Managing location privacy in cellular networks with femtocell deployments

Femtocell deployments allow for high precision in localizing mobile devices. Many of today´s location based services have long been mapping the placements of wireless base stations and using the obtained maps to localize mobile devices. Allowing unauthorized third parties to obtain the locations of femtocell base stations may not be desired by network operators. Localizing mobile devices using the information about femtocell base stations´ locations is a service that an investor in a femtocell deployment may want to exploit exclusively. In this work we present a station identity management system that enables preserving femtocell base stations location privacy. Through the use of dynamic base station identifiers, the system ensures that unauthorized third parties are not able to map the locations of the base stations for use in their localization services. We analyze the design tradeoffs of the presented approach for different femtocell technologies. Results indicate that complexity will be limited, and that the presented system creates network dynamics smaller than the existing dynamics due to mobility. Additionally, we present an approach for providing location information to authorized systems at different resolution levels.