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Main Authors: Hiles, Alex, Ahmad, Bashar I.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09775
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author Hiles, Alex
Ahmad, Bashar I.
author_facet Hiles, Alex
Ahmad, Bashar I.
contents Fingerprinting radio frequency (RF) emitters typically involves finding unique characteristics that are featured in their received signal. These fingerprints are nuanced, but sufficiently detailed, motivating the pursuit of methods that can successfully extract them. The downstream task that requires the most meticulous RF fingerprinting (RFF) is known as specific emitter identification (SEI), which entails recognising each individual transmitter. RFF and SEI have a long history, with numerous defence and civilian applications such as signal intelligence, electronic surveillance, physical-layer authentication of wireless devices, to name a few. In recent years, data-driven RFF approaches have become popular due to their ability to automatically learn intricate fingerprints. They generally deliver superior performance when compared to traditional RFF techniques that are often labour-intensive, inflexible, and only applicable to a particular emitter type or transmission scheme. In this paper, we present a generic and versatile machine learning (ML) framework for data-driven RFF with several popular downstream tasks such as SEI, data association (EDA) and RF emitter clustering (RFEC). It is emitter-type agnostic. We then demonstrate the introduced framework for several tasks using real RF datasets for spaceborne surveillance, signal intelligence and countering drones applications.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_09775
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Generic Machine Learning Framework for Radio Frequency Fingerprinting
Hiles, Alex
Ahmad, Bashar I.
Machine Learning
Cryptography and Security
Fingerprinting radio frequency (RF) emitters typically involves finding unique characteristics that are featured in their received signal. These fingerprints are nuanced, but sufficiently detailed, motivating the pursuit of methods that can successfully extract them. The downstream task that requires the most meticulous RF fingerprinting (RFF) is known as specific emitter identification (SEI), which entails recognising each individual transmitter. RFF and SEI have a long history, with numerous defence and civilian applications such as signal intelligence, electronic surveillance, physical-layer authentication of wireless devices, to name a few. In recent years, data-driven RFF approaches have become popular due to their ability to automatically learn intricate fingerprints. They generally deliver superior performance when compared to traditional RFF techniques that are often labour-intensive, inflexible, and only applicable to a particular emitter type or transmission scheme. In this paper, we present a generic and versatile machine learning (ML) framework for data-driven RFF with several popular downstream tasks such as SEI, data association (EDA) and RF emitter clustering (RFEC). It is emitter-type agnostic. We then demonstrate the introduced framework for several tasks using real RF datasets for spaceborne surveillance, signal intelligence and countering drones applications.
title A Generic Machine Learning Framework for Radio Frequency Fingerprinting
topic Machine Learning
Cryptography and Security
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09775