System and Method for Identifying Wireless Devices Using Pulse Fingerprinting and Sequence Analysis
First Claim
1. A method for identifying devices that are sources of wireless signals from received radio frequency (RF) energy, comprising:
- a. receiving RF energy;
b. generating pulse metric data from the received RF energy, the pulse metric data representing characteristics associated with pulses of received RF energy;
c. partitioning the pulses into groups based on their pulse metric data; and
d. identifying the sources of the received wireless signals based on said partitioning.
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Accused Products
Abstract
Methods are provided for identifying devices that are sources of wireless signals from received radio frequency (RF) energy. RF energy is received at a device called a sensor device herein. Pulse metric data is generated from the received RF energy. The pulse metric data represents characteristics associated with pulses of received RF energy. The pulses are partitioned into groups based on their pulse metric data such that a group comprises pulses having similarities for at least one item of pulse metric data. Sources of the wireless signals are identified based on the partitioning process. The partitioning process involves iteratively subdividing each group into subgroups until all resulting subgroups contain pulses determined to be from a single source. At each iteration, subdividing is performed based on different pulse metric data than at a prior iteration. Ultimately, output data is generated (e.g., a device name for display) that identifies a source of wireless signals for any subgroup that is determined to contain pulses from a single source.
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Citations
72 Claims
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1. A method for identifying devices that are sources of wireless signals from received radio frequency (RF) energy, comprising:
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a. receiving RF energy; b. generating pulse metric data from the received RF energy, the pulse metric data representing characteristics associated with pulses of received RF energy; c. partitioning the pulses into groups based on their pulse metric data; and d. identifying the sources of the received wireless signals based on said partitioning. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41)
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42. A device that receives radio frequency (RF) energy and identifies devices that are sources of wireless signals in the RF energy, comprising:
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a. a receiver that receives RF energy; b. an analog-to-digital converter that converts received RF energy to a digital data; and c. a processor coupled to the analog-to-digital converter that generates pulse metric data from the digital data, the pulse metric data representing characteristics associated with pulses of RF energy, partitions the pulse metric data for individual pulses into groups based on their characteristics, and identifies sources of wireless signals contained in the RF energy based on the groups. - View Dependent Claims (43, 44)
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45. A method for identifying devices that are sources of wireless signals from received radio frequency (RF) energy, comprising:
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a. receiving RF energy; b. generating protocol-specific pulse data and device-specific pulse data from the received RF energy; c. sorting data for pulses into groups to form a group of pulses whose transmission protocol is known and a group of pulses whose transmission protocol is not known; d. subdividing the group of pulses whose transmission protocol is not known into subgroups based on protocol-specific pulse data for those pulses to produce one or more subgroups, each subgroup comprising data for pulses having similar protocol-specific pulse data and thus corresponding to the same unknown transmission protocol; e. assigning a protocol identifier to each subgroup that comprises pulse data for pulses from one or more devices using the same unknown transmission protocol; f. iteratively subdividing each subgroup corresponding to an unknown transmission protocol into further subgroups based on device-specific pulse data until resulting subgroups contain pulses determined to be from a single device; g. assigning a device identifier to each resulting subgroup containing pulses from a single device; h. storing the protocol-specific pulse data for each protocol identifier; i. generating protocol-specific pulse data and device-specific pulse data for RF energy received after said (f) storing; and j. comparing the protocol-specific pulse data with said stored pulse protocol-specific pulse data to determine when pulses of RF energy are received that match the pulse-specific pulse data for an unknown transmission protocol that has been recognized as a result of said (d) subdividing, (e) assigning and (f) storing. - View Dependent Claims (46, 47, 48, 49, 50)
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51. A method for identifying devices that are sources of wireless signals from received radio frequency (RF) energy, comprising:
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a. receiving RF energy; b. generating protocol-specific pulse data and device-specific pulse data from the received RF energy; c. sorting data for pulses into groups to form a group of pulses whose transmission protocol is known and a group of pulses whose transmission protocol is not known; d. subdividing the group of pulses whose transmissions protocol is not known into subgroups based on protocol-specific pulse data for those pulses to produce one or more subgroups, each subgroup comprising data for pulses having similar protocol-specific pulse data and thus corresponding to the same unknown transmission protocol; e. assigning a protocol identifier to each subgroup that comprises pulse data for pulses from one or more devices using the same unknown transmission protocol; f. iteratively subdividing each subgroup corresponding to an unknown transmission protocol into further subgroups based on device-specific pulse data until resulting subgroups contain pulses determined to be from a single device; g. examining demodulated data for pulses from multiple subgroups determined to be from a single device and having the same protocol identifier to identify one or more bit fields that are constant across multiple packets from multiple subgroups having the same protocol identifier; and h. storing said one or more bit fields as a synchronization pattern for a corresponding transmission protocol for use as one type of protocol-specific pulse data to group pulses for subsequently received RF energy. - View Dependent Claims (52, 53)
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54. A method for identifying sources of wireless signals from received radio frequency (RF) energy, comprising:
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a. detecting pulses of RF energy; b. determining carrier frequencies of the pulses; c. analyzing the carrier frequencies to determine a set of zero or more candidate frequency spacings to be used for identifying a hopset of a frequency hopping channelization scheme; d. determining one or more channelization schemes associated with the pulses using the set of candidate frequency spacings and the carrier frequencies for the pulses, wherein a channelization scheme comprises a set of one or more transmit frequencies; e. partitioning pulses into groups, wherein each group corresponds to a channelization scheme; and f. subdividing each group of pulses into subgroups based on differences between the carrier frequencies for pulses in the group and a particular one of the transmit frequencies for the corresponding channelization scheme; and g. identifying sources of wireless signals based on the subgroups formed by said (f) subdividing. - View Dependent Claims (55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61)
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62. A method for identifying sources of wireless signals from received radio frequency (RF) energy, comprising:
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a. detecting pulses of RF energy; b. determining arrival times for the pulses; c. deriving candidate periods for the pulses based on the arrival times; d. partitioning pulses into groups on their candidate periods; e. deriving phases for each of the groups of pulses that have been formed based on candidate periods; f. partitioning the groups into subgroups based on their phases; and g. identifying sources of wireless signals based on the subgroups formed by partitioning based on phase and other pulses remaining that were not grouped based on candidate period. - View Dependent Claims (63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72)
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Specification