Physical Layer Authentication in UAV Communications With Channel Randomness and Jamming Uncertainty

• Published in: IEEE transactions on vehicular technology Vol. 74; no. 6; pp. 9894 - 9898
• Main Authors: Cheng, Qi, Zhou, Yi, Liu, Heng, Yang, Liu, Ma, Zheng, Fan, Pingzhi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.06.2025; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Authentication; Autonomous aerial vehicles; channel randomness; Fading channels; False alarms; Jamming; jamming uncertainty; PLA; Probability density function; Probability density functions; Randomness; Receivers; Simulation; Spoofing; UAV communications; Uncertainty; Unmanned aerial vehicles; Wireless communication; Wireless sensor networks
• ISSN: 0018-9545; 1939-9359
• DOI: 10.1109/TVT.2025.3532982

In this paper, aimed to identify the true origin of the transmission and protect the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communications from spoofing attacks, a novel physical layer authentication (PLA) framework is developed based on the difference of detected power, in a propagation environment where jamming exists. First, a binary hypothesis test for the PLA is organized at the UAV receiver, with joint considerations of channel randomness and jamming uncertainty. Then, the probability density function (PDF) of detected power difference, false alarm probability (FAP) as well as miss detection probability (MDP) are derived in closed-form, and the optimal detection threshold that results in the minimum MDP subject to given FAP constraint is studied. Finally, the correctness of our derived theoretical expressions are verified and the impact of jamming is discussed via simulation results.