One-shot generative distribution matching for augmented RF-based UAV identification

Abstract

This work addresses the challenge of identifying Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) using radiofrequency (RF) fingerprinting in limited RF environments. The complexity and variability of RF signals, influenced by environmental interference and hardware imperfections, often render traditional RF-based identification methods ineffective. To address these complications, the study introduces the rigorous use of one-shot generative methods for augmenting transformed RF signals, offering a significant improvement in UAV identification. This approach, when utilizing a distributional distance metric, demonstrates significant promise in low-data regimes, outperforming deep generative methods such as conditional generative adversarial networks (GANs) and variational autoencoders (VAEs). The paper provides a theoretical guarantee for the effectiveness of one-shot generative models in augmenting limited data, setting a precedent for their application in limited RF environments. This research also contributes to learning techniques in low-data regime scenarios, which may include complex sequences beyond images and videos. The code and links to datasets used in this study are available at https://github.com/amir-kazemi/uav-rf-id.