Cellular network coverage analysis using UAV and SDR

Drones and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are being given more and more attention. Drone research focuses on autonomous capabilities, flight dynamics and gathering data with specific sensors. However, there is very little focus on drones carrying radio interfaces for other purposes than communicating with a ground station and it's surprising because of of ubiquitous characteristics of both of these technologies. This project is about equipping a quadcopter drone with a Software Defined Radio and a small, single-board computer to process the signal and location data. The ultimate goal is to create a modular platform for different, task-specific UAVs and software capable logging and processing the RF data. As an intermediate point for that goal and the purpose of this thesis, we've created a system that can easily be used to fly around an area and log the power of a GSM pilot carrier. The data is logged together with the precise geographical location so that the data from a logfile can be used to create an easy to read heatmap of the carrier's coverage