Radio fingerprinting is a process that identifies a

cellular phone A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This radi ...

or any other radio transmitter by the ''fingerprint'' that characterizes its signal transmission and is hard to imitate. An electronic fingerprint makes it possible to identify a wireless device by its radio

transmission Transmission or transmit may refer to: Science and technology * Power transmission ** Electric power transmission ** Transmission (mechanical device), technology that allows controlled application of power *** Automatic transmission *** Manual tra ...

characteristics. Radio fingerprinting is commonly used by cellular operators to prevent cloning of cell phones — a cloned device will have the same numeric equipment identity but a different radio fingerprint. Essentially, each transmitter (cell phones are just one type of radio transmitter) has a

rise time In electronics, when describing a voltage or current step function, rise time is the time taken by a signal to change from a specified low value to a specified high value. These values may be expressed as ratiosSee for example , and . or, equiva ...

signature when first keyed which is caused by the slight variations of component values during manufacture. Once the rise time signature is captured and assigned to a callsign, the use of a different transmitter using the same callsign is easily detected. Such systems are used in military signals intelligence and by radio regulatory agencies such as the U.S.

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, internet, wi-fi, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains j ...

(FCC) for identifying illegal transmitters. They are also used for assessing usage for billing purposes in Subscriber Mobile Radio (SMR) systems. This topic has garnered great attention in recent years as the radio fingerprinting technique offers a "physical layer" authentication solution, which can provide fundamentally superior performance than traditional higher-layer encryption solutions. The topic has been studied by various researchers across multiple disciplines, including Signal Processing, Antenna and Propagation and Computer Science.

References

{{Reflist Automatic identification and data capture Radio-frequency identification Radio Mobile telecommunications Measurement and signature intelligence