Physical-layer identification of wireless sensor nodes

Abstract

Identification of wireless sensor nodes based on the physical characteristics of their radio transmissions can potentially provide additional layer of security in all-wireless multi-hop sensor networks. Reliable identification can be means for detection and/or prevention of wormhole, Sybil and replication attacks, and for complementing cryptographic message authentication protocols. In this paper, we propose an improved method for capturing and analysis of sensor node radio signals for reliable and accurate recognition. We investigate the performance accuracy of our approach in terms of parameters such as distance, antenna polarization, voltage and show that it achieves recognition with EER=0.24%. We also propose and perform practical attacks on the recognition to further evaluate the robustness of the proposed method under security threats.