Detection and Characterization of Unintended RF Emissions on Wideband Real Data

• Published in: International Conference on Signal Processing and Communications pp. 1 - 5
• Main Authors: Sathyanarayanan, Venkatesh, Gerstoft, Peter
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.07.2024
• Subjects: data security and privacy; Emanations; Frequency-domain analysis; Harmonic analysis; Mathematical models; Modulation; Portable computers; Radio frequency; RF anomaly; Sensors; side-channel attacks; unintended RF emission
• ISSN: 2474-915X
• DOI: 10.1109/SPCOM60851.2024.10631603

Sensing and understanding all signals in an RF-secure military or civilian setup is important, this includes unin-tended RF emissions called emanations. Prior work in detecting emanations involves profiling, which is hardware (HW) specific and hence not a scalable approach. Our technique looks for a generic signature of harmonics in the frequency domain without knowledge of HW. It detects emanation and characterizes it by estimating the pitch frequency of harmonic. A signal model for emanations, HW, and channel effects is provided. A mathematical treatment showcases the removal of artifacts and extracts the harmonic structure. The performance is showcased on In-phase and Quadrature-phase (IQ) data collected using a Signal Hound software-defined radio (SDR) in a shielded room. Data is collected from 0.1-1.1 GHz and 100 ms duration. Emanations are detected for a laptop, and a desktop connected to a monitor. The unique contribution of this work is the detection of emanation without HW knowledge, with mathematical justification and demonstrated performance on wideband real data.