Wireless security through RF fingerprinting

Abstract

The process of identifying radio transmitters by examining their unique transient characteristics at the beginning of transmission is called RF fingerprinting. The security of wireless networks can be enhanced by challenging a user to prove its identity if the fingerprint of a network device is unidentified or deemed to be a threat. This paper addresses the problem of identifying an individual node in a wireless network by means of its RF fingerprint. A complete identification system is presented, including data acquisition, transient detection, RF fingerprint extraction, and classification subsystems. The classification performance of the proposed system has been evaluated from experimental data. It is demonstrated that the RF fingerprinting technique can be used as an additional tool to enhance the security of wireless networks.