David Allen Burgess

Mr. David Burgess is an engineer and researcher. His areas of expertise are telecommunications, radio-location, radio-navigation, cellular networks, and cellphone intercept and tracking systems. He has more than 20 years of experience as a practicing in these areas in both civilian commercial companies and in military/government applications.

Mr. Burgess provides expert witness or consultant services in the areas of telecommunications, SIM forensics, cell tower data analysis, activity record analysis, and related areas. He has particularly deep experience in the areas of cell phone location/triangulation, cellphone interception systems (Stingray-type systems), and reverse-engineering. He works in both civil and criminal cases and has provided training to US government personnel in the areas of cell phone interception and location.

David Burgess earned a BE Electrical Engineering degree from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1991 and an MS Computer Science degree from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1993.

Services

Mr. David Burgess is an expert witness or consultant for plaintiff or defense.

Typical services:
* GPS record analysis
* Cellular network performance and coverage
* Software analysis
* Cell tower data analysis
* Historical cell site analysis
* Cell site location information (CSLI)
* Call data record analysis
* Cell phone tracking
* Call detail records (CDRs)
* Cell phone carrier records
* Performance analysis of radio navigation systems (GPS, VOR, GNSS)
* Cell network coverage and performance

Litigation Support Services

Mr. David Burgess is available as an expert witness or consulting expert in any U.S. state, working with plaintiffs or defendants. His interest is to make sense of technical evidence, determine facts, and explain things clearly.

Areas of Expertise

Additional Expertise:

Cell Tower Records, Call Records, Historical Cell Site Analysis, Cell Site Location Information (CSLI), CAST, Cellhawk, Sting-Ray, DRT Box, GPS, Coverage, Telecom, Triangulation, SIMs.

Profile

Mr. Burgess' areas of expertise are telecommunications, radio-location, radio-navigation, cellular networks, and cellphone intercept and tracking systems.

He was the primary author of OpenBTS, a widely used tool for cellular technology education, cellphone testing, cellular security research, and basic cellular service in some public networks. He developed the signal analysis and target location algorithms and software for cellphone tracking systems used successfully by US special forces in combat operations and has worked on several US government projects in the area of telecommunications intelligence collection.

Areas Served

All States

Professional Experience

Founder, CEO, Director
Legba, Inc. (US) and SC Legba LTE SRL (RO)
New York, New York, USA, and Bucharest, Romania
Sep 2013 - Current
Legba produces cellular radio network equipment and test equipment for GSM (2G) and LTE (4G). It has 10 - 15 staff members typically, with main operations in Romania. As a director and founder, my duties include company operations, strategy, product management, hiring/training, radio network planning, and system design.

My technical duties in this role include designing and managing the development of a complete software LTE eNodeB (written in C++ and Javascript) and overseeing the development of hardware for radio products.

Our customers include small public mobile network operators, private network operators, IoT systems integrators, mobile network operator laboratories, and US defense contractors.

Co-Founder, CEO, CTO
Range Networks, Inc.
San Francisco, California, USA
Jun 2010 - Sep 2013
Range Networks produced cellular radio network equipment for GSM (2G) and UMTS (3G). Early products were based on the OpenBTS GSM implementation, which was developed by the company founders, including me, under my direction. I started the OpenBTS project, recruited the initial management team, and led the company through “angel” and “series-A” financing & rounds. Range Networks continued to operate after my departure and was purchased by Africa Mobile Networks (UK) in August 2020.

Partner
Kestrel Signal Processing, Inc.
Fairfield, California, USA
Sep 2005 - Jun 2010
Kestrel was an engineering and software consulting shop. We provided specialized engineering and software development for signal processing and software-defined radio projects to clients in the San Francisco Bay area. Clients included commercial companies in Silicon Valley, defense contractors, and law enforcement equipment suppliers.

Most projects were in the areas of communications intelligence, radio navigation, and emitter location. Technologies we worked with included GPS, GSM (2G), UMTS (3G), CDMA2000 (3G), iDEN (2G), IS-95 (2G), GMR-1 (2G sat phone), ATSC-53B (TV), DVB-H/T/S (TV), PL/OPERA (power line modems). Implementation languages included C, C++, and Java for production and Python and MATLAB for prototyping and data analysis. Algorithms I designed and implemented included radio equalizers, multipath mitigation, trellis-search joint demodulation (JMLSE and others), parameter estimation of low-SNR signals, geolocation and navigation based on TOA/FOA/AOA, and MUSIC-based AOA estimation.

Projects done through Kestrel included algorithms and software used by US special forces to intercept, control, and track cellular handsets in tactical missions, and radio-navigation systems based on signals of opportunity. We also provided training on cellular technology and exploitation techniques to US defense contractors and government personnel.

Qualifications

Mr. Burgess has held Secret and Top Secret security clearances at various times in his career.

Seminars & Training

Mr. Burgess has conducted several training sessions in cellular technology and security, for corporations and for US government personnel. He has also conducted the follow publicly-announcing workshops:

DeepSec, Vienna, Austria, Nov 2021. “Mobile Network Operations and Security”, a 2-day workshop giving an overview of security risks in the mobile network.

OpenBTS, Pfarrkirchen, Germany, Jun 2013, “OpenBTS Workshop”, a training session for engineers wanting to use the OpenBTS open source GSM implementation.

OpenBTS, Pfarrkirchen, Germany, Jun 2010, “OpenBTS Workshop”, a training session for engineers wanting to use the OpenBTS open source GSM implementation.

DeepSec, Vienna, Austria, Nov 2009. “Security on the GSM Air Interface”, a 2-day workshop presented together with Harald Welte.

Publications

United States Patents
These are US patents where Mr. Burgess is named as an inventor.
Some of these patents are also filed internationally.

10,362,493 High-bandwidth beamforming LTE Base Station
8,253,627 Position determination with NRSC-5 digital radio signals
8,233,091 Positioning and time transfer using television synchronization signals
7,519,271 Low attention recording with particular application to social recording
7,498,873 Wide-lane pseudorange measurements using FM signals
7,194,186 Flexible marking of recording data by a recording unit
6,934,461 Low attention recording, with particular application to social recording
6,825,875 Hybrid recording unit including portable video recorder and auxiliary device
6,720,876 Untethered position tracking system
6,563,532 Low attention recording unit for use by vigorously active recorder
6,011,754 Personal object detector with enhanced stereo imaging capability
5,724,313 Personal object detector

Peer-Reviewed Publications

D. A. Burgess, TECHNIQUES FOR LOW-COST SPATIAL AUDIO, Proceedings of the 5th ACM Conference on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), December 1992, Monterey, CA.

W. A. Gardner, D. A. Burgess, and C. W. Reed, COMPUTATIONALLY EFFICIENT MIMO DEMODULATION, Proceedings of the 11th Virginia Tech Symposium on Wireless Personal Communications, June 2001, Blacksburg, VA.

W. A. Gardner, D. A. Burgess, and C. W. Reed, FOUR ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE COST REDUCTION IN THE VITERBI ALGORITHM, Proceedings of the 34th IEEE Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, November 2001, Monterey, CA.

Education

MS Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 1993

BE Electrical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 1991