Effect of Channel Impairments on the Performance of RF Fingerprinting using Low-end Receivers

Abstract

Radio Frequency (RF) Fingerprinting Problem definition Objective Experiment setup Results Conclusion Radio fingerprinting is the process of identifying a radio transmitter by the unique characteristics present in its signal. This unique characteristics are due to the imperfections of the analog components present in the transmitter chain.These active and passive components present in the transmitter chain contribute to a unique radio fingerprint. A transmitter can be identified by these unique characteristics. The results so far has investigated the impact of transmitter but no one has considered the impairments of the receiver. As receivers front-end is also made up of low noise amplifier, oscillators, mixer and filters etc. Therefore, they also have an effect on accuracy. This paper has performed experiments with multiple low-end receivers in order to cross validate our findings. In this paper, low end means inexpensive receivers built with off the shelf components.