A Novel CS-based Measurement Method for Impairments Identification in Wireline Channels

The paper proposes a new measurement method for impairments identification in wireline channels (i.e. wire cables) by exploiting a Compressive Sampling (CS)-based technique. The method consists of two-phases: (i) acquisition and reconstruction of the channel impulse response in the nominal working condition and (ii) analysis of the channel state to detect any physical anomaly/discontinuity like deterioration (e.g. aging due to harsh environment) or unauthorized side channel attacks (e.g. taps). The first results demonstrate that the proposed method is capable of estimating the channel impairments with an accuracy that could allow the classification of the main channel impairments. The proposed method could be used to develop low-cost instrumentation for continuous monitoring of the physical layer of data networks and to improve their hardware security.