Autoencoder based Physical Layer Authentication for UAV Communications

The use of flying Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for communications is becoming more and more widespread, especially in 5G and beyond networks. In such a context, detection and authentication of UAVs is assuming an increasingly important role. In this paper we show that it is possible to distinguish different drones which communicate with a fixed ground base station (BS) on the basis of their channel characteristics and of the micro-Doppler signature associated to the specific features of each UAV. An urban scenario is simulated where UAVs fly at a constant height and channels are affected by Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) and fading. With the aim of helping the BS in its authentication task, we take advantage of a sparse autoencoder trained on the channel of the legitimate transmitter, while data coming from possible attackers are classified as anomalies. We prove that, with proper network training, low levels of false alarm and missed detection can be achieved, especially if the attacker has no line-of-sight link, and that the presence of micro-Doppler actually contribute to enhance the authentication performance.