PHY-Authentication Protocol for Spoofing Detection in Wireless Networks

The authors propose a PHY-authentication protocol to detect spoofing attacks in wireless networks, exploiting the rapid-decorrelation property of radio channels with distance. In this protocol, a PHY-authentication scheme that exploits channel estimations that already exist in most wireless systems, cooperates with any existing - either simple or advanced - higher-layer process, such as IEEE 802.11i. With little additional system overhead, their scheme reduces the workload of the higher-layer process, or provides some degree of spoofing protection for "Naked" wireless systems, such as some sensor networks. They describe the performance of their approach as a function of the spoofing pattern and the snapshot performance that can be easily measured through field tests.