Radio Specific Emitter Identification based on nonlinear characteristics of signal

Abstract

Radio Specific Emitter Identification (SEI) is the technique which identifies the individual radio emitter based on the received signals' specific properties called signals' Radio Frequency Fingerprint (RFF). SEI is very significant for improving the security of wireless networks. A novel SEI method which treats the emitter as a nonlinear dynamical system is proposed in this paper. The method works based on the signal's nonlinear characteristics which result from the unintentional and unavoidable physical-layer imperfections. The reconstructed phase space (RPS) is used as the tool for analyzing the nonlinearity. The entire characteristics of RPS and state changes characteristics of points in RPS are extracted to form RFF. To evaluate the availability of the RFF, the signals from four wireless network cards are collected by a signal acquisition system. The proposed RFF's discrimination capabilities are visually analyzed using the boxplot. The results of visual analysis and classification demonstrate that this method is effective.