, and

identify unique instances of the one or more user equipment devices from the clustered spectrum tiles.

12. The system of claim 11 , wherein the wireless uplink signals comprise one of 4G, 5G, and LTE communications.

13. The system of claim 11 , wherein the one or more processing units are further configured to statistically aggregate the spectrum tiles in a time domain to reduce a quantity of the data samples.

14. The system of claim 11 , wherein the statistical aggregation comprises rank statistics.

15. The system of claim 11 , wherein the one or more processing units are further configured to identify reference signals within the received wireless uplink signals and synchronize common uplink signals among two or more of the radio frequency sensors.

16. The system of claim 11 , wherein the statistical aggregation reduces noise in the received wireless uplink signals.

17. The system of claim 11 , wherein the statistical aggregation reduces the quantity of data samples by a factor of 84.

18. The system of claim 11 , wherein the one or more radio frequency sensors comprise software-defined radio receivers.

19. The system of claim 11 , wherein the one or more user equipment devices comprise mobile wireless communication devices.

20. A system for identifying wireless devices, comprising:

one or more radio frequency sensor antennas within an electromagnetic environment;

one or more operator interfaces for communicating information associated with wireless devices; and

a signal analysis engine comprising one or more processing units, and one or more processing modules configuring the one or more processing units to:

receive, at one or more of the radio frequency sensor antennas, radio frequency signals associated with the wireless devices,

generate data samples representing at least a portion of the radio frequency signals,

identify, within the generated data samples, uplink signals associated with one or more of 4G, 5G, and LTE communications,

compute frequency domain samples from the identified data samples,

partitioning the identified data samples into spectrum tiles,

statistically aggregate the spectrum tiles to reduce noise within the spectrum tiles,

apply a clustering algorithm to the statistically aggregated spectrum tiles to determine clustered spectrum tiles, and

present the clustered spectrum tiles to the one or more operator interfaces as identified wireless devices within the electromagnetic environment.