Recent advancements in radio frequency machine learning (RFML) have demonstrated the use of raw in-phase and quadrature (IQ) samples for multiple spectrum sensing tasks. Yet, deep learning techniques have been shown, in other applications, to be vulnerable to adversarial machine learning (ML) techniques, which seek to craft small perturbations that are added to the input to cause a misclassification. The current work differentiates the threats that adversarial ML poses to RFML systems based on where the attack is executed from: direct access to classifier input, synchronously transmitted over the air (OTA), or asynchronously transmitted from a separate device. Additionally, the current work develops a methodology for evaluating adversarial success in the context of wireless communications, where the primary metric of interest is bit error rate and not human perception, as is the case in image recognition. The methodology is demonstrated using the well known Fast Gradient Sign Method to evaluate the vulnerabilities of raw IQ based Automatic Modulation Classification and concludes RFML is vulnerable to adversarial examples, even in OTA attacks. However, RFML domain specific receiver effects, which would be encountered in an OTA attack, can present significant impairments to adversarial evasion.
Wireless systems are vulnerable to various attacks such as jamming and eavesdropping due to the shared and broadcast nature of wireless medium. To support both attack and defense strategies, machine learning (ML) provides automated means to learn from and adapt to wireless communication characteristics that are hard to capture by hand-crafted features and models. This article discusses motivation, background, and scope of research efforts that bridge ML and wireless security. Motivated by research directions surveyed in the context of ML for wireless security, ML-based attack and defense solutions and emerging adversarial ML techniques in the wireless domain are identified along with a roadmap to foster research efforts in bridging ML and wireless security.
While deep learning (DL) technologies are now pervasive in state-of-the-art Computer Vision (CV) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications, only in recent years have these technologies started to sufficiently mature in applications related to wireless communications, a field loosely termed Radio Frequency Machine Learning (RFML). In particular, recent research has shown DL to be an enabling technology for Cognitive Radio (CR) applications as well as a useful tool for supplementing expertly defined algorithms for spectrum awareness applications such as signal detection, estimation, and classification. A major driver for the usage of RFML is that little, to no, a priori knowledge of the intended spectral environment is required, given that there is an abundance of representative raw Radio Frequency (RF) data to facilitate training and evaluation. However, in addition to this fundamental need for sufficient data, there are other key considerations, such as trust, security, and hardware requirements, that must be taken into account before deploying RFML systems in real-world wireless communication applications that largely go unaddressed in the current literature. This paper examines the prior works related to these major research considerations, with focus on the dependencies between them and factors unique to the RFML space.
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