Everyday 5G cell towers can be repurposed as a massive radar system capable of tracking drones hidden in urban noise.
April 1, 2026
Original Paper
Needle in a Haystack: Tracking UAVs from Massive Noise in Real-World 5G-A Base Station Data
arXiv · 2603.29187
The Takeaway
Researchers successfully turned standard phone masts into high-precision surveillance tools by filtering out massive amounts of signal interference. This proves that existing city infrastructure can double as a sky-wide tracking network without needing new cameras or specialized radar hardware.
From the abstract
The potential usage of UAVs in daily life has made monitoring them essential. However, existing systems for monitoring UAVs typically rely on cameras, LiDARs, or radars, whose limited sensing range or high deployment cost hinder large-scale adoption. In response, we develop BSense, the first system that tracks UAVs by leveraging point clouds from commercial 5G-A base stations. The key challenge lies in the dominant number of noise points that closely resemble true UAV points, resulting in a nois