BiLCNet : BiLSTM-Conformer Network for Encrypted Traffic Classification with 5G SA Physical Channel Records

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Ma, Ke, Lu, Jialiang, Martins, Philippe
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Ma, Ke
Lu, Jialiang
Martins, Philippe
author_facet Ma, Ke
Lu, Jialiang
Martins, Philippe
contents Accurate and efficient traffic classification is vital for wireless network management, especially under encrypted payloads and dynamic application behavior, where traditional methods such as port-based identification and deep packet inspection (DPI) are increasingly inadequate. This work explores the feasibility of using physical channel data collected from the air interface of 5G Standalone (SA) networks for traffic sensing. We develop a preprocessing pipeline to transform raw channel records into structured representations with customized feature engineering to enhance downstream classification performance. To jointly capture temporal dependencies and both local and global structural patterns inherent in physical channel records, we propose a novel hybrid architecture: BiLSTM-Conformer Network (BiLCNet), which integrates the sequential modeling capability of Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory networks (BiLSTM) with the spatial feature extraction strength of Conformer blocks. Evaluated on a noise-limited 5G SA dataset, our model achieves a classification accuracy of 93.9%, outperforming a series of conventional machine learning and deep learning algorithms. Furthermore, we demonstrate its generalization ability under zero-shot transfer settings, validating its robustness across traffic categories and varying environmental conditions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_17495
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle BiLCNet : BiLSTM-Conformer Network for Encrypted Traffic Classification with 5G SA Physical Channel Records
Ma, Ke
Lu, Jialiang
Martins, Philippe
Machine Learning
Networking and Internet Architecture
Accurate and efficient traffic classification is vital for wireless network management, especially under encrypted payloads and dynamic application behavior, where traditional methods such as port-based identification and deep packet inspection (DPI) are increasingly inadequate. This work explores the feasibility of using physical channel data collected from the air interface of 5G Standalone (SA) networks for traffic sensing. We develop a preprocessing pipeline to transform raw channel records into structured representations with customized feature engineering to enhance downstream classification performance. To jointly capture temporal dependencies and both local and global structural patterns inherent in physical channel records, we propose a novel hybrid architecture: BiLSTM-Conformer Network (BiLCNet), which integrates the sequential modeling capability of Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory networks (BiLSTM) with the spatial feature extraction strength of Conformer blocks. Evaluated on a noise-limited 5G SA dataset, our model achieves a classification accuracy of 93.9%, outperforming a series of conventional machine learning and deep learning algorithms. Furthermore, we demonstrate its generalization ability under zero-shot transfer settings, validating its robustness across traffic categories and varying environmental conditions.
title BiLCNet : BiLSTM-Conformer Network for Encrypted Traffic Classification with 5G SA Physical Channel Records
topic Machine Learning
Networking and Internet Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17495