RF transmitter hidden in Electronics goods?

[24vtingle]

Hi,
A company sells Offline SMPS all over the world.
They want to know where they are being mostly used.
So they want to put a small RF transmitter in the product. Very small, so small that hopefully anybody who is reverse engineering the
SMPS will not notice it. It will go on say the 24V output so doesnt needs its own power source, the PSU will give that.
Just for it to transmit a 1ms long "identification pulse" every 12 hours would be fine.

Do any such RF transmitters exist?

 

[betwixt]

Sounds perfectly feasible. All they have to do is make every power supply use its own frequency that nothing else uses, ensure the antenna attached to it is elevated in an open position and have a 24/7 spy located near every unit to listen for it. Might not be economical to pay spies in every country but I suppose it depends on the units sale price.

Brian.

 

[24vtingle]

Well i am not sure how its done.....but according to Ukrainian sources on the publicly available national news, Chinese drones purchased for use by Ukraine were signalling the drone's position to the Russians. The Ukrainians apparently had reverse engineered them and not noticed anything obviously purposed for this...whatever it was wasnt using the drones antenna, but must have been a tiny antenna "somewhere" in that drone power supply or electric drive.
Whatever it was was so small that it wasnt noticed in initial investigations.

Ukrainian surveillance drones (bought from China) were being flown back to the Ukraine base, and quickly followed by a guided artillery shell from the Russians.

 

[betwixt]

Which entirely misses the point. A drone does contain a transmitter, without it it wouldn't be much use to anyone. Simple triangulation and also watching the picture transmitted by the drone makes it very easy to locate its position and trajectory back home. Most transmit at around 5GHz so directional antennas for triangulation can be high gain and narrow beam width while still quite small.

confession - I have watched video from police helicopters in the past and it is quite easy to tell where they are, especially over towns and cities where the road structures and buildings are easy to identify.

Brian.

 

[24vtingle]

Thanks, i agree with you..but that applies to all drones..the Ukrainian source said that something had been put in these drones that they got from China in particular to make them traceable. (ie these drones in particular were traceable in a way which most other drones werent).

Of course, maybe the guy was just wrong, i dont know, but the news story said they in particular (the ones sent to Ukraine from China) were traceable...it was on UK national news just over a year ago or so, maybe more.

 

[betwixt]

The drones will have unique MAC addresses so they can be wirelessly controlled. Even if individual numbers are unknown, the MAC number will be allocated to a particular manufacturer so the type of drone and therefore its characteristics can be found from the first set of its digits.

Brian.