Methods and systems for cellular device detection are presented. A wideband receiver is operable to acquire a block of digitized samples in an uplink frequency band. The wideband receiver is also operable to applying one or more computational kernels to the block of digitized samples, thereby determining a possible uplink transmission from the cellular device. The cellular device is confirmed when the bandwidth of the possible uplink transmission is verified and a cellular basestation, associated with the possible uplink transmission, is located.