Proving the location of a mobile device user

Certain location-based services seek to spontaneously authenticate user location without the need to have a pre-existing relationship with each user, or with each location provider. We introduce an intelligent infrastructure-based solution that provides spontaneous, rapid, and robust mobile device location authentication by supplementing existing 802.11x APs with femtocells. We show that by transferring data to a mobile computing device associated with a femtocell while remotely monitoring its traffic activity, a sender can verify the cooperating receiver’s location. We describe a prototype femtocell-based location authentication system we constructed, and explain how to use rate-control to construct data transmissions with distinct traffic signatures that can be reliably detected even in the presence of heavy cross-traffic introduced by other femtocell users. Neither mobile operators nor location providers need be aware that an authentication is taking place.