Short paper: ACE - Authenticating the channel estimation process in wireless communication systems

Accurate channel estimation is essential to modern wireless communication. Pilot waveforms are susceptible to attacks that can severely degrade performance. Thus, it is important to protect channel estimation. Related research focuses on transmitter authentication rather than channel estimate authentication, and results rely heavily upon correlated estimates that occur within the channel coherence time in multipath-rich environments and/or sacrifice system throughput. We propose a methodology to authenticate channel estimation by leveraging physical layer properties of the wireless channel without any coherence time dependence or overhead. Our methods inherently provide data authentication, work in any environment, and provide error inference. We focus on general multi-antenna, multicarrier communication schemes and relate our results to existing protocols such as 802.11g/n and WiMAX.