Precheck Sequence Based False Base Station Detection During Handover: A Physical Layer Security Scheme

TL;DR

This paper proposes a Precheck Sequence-based Detection scheme to enhance physical layer security during handover, effectively identifying false base stations and preventing FBS attacks in cellular networks.

Contribution

It introduces a novel sequence-based detection method aligned with 3GPP standards, improving FBS detection accuracy during handover.

Findings

The PSD scheme outperforms existing detection methods.

The scheme effectively detects FBS even with specific transmit power.

Simulation results confirm improved security during handover.

Abstract

False Base Station (FBS) attack has been a severe security problem for the cellular network since 2G era. During handover, the user equipment (UE) periodically receives state information from surrounding base stations (BSs) and uploads it to the source BS. The source BS compares the uploaded signal power and shifts UE to another BS that can provide the strongest signal. An FBS can transmit signal with the proper power and attract UE to connect to it. In this paper, based on the 3GPP standard, a Precheck Sequence-based Detection (PSD) Scheme is proposed to secure the transition of legal base station (LBS) for UE. This scheme first analyzes the structure of received signals in blocks and symbols. Several additional symbols are added to the current signal sequence for verification. By designing a long table of symbol sequence, every UE which needs handover will be allocated a specific sequence from this table. The simulation results show that the performance of this PSD Scheme is better than that of any existing ones, even when a specific transmit power is designed for FBS.