Improvement of Radio Frequency Fingerprint

Portability for Wi-Fi Adaptor Identification

*Note: Sub-titles are not captured in Xplore and should not be used

Hsin-Hung Yang Tzu-Chia Wang Yi-Ju Yang Jo-Yun Wang

2021 IEEE 93rd Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2021-Spring) | 978-1-7281-8964-2/20/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/VTC2021-Spring51267.2021.9449035

Departement of Electrical Departement of Electrical Departement of Electrical Departement of Electrical

Engineering Engineering Engineering Engineering
National Taiwan National Taiwan National Taiwan National Taiwan
University of Science and University of Science and University of Science and University of Science and
Technology Technology Technology Technology
Taipei, Taiwan Taipei, Taiwan Taipei, Taiwan Taipei, Taiwan
m10807603@gapps.ntust.e m10807602@gapps.ntust.e m10807616@gapps.ntust.e m10807615@gapps.ntust.e
du.tw du.tw du.tw du.tw

Ting Yu Lin Sena Lai Hsin-Chin Liu

Institute for Information Institute for Information Departement of Electrical
Industry Industry Engineering
Taipei, Taiwan Taipei, Taiwan National Taiwan
tingyulin@iii.org.tw senalai@iii.org.tw University of Science and
Technology
Taipei, Taiwan
hcliu@mail.ntust.edu.tw

Abstract—As quantum computing technology approaches
maturity, the security of wireless communication using data
encryption algorithms is facing great challenges. On the other
hand, physical layer security technologies using the unique
physical characteristic properties of one transmitter like radio
frequency/ radiometric fingerprint, localization information, or
channel state information are more resistant to attacks using
quantum computing technology. Consequently, the research of
physical layer security has attracted significant attentions
recently. However, the RF fingerprint portability is an
inevitable problem in practical applications. In this work, a joint
RF feature calibration and weighted feature classification
scheme is proposed to overcome the RF fingerprint portability
problem caused by channel fading and receiver differentiation.
Experimental results show that the average successful
identification rate increases significantly using the proposed
scheme.
Keywords—RF fingerprint, Wi-Fi, machine learning, IoT,
channel, identification
I. EXTENDED ABSTRACT
As quantum computing technology approaches maturity,
the security of wireless communication using data encryption
algorithms is facing great challenges. Such authentication
schemes, which rely on mathematical cryptography requiring
key exchange, become vulnerable to the threat of powerful
computers. On the other hand, physical layer security
technologies using the unique physical characteristic
properties of one transmitter like radio frequency (RF)/
radiometric fingerprint, localization information, or channel
state information, are more resistant to attacks using quantum
computing technology. Consequently, the research of physical
layer security has attracted significant attentions recently [1].
imperfections can be observed by extracting different RF
features in both time domain and frequency domain, which
constitute the unique RF fingerprint associated with each
device.
Using the RF fingerprint to enhance the security of
wireless communications is not a new idea [2-5]. For example,
a receiver, which utilizes a high-end instrument with high-
speed sampling analog-to-digital converter (ADC) capturing
the transient state of the modulated RF signal waveform to
distinguish the differences between waveforms emitted from
different transmitters, serves as an authenticator in the military
communications [6].
As the internet of things (IoT) applications thrive along
with 5G communications, there will be more attacks from
rogue IoT devices in the future. The security schemes using
the RF fingerprint are promising solutions to overcome these
possible attacks. In the meantime, as the technology will be
pervasively used in the future, the transient state of the
modulated RF signal waveform obtained from expensive
equipment will no longer be available in practical
applications. Consequently, using a low cost receiver to serve
as the authenticator will become an essential condition for the
feasibility of RF fingerprint technology in IoT applications.
In general, a typical low cost IoT device has only one or
two low sampling rate ADC chips to convert the received
analog waveform to digital data. Due to the low sampling rate,
the transient state features of the received RF signals are not
available, instead, the steady state features such as carrier
frequency offset (CFO), sampling frequency offset (SFO),
error vector magnitude (EVM), and subcarrier power (SD) are
used to identify the transmitter [7].

In wireless communications, analog modulated signal

waveform emitted from the transmitter of each device is
different due to imperfections inherent in the RF frontend
circuit manufacturing process. The modulated analog RF
signal waveform variations caused by various hardware

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 Fig. 1. The experiment setup for the RF feature extraction under Rician
channel.
The aforementioned extracted RF features are then
classified, using various machine learning classification
algorithms, such as K-nearest-neighbor (KNN) or
convolutional neural network (CNN) classifiers, to verify the
identity of the signal originated device [7]. Since an emitted
modulated RF signal waveform must pass through a channel
before being received by the receiver antenna, the RF features
are affected by the channel fading. Moreover, the received
signal waveform is also down-converted through an RF
frontend circuit of the receiver, the RF features are hence
inevitably affected by the receiver hardware as well.
Consequently, both channel and receiver hardware factors
must be taken into account in RF fingerprint technology.
Generally, the RF fingerprint of a transmitter obtained by
one receiver is difficult to be directly used by another receiver
as the device identification rate drops significantly. This is
referred as the RF fingerprint portability problem [8].
In this work, a joint RF feature calibration and weighted
feature classification scheme is proposed to overcome the RF
fingerprint portability problem caused by the channel fading
and receiver differentiation.
Field experiments using IEEE 802.11g Wi-Fi
communications are carried out in our laboratory as shown in
Fig. 1. Note that the human body shadowing and reflection are
not taken into account in the experiments. We use 15 Wi-Fi
USB adaptors as transmitters. Both Rician fading channel and
Rayleigh fading channel are set up in the experiments. Ten
Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) B210s [9] with
ADC sampling rate as 20M samples per second are used to
emulate Wi-Fi receivers. We use the short preamble and the
long preamble signals in the IEEE 802.11g specification to
extract steady state RF features such as CFO, SFO, and EVM
on individual orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing
(OFDM) subcarrier. Under different fading channels, 15000
packets are recorded for each transmitter and receiver pair.
These packets are then used to extract the RF features.
The RF features are extracted from one and only one
USRP (RX2B, which is called the “standard USRP”), which
is used as the training set to training the model of CNN
classifier. The RF features extracted by the reset USRP are
statistically analyzed to determine their individual means and
variances, which are compared with that of the “standard
USRP.” The extracted RF features of each USRP receiver are
calibrated by adjusting the features distribution, so that their
mean and variance approach to that of the “standard USRP.”
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Fig. 2. The RF feature (CFO) calibration. The figure above shows the
distribution of the original CFO feature, while the figure below shows the
distribution of the calibrated CFO feature.
Fig. 2 shows the distributive change taking CFO feature as an
example.
The calibrated RF features are then fed into the already
trained CNN classification model to identify the
corresponding transmitters. The classification results based on
different features are then weighted and combined to make the
final decision of the signal transmitter.
The average successful identification rate with fading
channels increases from 55.38% to 74.49%. The experimental
results verify that the proposed method can effectively
mitigate the RF fingerprint portability problem.
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