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Qualcomm · Security · Filed Dec 5, 2024 · USPTO published Jun 11, 2026 · Jun 11 release

Qualcomm Patents a Phone That Fakes Out Wireless Surveillance Sensors

Your phone could one day detect that someone nearby is using radio waves to track your movements — and automatically lie to them about where you are and what you're doing.

By · Updated · 3 min read

Qualcomm Patent: Spoofed Wireless Sensing Signals for Privacy, figure from US 2026/0160855 A1
Figure from the official USPTO publication.
Publication number
US 2026/0160855 A1(US20260160855A1)
Applicant
QUALCOMM Incorporated
Filed · Published
Dec 5, 2024 · Jun 11, 2026
Inventors
Kangqi LIU, Weimin DUAN, Danlu ZHANG
Status when we published
Waiting for an examiner
Document
30 claims
US classification
342/52

How Qualcomm's anti-sensing decoy actually works

Imagine a retailer, landlord, or even a stranger using a radar-like device to silently track how many people are in a room, where they're standing, or whether anyone is moving. These so-called wireless sensing systems use the same radio frequencies as Wi-Fi and 5G to "see" through walls or across open spaces — and you'd never know it was happening.

Qualcomm's patent describes a phone that can recognize when it's being scanned by one of these devices and fight back — not by blocking the signal, but by lying to it. The phone would transmit its own carefully crafted radio signals that make the sensing device think there are fake people or fake movements in the area, muddying the picture entirely.

Think of it like a squid releasing ink. Instead of going silent and hoping not to be noticed, your phone would flood the sensing device with convincing decoys. The result: the tracker can't reliably tell what's real.

How the UE detects, then spoofs, sensing signals

The patent describes a user equipment (UE) — industry shorthand for any device on a cellular or wireless network, typically a smartphone — that performs two key actions in sequence.

First, it receives and recognizes wireless sensing signals. These are radio transmissions specifically structured to detect objects and motion in the physical environment. Sensing systems like these use reflected radio waves to build a picture of a space, similar to how radar works, but at much shorter range and often using everyday 5G or Wi-Fi frequencies.

Second, the device transmits spoofed sensing signals in response. These aren't random noise — they're crafted to convincingly indicate the presence of fake target objects, fake movement from those objects, or both. The goal is to make the legitimate sensing device's output unreliable or meaningless.

The technical approach is notable because it's reactive and proportional: the phone doesn't jam or block signals (which has legal implications), it responds with plausible-but-false data. The claim covers spoofing both static presence ("there's someone here") and dynamic movement ("they're walking this way"), which are the two primary outputs most sensing systems try to produce.

What this means for wireless privacy in public spaces

Wireless sensing — using 5G, Wi-Fi, or dedicated radio hardware to detect motion and presence without cameras — is a growing and largely invisible technology. Retailers use it for foot-traffic analytics, smart-home systems use it to detect occupancy, and security products use it for perimeter monitoring. There are few consumer protections against passive sensing, and most people have no idea it's happening.

A phone-level countermeasure like this would put a privacy tool directly in your pocket. It also signals that Qualcomm — whose chips power the majority of Android flagship phones — sees sensing privacy as a chipset-level feature worth building into future hardware, not just a software policy problem.

Source: US 2026/0160855 A1 at the USPTO (PDF). Full patent text and figures are in the official publication.

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