Inter-Frame-Relationship Protected Signal: A New Design for Radio Frequency Fingerprint Authentication

Area of Science:

• Cybersecurity
• Wireless Communication Security
• Signal Processing

Background:

• Multi-frame signal (MFS) based radio frequency fingerprint authentication (RFFA) offers higher accuracy than single-frame signal (SFS) methods.
• Existing MFS-based RFFA techniques are vulnerable to security threats, particularly the injection of forged frames into legitimate traffic.

Purpose of the Study:

• To address the security vulnerabilities in MFS-based RFFA.
• To propose a novel method, the inter-frame-relationship protected signal (IfrPS), to safeguard MFS-based RFFA against forged frame injection.
• To evaluate the performance and security enhancements offered by the IfrPS scheme.

Main Methods:

• Focus on the carrier-sense multiple access with collision avoidance channel to identify security threats.
• Propose the inter-frame-relationship protected signal (IfrPS) to verify the origin of consecutively received frames.
• Analyze and numerically evaluate the impact of IfrPS on message demodulation and its accuracy gain in MFS-based RFFA.

Main Results:

• The proposed IfrPS scheme demonstrates a minimal impact of -0.5 dB on message demodulation.
• IfrPS-aided MFS-based RFFA achieves up to a 5 dB accuracy gain compared to SFS-based RFFA.
• The IfrPS effectively counters the threat of forged frame injection in MFS-based RFFA.

Conclusions:

• The inter-frame-relationship protected signal (IfrPS) is an effective solution for enhancing the security of multi-frame signal (MFS) based radio frequency fingerprint authentication (RFFA).
• The proposed scheme significantly improves RFFA accuracy while maintaining minimal impact on message demodulation.
• IfrPS provides a robust defense against sophisticated attacks like forged frame injection in wireless communication systems.