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EP-4742725-A2 - SYSTEMS AND METHODS OF ASSESSING A PLAUSIBILITY OF A RANGING MEASUREMENT

EP4742725A2EP 4742725 A2EP4742725 A2EP 4742725A2EP-4742725-A2

Abstract

Systems and methods of assessing a plausibility of a ranging measurement are provided. In some embodiments, a method of assessing a plausibility of a ranging measurement includes: obtaining the ranging measurement from a remote device; obtaining one or more measurements associated with the ranging measurement; and based on the one or more measurements associated with the ranging measurement, determining the plausibility of the ranging measurement. The embodiments disclosed herein determine the reliability of the measured range and thus enforce the security level of Ultra-WideBand (UWB) transactions to be secured. Some embodiments are based on existing and standardized metrics. Some embodiments include a capability to auto-assess whether it is reliable to estimate the plausibility of the transaction range. In some embodiments, the computations needed are relatively simple and can be performed by relatively simple devices.

Inventors

  • PERRAUD, ERIC

Assignees

  • QORVO US, INC.

Dates

Publication Date
20260513
Application Date
20230215

Claims (15)

  1. A method of assessing a plausibility of a ranging measurement, comprising: obtaining the ranging measurement from a remote device; obtaining one or more measurements associated with the ranging measurement; and based on the one or more measurements associated with the ranging measurement, determining the plausibility of the ranging measurement.
  2. The method of claim 1 wherein the ranging measurement is part of an Ultra-WideBand (UWB) transaction.
  3. The method of any of claims 1 to 2 wherein the one or more measurements associated with the ranging measurement comprise one or more of the group consisting of: a received channel power from the remote device; a Channel Impulse Response (CIR) associated with the ranging measurement; a Time of Flight (ToF) associated with the ranging measurement; a received channel power of the remote device; and an angle of arrival associated with the ranging measurement.
  4. The method of any of claims 1 to 3 wherein determining the plausibility of the ranging measurement comprises: comparing the one or more measurements associated with the ranging measurement with a model of expected values for a plausible ranging measurement.
  5. The method of claim 4 wherein the model of expected values for a plausible ranging measurement is the result of an unsupervised clustering algorithm of known plausible ranging measurements.
  6. The method of claim 5 wherein the unsupervised clustering algorithm comprises a digital grid clustering algorithm.
  7. The method of any of claims 4 to 6 wherein comparing the one or more measurements associated with the ranging measurement with the model of expected values for a plausible ranging measurement comprises: projecting the one or more measurements associated with the ranging measurement into digital cells of an n-dimensional space; determining a density of the digital cells and a global state anomaly score; determining an anomaly score for the one or more measurements associated with the ranging measurement; and determining the plausibility of the ranging measurement by comparing the anomaly score with the global state anomaly score.
  8. The method of any of claims 4 to 7 further comprising: determining reliability of the model of expected values for a plausible ranging measurement.
  9. The method of claim 8 wherein determining the reliability of the model of expected values for a plausible ranging measurement is based on a number of dense cells of the model of expected values and a number of past measurements out of the cluster of dense cells.
  10. The method of any of claims 1 to 5 wherein determining the plausibility of the ranging measurement comprises: comparing the one or more measurements associated with the ranging measurement with a one-class State Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm which predicts whether the ranging measurement is plausible.
  11. The method of claim 10 further comprising: if the ranging measurement is determined to not be plausible but within a threshold, retraining the model of expected values using the one or more measurements associated with the ranging measurement.
  12. The method of claim 11 further comprising: assessing a reliability of the plausibility determination based on a generalization loss of cross-validation done when the model of expected values is trained or re-trained.
  13. A computing device for assessing a plausibility of a ranging measurement, comprising at least one processor, the at least one processor being configured to: obtain the ranging measurement from a remote device; obtain one or more measurements associated with the ranging measurement; and based on the one or more measurements associated with the ranging measurement, determine the plausibility of the ranging measurement.
  14. The computing device of claim 13 wherein the ranging measurement is part of an Ultra-WideBand (UWB) transaction.
  15. The computing device of any of claims 13 to 14 wherein the one or more measurements associated with the ranging measurement comprise one or more of the group consisting of: a received channel power from the remote device; a Channel Impulse Response (CIR) associated with the ranging measurement; a Time of Flight (ToF) associated with the ranging measurement; a received channel power of the remote device; and an angle of arrival associated with the ranging measurement.

