Handover-based method for anonymous observation of a moving subscriber

• US 7,979,080 B2
• Filed: 09/19/2005
• Issued: 07/12/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 03/24/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Elisa Oyj
• Original Assignee: Elisa Matkapuhelinpalvelut Oy (Elisa Oyj)
• Inventors: Nykopp, Juha, Knuuttila, Olli, Kiviranta, Veli-Matti
• Primary Examiner(s): Eng; George
• Assistant Examiner(s): HUYNH, NAM TRUNG
• Application Number:
  US11/230,178
• Publication Number:
  US 20060009222A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,122 Days
• Field of Search: 455/412.1, 4554561-4566, 455436-444
• US Class Current: 455/456.5
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/08 Testing, supervising or monitoring using real traffic

Abstract

A location of a subscriber can be observed by means of a mobile network in a completely anonymous way, without a subscriber identifier or a temporary subscriber identifier. At first, a method extracts from a first time slot of a radio channel a message which includes information about a second time slot of a radio channel. The first time slot of a radio channel discloses the current cell of the subscriber and the second time slot of a radio channel discloses a new cell of the subscriber. A location of the subscriber is determined on the basis of the current and the new cell. This location is approximately situated in a geographical intersection area of the current and the new cell. Different kinds of statistics can be deduced from the observations concerning activities of subscribers.

Claims

1. A method for locating anonymously busy and idle subscribers so that each subscriber is located on the basis of two messages, the subscribers moving between cells of a mobile network, the method including the steps of:

extracting by extracting means through an Abis interface a first message transmitted in the mobile network, the first message defining a current cell of a subscriber of the mobile network and the first message including a piece of information on the basis of which a second message transmitted in the mobile network is to be extracted,

attaching a first time stamp to the first message which discloses a point of time when the first message was extracted,

extracting by the extracting means through the Abis interface the second message which defines a new cell of the subscriber, wherein the first and second messages are extracted from signal traffic of at least one E1 connection of the Abis interface, and

attaching a second time stamp to the second message which discloses a point of time when the second message was extracted,

determining by a calculating server a location of the subscriber on the basis of the current cell defined by the first message and the new cell defined by the second message, wherein the location is at least partly situated in a geographical intersection of the current and new cells, wherein the calculating server determines a first border area of the geographical intersection based on the current cell defined by the first message and a second border area of the geographical intersection based on the new cell defined by the second message so that both busy and idle subscribers can be anonymously located on the basis of the first and second messages, and

on the basis of a location read from a memory and another location, determining a distance which the subscriber has traveled, and determining by the calculating server a velocity of the subscriber is determined on the basis of the distance, the first time stamp, and the second time stamp, wherein the distance traveled by the subscriber is the distance between the two border areas situated in the geographical intersection of the cells defined by the first and the second message; and

repeating the method to determine a velocity of at least one further subscriber as part of a statistical survey concerning velocities of subscribers.

2. The method as in claim 1, wherein the first message is a HandOver Command message and the second message is a Channel Activation message.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the piece of information is a reference number of the handover.

4. The method as in claim 1, wherein the extracting means comprises at least one signal analyzer which is adapted to send data the calculation server.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the first message is a HandOver Command and the second message is a Channel Activation Acknowledgement message.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the first message is a HandOver Command and the second message is a HandOver Detect.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the new cell belongs to a location area that is different than that of the current cell.