A Novel Radio Frequency Fingerprint Concealment Method Based on IQ Imbalance Compensation and Digital Pre-Distortion

Abstract

Radio frequency fingerprinting (RFF) serves as a distinctive hardware trait in transmitters, forming the cornerstone of transmitter identification. While recent advancements led to significant improvements in identification accuracy, these developments also inadvertently simplify the process for adversaries to detect our transmitters. This vulnerability is particularly concerning in secure communications, as the exposure of device information could potentially result in the compromise of communication content, posing significant security threats. To counteract such risks and safeguard transmitters against unauthorized identification, this paper proposes a novel RFF concealment (RFFC) method based on IQ imbalance compensation and digital pre-distortion (DPD) techniques. This method not only effectively conceals the RFF, preventing malicious detection of the transmitter, but also enhances the system’s linearization performance. The effectiveness of the proposed RFFC framework is validated through MATLAB Simulink and a software and hardware test platform. Experimental results show that using the blind generalized linear structure-based IQ imbalance and deep neural network (DNN)-based PA nonlinearity joint concealment method performs best, reducing transmitter identification accuracy to only 17% under various signal-to-noise ratio conditions. Additionally, this method performs the best in system linearization performance.