Preprint: Using RF-DNA Fingerprints To Classify OFDM Transmitters Under Rayleigh Fading Conditions

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a collection of Internet connected devices capable of interacting with the physical world and computer systems. It is estimated that the IoT will consist of approximately fifty billion devices by the year 2020. In addition to the sheer numbers, the need for IoT security is exacerbated by the fact that many of the edge devices employ weak to no encryption of the communication link. It has been estimated that almost 70% of IoT devices use no form of encryption. Previous research has suggested the use of Specific Emitter Identification (SEI), a physical layer technique, as a means of augmenting bit-level security mechanism such as encryption. The work presented here integrates a Nelder-Mead based approach for estimating the Rayleigh fading channel coefficients prior to the SEI approach known as RF-DNA fingerprinting. The performance of this estimator is assessed for degrading signal-to-noise ratio and compared with least square and minimum mean squared error channel estimators. Additionally, this work presents classification results using RF-DNA fingerprints that were extracted from received signals that have undergone Rayleigh fading channel correction using Minimum Mean Squared Error (MMSE) equalization. This work also performs radio discrimination using RF-DNA fingerprints generated from the normalized magnitude-squared and phase response of Gabor coefficients as well as two classifiers. Discrimination of four 802.11a Wi-Fi radios achieves an average percent correct classification of 90% or better for signal-to-noise ratios of 18 and 21 dB or greater using a Rayleigh fading channel comprised of two and five paths, respectively.Comment: 13 pages, 14 total figures/images, Currently under review by the IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Securit

Survey on wireless technology trade-offs for the industrial internet of things

Aside from vast deployment cost reduction, Industrial Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks (IWSAN) introduce a new level of industrial connectivity. Wireless connection of sensors and actuators in industrial environments not only enables wireless monitoring and actuation, it also enables coordination of production stages, connecting mobile robots and autonomous transport vehicles, as well as localization and tracking of assets. All these opportunities already inspired the development of many wireless technologies in an effort to fully enable Industry 4.0. However, different technologies significantly differ in performance and capabilities, none being capable of supporting all industrial use cases. When designing a network solution, one must be aware of the capabilities and the trade-offs that prospective technologies have. This paper evaluates the technologies potentially suitable for IWSAN solutions covering an entire industrial site with limited infrastructure cost and discusses their trade-offs in an effort to provide information for choosing the most suitable technology for the use case of interest. The comparative discussion presented in this paper aims to enable engineers to choose the most suitable wireless technology for their specific IWSAN deployment

The impact of Rayleigh fading channel effects on the RF-DNA fingerprinting process

The Internet of Things (IoT) consists of many electronic and electromechanical devices connected to the Internet. It is estimated that the number of connected IoT devices will be between 20 and 50 billion by the year 2020. The need for mechanisms to secure IoT networks will increase dramatically as 70% of the edge devices have no encryption. Previous research has proposed RF-DNA fingerprinting to provide wireless network access security through the exploitation of PHY layer features. RF-DNA fingerprinting takes advantage of unique and distinct characteristics that unintentionally occur within a given radio’s transmit chain during waveform generation. In this work, the application of RF-DNA fingerprinting is extended by developing a Nelder-Mead-based algorithm that estimates the coefficients of an indoor Rayleigh fading channel. The performance of the Nelder-Mead estimator is compared to the Least Square estimator and is assessed with degrading signal-to-noise ratio. The Rayleigh channel coefficients set estimated by the Nelder-Mead estimator is used to remove the multipath channel effects from the radio signal. The resulting channel-compensated signal is the region where the RF-DNA fingerprints are generated and classified. For a signal-to-noise ratio greater than 21 decibels, an average percent correct classification of more than 95% was achieved in a two-reflector channel

Performance Evaluation of Class A LoRa Communications

Recently, Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs) have attracted a great interest due to the need of connecting more and more devices to the so-called Internet of Things (IoT). This thesis explores LoRa’s suitability and performance within this paradigm, through a theoretical approach as well as through practical data acquired in multiple field campaigns. First, a performance evaluation model of LoRa class A devices is proposed. The model is meant to characterize the performance of LoRa’s Uplink communications where both physical layer (PHY) and medium access control (MAC) are taken into account. By admitting a uniform spatial distribution of the devices, the performance characterization of the PHY-layer is studied through the derivation of the probability of successfully decoding multiple frames that were transmitted with the same spreading factor and at the same time. The MAC performance is evaluated by admitting that the inter-arrival time of the frames generated by each LoRa device is exponentially distributed. A typical LoRaWAN operating scenario is considered, where the transmissions of LoRa Class A devices suffer path-loss, shadowing and Rayleigh fading. Numerical results obtained with the modeling methodology are compared with simulation results, and the validation of the proposed model is discussed for different levels of traffic load and PHY-layer conditions. Due to the possibility of capturing multiple frames simultaneously, the maximum achievable performance of the PHY/MAC LoRa scheme according to the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) is considered. The contribution of this model is primarily focused on studying the average number of successfully received LoRa frames, which establishes a performance upper bound due to the optimal capture condition considered in the PHY-layer. In the second stage of this work a practical LoRa point-to-point network was deployed to characterize LoRa’s performance in a practical way. Performance was assessed through data collected in the course of several experiments, positioning the transmitter in diverse locations and environments. This work reports statistics of the received packets and different metrics gathered from the physical-layer

Machine Learning For In-Region Location Verification In Wireless Networks

In-region location verification (IRLV) aims at verifying whether a user is inside a region of interest (ROI). In wireless networks, IRLV can exploit the features of the channel between the user and a set of trusted access points. In practice, the channel feature statistics is not available and we resort to machine learning (ML) solutions for IRLV. We first show that solutions based on either neural networks (NNs) or support vector machines (SVMs) and typical loss functions are Neyman-Pearson (N-P)-optimal at learning convergence for sufficiently complex learning machines and large training datasets . Indeed, for finite training, ML solutions are more accurate than the N-P test based on estimated channel statistics. Then, as estimating channel features outside the ROI may be difficult, we consider one-class classifiers, namely auto-encoders NNs and one-class SVMs, which however are not equivalent to the generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT), typically replacing the N-P test in the one-class problem. Numerical results support the results in realistic wireless networks, with channel models including path-loss, shadowing, and fading