Location-Invariant Radio Frequency Fingerprint for Base Station Recognition

Pseudo base station (BS) is an illegal radio device that exploits the security vulnerabilities of fifth generation (5G) communications and then implements corresponding network attacks, such as spoofing attack. These malicious actions cause security and privacy threats and hinder the wide deployment of wireless access networks. To address these problems, efficient BS identification mechanisms are necessary. Radio frequency fingerprinting (RFF) and channel fingerprinting are potential solutions. Unfortunately, existing solutions are limited to be applicable to scenarios where the locations of pseudo BSs are fixed, while the emerging challenges brought by movable pseudo BSs can hardly be addressed by mature wireless security mechanisms. In this letter, we propose a signal echoing protocol (SEP) to reduce the influence on wireless channels and construct the location-invariant RFF. When BS and user equipment (UE) communicate using SEP, UE can accurately estimate the channel to recognize different BSs. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can reach a high classification accuracy for ten BSs, by 95.2% at the signal-noise ratio (SNR) of 25 dB.

Automated summary

Pseudo base stations are illegal devices that exploit security vulnerabilities of 5G communications and conduct network attacks, posing threats to the deployment of wireless access networks. Efficient methods for identifying base stations are necessary. This letter proposes a signal echoing protocol to reduce channel interference and create location-invariant radio frequency fingerprints, achieving high accuracy in base station classification.