Detection of Pilot Contamination Attack in Massive MIMO System

In this work, we present low complexity method to detect pilot contamination attack (PCA) by eavesdropper (Eve) on legitimate user (LU) in massive MIMO (MaMIMO) systems. In PCA, Eve transmits pilot signal in synchronization with LU to steer partial beam towards Eve. Consequently, significant information leaks to the Eve during downlink transmission causing security breach. The knowledge of active Eve can significantly improve secrecy capacity of the LU. We also provide analysis of probability of detection, probability of false alarm and probability of detection error. The simulation results demonstrate efficacy of the proposed method to detect PCA.

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