EM-ID: TAG-LESS IDENTIFICATION OF ELECTRICAL DEVICES VIA ELECTROMAGNETIC EMISSIONS

Number: 20170270198
Published: 2017-09-21
Filed: 2017-03-17
Assignee: DISNEY ENTERPRISES, INC.
Inventors: SAMPLE; ALANSON, YANG; CHOUCHANG
CPC: G06F16/211; G06F16/334; G06F16/381
Verdict: Medium Notable software
Source: Google Patents · FreePatentsOnline

The keeper's note

Identifies individual electronic devices tag-lessly by reading their unique RF emission spectrum with a basic RFID reader and matching it to a known library.

Abstract

A technique for identifying individual instances of electronic devices. This is done by using a basic RFID reader to read the RF emissions from the electronic device to obtain an emitted electromagnetic spectrum and compare it to a library of emitted electromagnetic spectrums of different instances of that type of electronic device and, based on that comparison, finding a best match and identifying the electronic device as being a particular instance of that type of electronic device. This comparison may be made by computing Euclidean distances between vectors that are based on the measured electromagnetic spectrums.

Background

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THEDRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a depiction of an IT professional scanning the unique electromagnetic noise generated by the unmodified laptops in order to determine their unique IDs andrecover their asset management information.

FIG. 2 depicts the process of uniquely identifying an electronic device (in this case an unknown iPhone 6) based on its low frequency electromagnetic emissions. Panel A shows a low cost EM-ID reader recording the EM signature shown in panel B. This signature is thresholded to remove noise and the device's EM-ID is extracted as depicted in panel C. In order to identify what type of device it is, aclassification algorithm is done in panel D. Once the object type is known, it is compared to all other iPhone 6s in the database in order to recover its unique ID, as shown in panel E.

FIG. 3 shows representative frequency domain plots from 0 to 500 kHz of the EM signals from five different categories of devices. The distinctive patterns are a manifestation of the circuit topology and are unique to each device category.

FIG. 4 showsfrequency domain plots from 0 to 500 kHz of the EM signals for five identical toys. Sincethe same circuit is used in each device the frequency distributions are similar to each other, although close inspection shows that indeed there are small differences.

FIG. 5 shows a histogram of Euclidean distances between an unknown test toy A.sub.i and the five known toys A, B, C, D and E, whose

Claims

1. A method for identifying a particular instance of an electronic device, the method comprising: receiving a spectrum of electromagnetic signals emitted by an electronic device under examination; comparing the received spectrum of electromagnetic signals to a library of spectrums of electromagnetic signals, each of the spectrums of electromagnetic signals in the library representing the spectrum of electromagnetic signals produced by a particular instance of an electronic device; finding a best match of the received spectrum of electromagnetic signals to one of the spectrums of electromagnetic signals in the library; and identifying the electronic device under examination as the electronic device in the library that produces the spectrum of electromagnetic signals to which the best match was made. 12. A method comprising:separately for each of a group of electronic devices of the same type, receiving the spectrum of electromagnetic signals emitted by each electronic device in the group; creating alibrary of the received spectrums, including an indication of which electromagnetic device in the group produced each spectrum; subsequently, receiving a spectrum of electromagnetic signals emitted by an electronic device under examination; comparing the received spectrum of electromagnetic signals to the library of spectrums of electromagnetic signals; finding a best match of the received spectrum of electromagnetic signals to one of the spectrums of electromagnetic signals in the library; and identifying the electronic device underexamination as the electronic device in the library that produces the spectrum of electromagnetic signals to which the best match was made.