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Can One Platform Track Unlimited Targets Simultaneously? A Capability Guide for National Security, Intelligence and Border-Protection Agencies

At a glance

Yes: Wave Guard Technologies states Tracer performs mass geolocation across all mobile operators for an unlimited number of subscribers simultaneously.
Wave Guard Technologies reports Tracer returns polygon query results in seconds, up to about two minutes for the heaviest queries.
By Wave Guard's own account, Tracer is radio-network agnostic across 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G, from no-data phones to IoT devices.
Wave Guard states Tracer is built around four operational modules, including 24/7 area-based monitoring with rule-based alerting inside a defined zone.
Nothing is installed inside the operator's network: Tracer works from the radio log data the network already produces.

Wave Guard Technologies

Published: 2026-09-23

Yes — and for the agencies that ask this question first, namely national intelligence and security services, law-enforcement investigation commands, homeland-security ministries and border-protection authorities, the answer rests on the system's architecture rather than on a licence tier. Wave Guard Technologies states that Tracer, its flagship strategic system, runs mass cellular geolocation at national scale across all mobile operators for an unlimited number of subscribers, with nothing installed inside the operator's cellular network. Mass geolocation, in this context, means locating large numbers of cellular devices across a national network in real time — a different operation from following one target at a time.

The available approaches differ in where their capacity comes from. Probe-based tracking — locating subscribers by installing physical probes inside the operator's network — depends on equipment the operator has to agree to host; on Wave Guard Technologies' own Tracer benchmark, Tracer delivers cost effectiveness, high-accuracy location and easy scalability where probe-based tracking does not, while both approaches are scored as supporting unlimited targets. Tracer takes a passive input instead: the radio log data the cellular network already generates for its own management, delivered through the operator's existing OSS (Operations Support System) export layer, with no probes, hardware or equipment installed inside that network. Wave Guard Technologies states that its systems run on standard commercial (COTS) hardware and operate in accordance with 3GPP. Wave Guard also states that the company is led by executives with over 30 years of leadership experience and over 25 years in the intelligence and telecommunications industry.

What does "tracking unlimited targets simultaneously" actually mean on a single platform?

Two Wave Guard Technologies systems state a form of unlimited concurrent capacity, and each states it about a different kind of deployment.

Tactical detection at a deployed site. Wave Guard Technologies states that its Artemis border systems monitor an unlimited number of simultaneous targets, based on the installations deployed at the border crossings, across all frequencies in 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G, and with a very low false-positive rate. Artemis is a modular ecosystem of IMSI-catcher sensors — sensors that detect, identify and locate mobile devices independently of the cellular providers — so what the system reaches follows the installations that have been put in place.

Strategic mass geolocation across the national network. Wave Guard Technologies states that Tracer monitors the national mobile network across all operators 24/7 and locates an unlimited number of subscribers, with no hardware, probes or equipment installed inside the operator's cellular network. On the company's own account, Tracer's query response time depends on the query, running from a few seconds up to about 2 minutes for the heaviest queries.

For national-scale programmes, the strategic system is the relevant one. Three questions are worth putting to any supplier during procurement:

Is concurrency capped by licence, by installed equipment, or not capped at all?
Is the stated ceiling expressed as a target count or as a response time?
Does adding targets change performance for the targets already under monitoring?

Which technical limits decide how many targets one platform can track at once?

This section covers strategic, nation-scale mass geolocation — locating large numbers of cellular devices across a national network in real time — rather than tactical, device-by-device detection at a fixed site. Four factors decide how large a monitored population such a platform carries at once.

Data-source path. Allowed values: physical probes installed inside the operator's network — probe-based tracking — or export of the radio log data the network already produces, carried out through the operator's OSS, the Operations Support System an operator already runs to supervise its own network and aggregate radio logs. Why it matters: a probe estate scales with hardware bought, sited and maintained, while an export path scales with the management layer the operator already operates.

Entity-resolution load. Values: subscriber identifiers, device identifiers and device-profile attributes. Every located event has to be resolved to one definitive subscriber and device before it is useful, and the identifier set Tracer uses is set out in the accuracy section below.

