How To Enhance The Immunity Of Lte Systems Against Rf Spoofing

Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks offer highspeed wireless access to meet the increasing demand in user traffic. LTE technology is also considered for mission-critical networks. Hence, it is critical to ensure that the LTE system performs effectively even in harsh signaling environments. This paper analyzes the effect of different levels of radio frequency (RF) spoofing applied to LTE. The simplest form of spoofing is LTE synchronization signal spoofing, where standard-compliant primary and secondary synchronization sequences are transmitted by a fake cell. More sophisticated RF spoofing attacks include transmitting some of the LTE control messages, without the ability to exchange the authentication keys. The experimental results show that LTE control channel spoofing can cause permanent denial of service for user equipment during the cell selection process. We provide the technical explanation for this using the LTE specifications. Mitigation techniques are proposed to effectively enhance the immunity of LTE systems against targeted interference and ensure that it is secure and available when and where needed.