Detection and localization of the eavesdropper in MIMO systems

Abstract

The pilot spoofing attack (PSA) is one kind of active eavesdropping that happens in the channel training phase, in which an intelligent eavesdropper transmits identical pilot sequences synchronously with the legitimate user to spoof the transmitter. This attack leads to the estimated channel being a mix of a legitimate channel (the channel from the transmitter to the legitimate user) and an eavesdropper channel (the channel from the transmitter to the eavesdropper). And as a result, confidential information is leaked to the eavesdropper during the data transmission phase. Especially when the eavesdropper utilizes sufficiently large power, the channel rate at the legitimate user end decreases observably and increases dramatically at the eavesdropper. To against the active PSA, we propose a new effective scheme called the spatial spectrum method (SSM) which can be applied in situations in which the eavesdropper attacks not only the transmitter but also the legitimate user in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems. Specifically, this method utilizes the spatial spectrums that are attained by the uplink training phase to detect the eavesdropper. Besides it also can locate the legitimate user and the eavesdropper by identifying the direction-of-arrival (DOA) of the legitimate user and the eavesdropper based on the symmetry of the uplink and downlink channels in a time-division-duplex (TDD) system and estimating the geographical distance between the legitimate user and the eavesdropper. Consequently, the secure transmission of secret information can be guaranteed by utilizing spatial information, such as by adopting beamforming technology. Numerical results show that our method can effectively detect and locate the eavesdropper.