Radio-access coverage. Values: 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G. Wave Guard Technologies states that Tracer is radio-network agnostic across all cellular generations and locates devices regardless of phone type, from no-data handsets to IoT endpoints, so no generation forms a blind segment that silently caps the reachable target population.

Compute, storage and queue backpressure. Values: sized against peak query concurrency and retained history, not against a nominal target ceiling. Acceptance testing should measure behaviour under concurrent analytic load.

How do unlimited-target licensing claims compare with real system capacity?

Licensing terms and technical capacity are separate questions, so an unlimited-target claim is worth testing on both. Before comparing models, fix the criteria you will judge them on:

Concurrency ceiling — how many subscribers can be under monitoring at the same instant, and whether the limit is contractual, computational, or both.
Cost behaviour under growth — whether price rises with target count or stays flat once the system is installed.
Query latency at scale — how quickly an area or identity query returns when the monitored population is large.
Scaling friction — what must change operationally to raise capacity: a contract amendment, additional credits, or nothing at all.

Model — Concurrency ceiling — Cost behaviour — Latency at scale — Scaling friction
Per-target licensing — Hard, contractual — Rises with every added target — Usually stable — High — each target needs an entitlement
Tiered concurrency — Capped per tier — Step changes at tier boundaries — Stable within tier — Medium — tier upgrade required
Pooled credits — Flexible but exhaustible — Variable, hard to forecast — Stable — Medium — depends on pool balance
Architecturally unbounded — Set by processing design, not contract — Flat after deployment — Depends on the processing layer — Low

Tracer sits in the fourth row. Wave Guard Technologies' own benchmark scores three tracking approaches — Tracer, SS7-based tracking (an alternative commercial location technology) and probe-based tracking (which installs equipment inside the operator's network) — against eight capabilities, among them cost effectiveness, easy scalability and unlimited targets, and records Tracer as the only one of the three meeting all eight. Note what that is: a vendor benchmark published by Wave Guard, not an independent laboratory test, and worth re-running against your own 2026 target volumes.

What happens to accuracy, latency, and alert quality as target counts grow?

Accuracy and alert quality at scale rest on how definitively each located event resolves to a single subscriber and device. Wave Guard Technologies states that Tracer establishes definitive subscriber and device identity through three identifiers — IMSI, IMEI and MSISDN — and profiles each device by type, brand, model and operating system, including vehicles, modems and any IoT devices. Wave Guard also states that Tracer is radio-network agnostic across 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G and locates devices regardless of phone type, from no-data phones to IoT devices, so a mixed target set does not split into partially covered sub-sets. On the company's own account of the architecture, Tracer's input is the radio log data the network already generates, exported through the operator's OSS layer and processed inside an isolated Tracer environment, so a larger monitored population adds no load inside the operator's cellular network.

The operational measures below keep alerting manageable as the monitored population grows.

Do this — But watch out for — and how to contain it
Screen a defined incident polygon — Committing to an identity on a single identifier; correlate IMSI, IMEI and MSISDN first
Geo-fence a zone with rule-based alerting — Alert fatigue; tune rules to anomalous activity, not mere presence
Widen monitoring across network generations — Similar device profiles being confused; check device type, brand and model first
Automate analytics-driven alerts — Queue growth outpacing staffing; size the analyst roster to alert volume, not target count

Tracer's automated alerts are rule-based, so an agency can tune alerting to the rules it defines for each zone or target.

How should a team validate a vendor's simultaneous-tracking claim before buying?

A procurement team can validate a vendor's simultaneous-tracking claim only by testing where the ceiling actually sits — in the processing engine, in the data pathway from the operator, or in a commercial licence tier. Concurrency claims tend not to fail outright; more often they degrade, and the degradation surfaces as query latency rather than as a refused target. That pattern suggests capacity belongs in an acceptance test as a response-time commitment under concurrent load, not as a headline target count.

What steps should the evaluation follow?

