A Practical Study Of Channel Influence On Radio Frequency Fingerprint Features

The radio frequency (RF) based device identification is a physical layer solution for wireless device authentication. However, the RF fingerprint emitted from wireless device could be seriously distorted due to the channel propagation. Therefore, the characteristics of the wireless channel will affect the identification of radio frequency fingerprint. In this paper, we investigate the impact of channel propagation on RF fingerprint via both simulation and practical experiment. Four RF fingerprint features, including frequency offset, I/Q offset, constellation trace figure offset and transient on/off signal point, are evaluated under different channel conditions. We set up experimental environment with 12 ZigBee devices and one USRP receiver. Both simulation and experiment results show that the influence of channel propagation on frequency offset is the slightest, followed by which is I/Q offset and CTF offset, and the transient features are most easily affected by the wireless channel.