Radio frequency fingerprinting and its challenges

RF fingerprinting aims to develop a unique RF fingerprint for a wireless device that can be used as an identity, in the same way a biological fingerprint operates, to improve the security and privacy of wireless communication. This is in contrast to the traditional bit-level algorithmic approaches to securing transmissions. In this work, we present a comprehensive overview of challenges in the deployment of RF fingerprinting in low-cost portable mobile devices including: the preliminary results showing the effect of channel impairments on RF fingerprinting accuracy and open research challenges associated with the deployment of RF fingerprinting.