APEG: Adaptive Physical Layer Authentication with Channel Extrapolation and Generative AI

TL;DR

This paper introduces APEG, a novel adaptive physical layer authentication framework for 6G that uses generative AI to improve CSI fingerprint generation and robustness in dynamic radio environments.

Contribution

The paper proposes a new AI-driven framework with innovative models CCMDM and CADM for enhanced CSI fingerprint generation and adaptive authentication in wireless security.

Findings

APEG outperforms existing PLA schemes in authentication accuracy.

CCMDM converges faster than traditional methods.

CADM achieves higher CSI fingerprint generation accuracy.

Abstract

With the rapid advancement of 6G, identity authentication has become increasingly critical for ensuring wireless security. The lightweight and keyless Physical Layer Authentication (PLA) is regarded as an instrumental security measure in addition to traditional cryptography-based authentication methods. However, existing PLA schemes often struggle to adapt to dynamic radio environments. To overcome this limitation, we propose the Adaptive PLA with Channel Extrapolation and Generative AI (APEG), designed to enhance authentication robustness in dynamic scenarios. Leveraging Generative AI (GAI), the framework adaptively generates Channel State Information (CSI) fingerprints, thereby improving the precision of identity verification. To refine CSI fingerprint generation, we propose the Collaborator-Cleaned Masked Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Model (CCMDM), which incorporates collaborator-provided fingerprints as conditional inputs for channel extrapolation. Additionally, we develop the Cross-Attention Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Model (CADM), employing a cross-attention mechanism to align multi-scale channel fingerprint features, further enhancing generation accuracy. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the APEG framework over existing time-sequence-based PLA schemes in authentication performance. Notably, CCMDM exhibits a significant advantage in convergence speed, while CADM, compared with model-free, time-series, and VAE-based methods, achieves superior accuracy in CSI fingerprint generation. The code is available at https://github.com/xiqicheng192-del/APEG