An UWB ranging-based localization strategy with internal attack immunity

Abstract

The two-way ranging (TWR) protocol has been adopted in the IEEE 802.15.4a standard for wireless networks. However, it is vulnerable to malicious attacks (e.g., internal attacks). An internal ranging attack here refers to a fraudulent timestamp report. For example, a compromised sensor node tampers its timestamp report to spoof its processing time in order to malignly decrease or enlarge distance measurements, or a sensor node submits an inaccurate timestamp report due to the clock drift. In this paper, we propose an UWB ranging-based localization strategy, which is immune to the internal ranging attack. Regardless of the honesty of the timestamp report from a sensor node, we could still estimate the position of the sensor node accurately. We show how to defeat a ranging attack by taking it into account in the development of a localization algorithm.