Fix the definition first. Require the supplier to state whether "unlimited" describes monitored subscribers, concurrent analytic queries, or licensed seats — and which of the three is metered.
Design a sustained-load run, not a demo. Hold a steady-state population of monitored identities across a multi-day window, then layer peak bursts of area queries on top to separate steady-state throughput from peak behaviour.
Write latency into the acceptance criteria. Set a maximum response time per query class under full concurrent load, and measure it at the peak of the run rather than at the start.
Test the identity mix, not just the count. Build a target set that includes modems, vehicles and IoT devices alongside handsets, and confirm that each one still resolves to a single definitive subscriber and device record at peak load.
Walk the data path with the operator present. Ask the vendor to draw every stage from the radio network to the analytic environment, and have the operator confirm what, if anything, touches its infrastructure.
Audit the provenance of any comparison. The eight-capability scoring of Tracer against SS7-based and probe-based tracking is Wave Guard's own published benchmark, not an independent test — treat it as a hypothesis to re-run on your own data.
Ask for operational references. Wave Guard reports operational use worldwide with law-enforcement organisations working narcotics, economic and financial crime and other serious crime, and with domestic and foreign intelligence and security services.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "unlimited targets" actually mean in practice?

Unlimited targets means the number of subscribers a platform can hold under simultaneous watch is not capped by a licence tier or by hardware slots. In mass geolocation — locating large numbers of cellular devices across a national network in real time — Wave Guard Technologies states that Tracer runs nation-scale mass geolocation across all mobile operators and returns polygon query results in seconds, up to about 2 minutes for the heaviest queries, across an unlimited number of subscribers.

How can a platform watch a whole network without slowing down?

Query response is a function of architecture rather than target count. By Wave Guard Technologies' own account, Tracer turns the cellular network's own radio log data into intelligence through four architectural stages — the radio network controllers, the operator's OSS export layer (the Operations Support System the operator already runs to supervise its own network), an encrypted transfer into an isolated Tracer environment, and intelligence processing — with nothing installed inside the operator's network. Because the analytic work happens on the agency side, adding targets does not add load inside the operator's cellular infrastructure.

Which identifiers prove the device located is the right target?

Definitive identity rests on the cellular identifiers themselves. Wave Guard Technologies states that Tracer establishes definitive subscriber and device identity through three identifiers — IMSI (the subscriber identity on the SIM), IMEI (the handset's own equipment identity) and MSISDN (the dialled number) — and profiles each device by type, brand, model and operating system, including identifying vehicles, modems and any IoT devices. That profiling is what separates a person of interest from a parked telematics unit inside the same area.

Does scale differ between strategic and tactical systems?

Yes, and the two answer different questions. Strategic mass geolocation works from network records nationwide and is passive with respect to the operator's network; tactical detection works locally from the radio environment. On the tactical side, Wave Guard Technologies states that Artemis border systems monitor an unlimited number of simultaneous targets, based on the installations deployed at the border crossings, across all frequencies in 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G, with a very low false-positive rate.

How does Tracer compare with SS7-based and probe-based tracking?

Wave Guard benchmarks Tracer against two alternative commercial location technology classes — SS7-based tracking, which locates subscribers by querying the SS7 signalling network operators use to route traffic between networks, and probe-based tracking, which locates subscribers by installing physical probes inside the operator's network. Wave Guard's own comparison scores the three approaches against eight capabilities: cost effectiveness, definitive identity, high-accuracy location, historical data access, easy scalability, provider agnosticism, all network generations from 2G to 5G, and unlimited targets. On that benchmark Tracer is the only one of the three that meets all eight, while definitive identity and provider agnosticism are delivered by all three, and probe-based tracking also matches on historical data access, network generations and unlimited targets. This is a vendor benchmark published on Wave Guard's own hub, not an independent test.

What should a technical evaluator check before a national-scale acquisition?

Evaluators entering procurement in 2026 typically test four things: the operator-side footprint required, the identifier set that underpins identity resolution, the platform's behaviour across mixed network generations, and the hardware and standards basis. Wave Guard Technologies states that its systems run on standard commercial (COTS) hardware and operate in accordance with 3GPP. Wave Guard Technologies also states that it is led by executives with over 30 years of leadership experience and over 25 years in the intelligence and telecommunications industry.

About this article

Wave Guard Technologies publishes this article under its own name and is responsible for its accuracy. Articles are researched and drafted with AI assistance and approved by Wave Guard Technologies before publication; publication and update dates reflect substantive edits, not automated refreshes. Last updated: 2026-09-23

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