Radio frequency fingerprinting commercial communication devices to enhance electronic security

  • Authors:
  • William C. Suski II;Michael A. Temple;Michael J. Mendenhall;Robert F. Mills

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, School of Engineering and Management, US Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton OH 45433, USA.;Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, School of Engineering and Management, US Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton OH 45433, USA.;Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, School of Engineering and Management, US Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton OH 45433, USA.;Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, School of Engineering and Management, US Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton OH 45433, USA

  • Venue:
  • International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

There is a current shift toward protecting against unauthorisednetwork access at the open systems interconnection physical layerby exploiting radio frequency characteristics that are difficult tomimic. This work addresses the use of RF 'fingerprints' to uniquelyidentify emissions from commercial devices. The goal is to exploitinherent signal features using a four step process that includes:1. feature generation, 2. transient detection, 3. fingerprintextraction and 4. classification. Reliable transient detection isperhaps the most important step and is addressed here using avariance trajectory approach. Following transient detection, twofingerprinting and classification methods are considered, including1. power spectral density (PSD) fingerprints with spectralcorrelation and 2. statistical fingerprints with multiplediscriminant analysis-maximum likelihood (MDA-ML) classification.Each of these methods is evaluated using the 802.11a orthogonalfrequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) signal. For minimaltransient detection error, results show that amplitude-baseddetection is most effective for 802.11a OFDM signals. It is shownthat MDA-ML classification provides approximately 8.5-9.0% betterclassification performance than spectral correlation over a rangeof analysis signal-to-noise ratios (SNRA) using threehardware devices from two manufacturers. Overall, greater than 80%classification accuracy is achieved for spectral correlation atSNRA 6 dB and for MDA-ML classification atSNRA -3 dB.