Description

Field of the Disclosure The current disclosure relates generally to validating ranging measurements. Background Ultra-WideBand (UWB) is a technology for short-range, low-cost, low-power communications, focusing on transactions between Internet of Things (loT) devices. These transactions may be unsecure: they can suffer of relay-attack or man-in-the-middle attacks. Figure 1 illustrates the principle of relay attack. As shown in Figure 1, the vehicle (or more generally an initiator device) periodically transmits a radio ciphered challenge to discover the vehicle owner key fob (or more generally a responder device). The radio communication range is typically a few meters. In normal mode, the key fob decodes and deciphers the challenge. If the decoding and deciphering are successfully accomplished, the key fob sends a ciphered response. The vehicle decodes and deciphers the response and if it is successfully authenticated, the doors are unlocked. An attacker can unlock the door with a simple radio. If the car owner has parked the vehicle and then is working far away off the vehicle, an attacker can simply amplify and relay the radio challenge signal until the signal is received by the owner key fob. Since the received challenge is unmodified by the radio relay, the key fob successfully decodes and deciphers the challenge and considers it a valid challenge. The key fob then sends a ciphered response. The radio relay of the attacker amplifies the response so that it is received by the vehicle. The vehicle decodes the response as the expected response and therefore unlocks the door. The attacker then has unauthorized access to the vehicle. Another simple attack is the Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) attack. Improved systems and methods for ranging measurements are needed. Summary Particular embodiments are set out in the independent claims. Various optional examples are set out in the dependent claims. Systems and methods of assessing a plausibility of a ranging measurement are provided. In some embodiments, a method of assessing a plausibility of a ranging measurement includes: obtaining the ranging measurement from a remote device; obtaining one or more measurements associated with the ranging measurement; and based on the one or more measurements associated with the ranging measurement, determining the plausibility of the ranging measurement. The embodiments disclosed herein determine the reliability of the measured range and thus enforce the security level of Ultra-WideBand (UWB) transactions to be secured. Some embodiments are based on existing and standardized metrics. Some embodiments include a capability to auto-assess whether it is reliable to estimate the plausibility of the transaction range. In some embodiments, the computations needed are relatively simple and can be performed by relatively simple devices. UWB ranging involves two UWB devices exchanging ranging messages. The initiator must know the reply time of the responder. Therefore, the ranging principle relies on that both devices are trustable and do not lie when reporting their respective timing measurement. However, a malicious device may intentionally report a reply time which is not the effective reply time. The idea is to collect other physical UWB metrics for every ranging round and to build a dataset of n-dimension vectors (like received power, channel impulse response...). Since there is some correlation between these metrics, these vectors will not occupy the full n-D space but will aggregate in some clusters. When UWB ranging is done with a malicious or misfunctioning device, it will be an outlier in the n-D dataset. This will be detected with an unsupervised or semi-supervised Machine Learning algorithm, aka a Grid Clustering or one-class SVM algorithm. If such vector is detected as an outlier, the plausibility of the ranging value is suspicious. In some embodiments, a computing device for assessing a plausibility of a ranging measurement, comprising at least one processor, the at least one processor being configured to: obtain the ranging measurement from a remote device; obtain one or more measurements associated with the ranging measurement; and based on the one or more measurements associated with the ranging measurement, determine the plausibility of the ranging measurement. In some embodiments, the ranging measurement is part of a UWB transaction. In some embodiments, the one or more measurements associated with the ranging measurement comprise one or more of the group consisting of: received channel power from the remote device; a Channel Impulse Response, (CIR) associated with the ranging measurement; a Time of Flight (ToF) associated with the ranging measurement; a received channel power of the remote device; and an angle of arrival associated with the ranging measurement. In some embodiments, determining the plausibility of the ranging measurement comprises: comparing the one or more measurements associated with the ranging measur