Experimental study of wireless transceiver authentication using carrier frequency offset monitoring

The research presented in this paper is oriented towards the physical layer security for wireless transceivers. Such approach is, besides to standard security provided at the bit level where the devices are identified using a MAC address or IMEI, able to provide additional level of security for any wireless devices, regardless the standard. The aim is to evaluate a potential to authenticate a set of wireless transceivers using measurement of the relative carrier frequency offsets between their local oscillators. Transmission of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex signals is considered. The carrier frequency offset is estimated using the embedded zero subcarriers (DC or special inserted ones). The measurements have been done using three Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) devices.