Designing Localization Algorithms Robust to Signal Strength Attacks

In this work, we propose a general principle for designing RSS-based algorithms so that they are robust to all-around signal strength attacks. Specifically, when the fingerprint for the mobile device changes from <; S<;sub>1<;/sub>, S<;sub>2<;/sub>,..., S<;sub>n<;/sub> > to <; S<;sub>1<;/sub> - S<;sub>t<;/sub>, S<;sub>2<;/sub> - S<;sub>t<;/sub>,..., S<;sub>n<;/sub> - S<;sub>t<;/sub> > (suffers attenuation attack of S<;sub>t<;/sub> dBm), the estimated position from localization algorithms does not change. Our proposal mainly advises algorithm designers to use the metric of signal strength difference (SSD) instead of RSS directly. It is a general design principle since it does not correspond to a particular algorithm, yet can be applied to many different algorithms. (The application to a particular algorithm is given as an example here, while the details for integration into other algorithms will be our immediate future work.) In the following, we explain the principle in more detail in Section II to show that usage of SSD achieves robustness and allows for accurate localization; we then demonstrate the usage of this principle in Section III, applying it to a particular previous-proposed algorithm and evaluating its performance. Finally we discuss related work in Section IV.