RF Fingerprinting: Hardware-Trustworthiness Enhancement in the Hardware Trojan Era: RF Fingerprinting-Based Countermeasures

Ensuring the security of wireless networks entails ensuring the authenticity, confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the data exchanged through them. In this data-dependent era, global communications systems have been experiencing rapid increases in the amount of data shared daily, thanks to the evolution of technologies that enable low-cost and ubiquitous wireless connectivity. In the last two decades, there has been a continuous increase in wireless traffic due to wireless technology advancements and a wide range of applications, and the increase in wireless network users [1], [2]. Although the total annual Internet traffic was a few exabytes of data fewer than 15 years ago, more than two hundred exabytes have been reached in the last two years. Moreover, by next year, the average Wi-Fi speed is predicted to be 92 Mb/s, up from 30 Mb/s in 2018 [3], [4]. This evolution has been driven by user demand, which includes higher data rates and broader coverage and bandwidth capabilities in wireless networks. Promising updates for current communication tools are in the making, but the boom in the amount of the data shared by them is making global communication systems a larger and easier target for security attacks [5], [6].