TIGHT: A Cross-Layer RF Distance Bounding Realization for Passive Wireless Devices

As distance bounding can be leveraged for solving numerous security issues, extensive studies have been carried out for its implementation. Realizing RF distance bounding in battery-less or constrained devices is quite challenging because of inadequate harvested energy and large signal processing delays. We present TIGHT, an RF distance bounding scheme based on Signal Conditioning and Polarization Selection, with which a prover codes and reflects the incident challenges as a polarization function at analog RF at 1 nsec. In addition, our focus lies in designing TIGHT as a full duplex energy optimized system while considering the device synchronization in passive hardware. Security analysis shows that TIGHT is resilient to attacks most concerned in distance bounding. We demonstrate our scheme through prototype implementation and practical evaluation for delay measurements and calculate bit error rate while considering channel interference at ten outdoor and indoor places. Dealing with noise, we estimate the protocol failure, false-acceptance and false-rejection probabilities for TIGHT. Our results show that TIGHT is an effective RF distance bounding approach for passive wireless devices, especially the RFID tokens.