RF Fingerprint-Based Identification of IoT Devices Using Meta-ELM Classifiers
Abstract
The increasing popularity of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has made them vulnerable to attackers, making customized security measures difficult due to limited resources. To address this issue, RF fingerprints, features of the physical layer of wireless signals, are being used to identify and authenticate IoT devices. This study uses low-cost software-defined radio (SDR), a single-board computer, and open-source software to capture and record RF signals. The captured signals are analyzed using the Hilbert transform to determine features for classification. Various statistical methods are applied to select the most relevant features, with the Minimum Redundancy and Maximum Relevance technique further reducing feature size. For the first time in RF fingerprinting, ELM-based Meta-ELM, Meta Multilayer ELM (Meta-MLELM), and Meta Constrained Mixed ELM (Meta-CMELM) algorithms are used as classifiers for device identification. The performance of these classifiers is evaluated based on the RF fingerprint dataset, which consist of 3752 raw signals from 7 devices. The Meta-MLELM classifier has an accuracy rate of 88%, while the Meta-ELM classifier has an accuracy rate of around 90%. The Meta-CMELM classifier performs with an accuracy rate of 92%.
Keywords
Project Number
Ethical Statement
Thanks
References
- F. T. Al-Dhief et al., “A survey of voice pathology surveillance systems based on Internet of Things and machine learning algorithms,” IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 64514–64533, 2020, doi:10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2984925.
- S. Chen et al., “Radio frequency fingerprint-based intelligent mobile edge computing for Internet of Things authentication,” Sensors, vol. 19, no. 16, Art. no. 3610, 2019, doi:10.3390/s19163610.
- K. Zhang, S. Leng, Y. He, S. Maharjan, and Y. Zhang, “Mobile edge computing and networking for green and low-latency Internet of Things,” IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 56, no. 5, pp. 39–45, 2018, doi:10.1109/MCOM.2018.1700882.
- M. A. Muhal, X. Luo, Z. Mahmood, and A. Ullah, “Physical unclonable function based authentication scheme for smart devices in Internet of Things,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Smart Internet of Things (SmartIoT), 2018, pp. 160–165, doi:10.1109/SmartIoT.2018.00037.
- P. Angueira et al., “A survey of physical layer techniques for secure wireless communications in industry,” IEEE Commun. Surveys Tuts., vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 810–838, 2022, doi:10.1109/COMST.2022.3148857.
- T.-Y. Lin, C.-M. Lai, and C.-W. Chen, “Using SDR platform to extract the RF fingerprint of the wireless devices for device identification,” in Proc. 10th Int. Conf. Comput. Sci., Eng. Appl. (CCSEA 2020), Computer Science & Information Technology, vol. 10, pp. 161–174, 2020, doi:10.5121/csit.2020.101013.
- R. Akeela and B. Dezfouli, “Software-defined radios: Architecture, state-of-the-art, and challenges,” Comput. Commun., vol. 128, pp. 106–125, 2018, doi:10.1016/j.comcom.2018.07.012.
- M. B. Sruthi, M. Abirami, A. Manikkoth, R. Gandhiraj, and K. P. Soman, “Low cost digital transceiver design for software defined radio using RTL-SDR,” in Proc. Int. Multi-Conf. Autom., Comput., Commun., Control Compressed Sens. (iMac4s), 2013, pp. 852–855, doi:10.1109/iMac4s.2013.6526525.
Details
Primary Language
English
Subjects
System and Network Security, Software and Application Security, Applied Computing (Other)
Journal Section
Research Article
Early Pub Date
October 27, 2026
Publication Date
October 30, 2026
Submission Date
June 18, 2026
Acceptance Date
July 22, 2026
Published in Issue
Year 2026 Volume: 9 Number: 5