> perhaps they need a StingRay or Reaper drone in the area to boost the signal. The cell tower itself may be powerful enough to pick up the signal. that small

> perhaps they need a StingRay or Reaper drone in the area to boost the signal. The cell tower itself may be powerful enough to pick up the signal. that small battery would indeed not be able to be enough to send a signal to a cellphone tower, so you could not really track phones without primary batteries. current batteries are quite low powered, and wireless data is already pretty expensive in term of power usage. if you want enough data speeds. And I don't think you can effectively receive a GPS signal with a low powered battery. what they could do though, is automatically find nearest smartphones, and use them to retransmit. far fetched for when you don't move too much, but possible...