Identification of Location Spoofing in Wireless Sensor Networks in Non-Line-of-Sight Conditions

Abstract

Location spoofing and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) propagation are two leading reasons of serious localization errors in wireless networks. Previous studies have managed to identify these two factors separately. However, when present in the same system, these two factors can cause localization errors in a similar manner, making the identification difficult. In this paper, we address the problem of identifying location spoofing in NLOS conditions. We first carry out a geometric analysis on NLOS and derive a bound that can be used to differentiate NLOS from location spoofing. Based on the bound, we propose an identification method. We show that the proposed method is secure against different types of spoofing attacks including those from individuals and from multiple collaborative attackers. In particular, it can be used to identify the well-known “perfect location spoofing.” Simulation in wireless sensor networks indicates that our method can achieve a high accuracy with 0 false positive on identifying individual attacks and perfect location spoofing in NLOS conditions.