Detection of Pilot Contamination Attack Using Random Training and Massive MIMO

Channel estimation attacks can degrade the performance
of the legitimate system and facilitate eavesdropping. It is
known that pilot contamination can alter the legitimate transmit
precoder design and strengthen the quality of the received signal
at the eavesdropper, without being detected. In this paper, we
devise a technique which employs random pilots chosen from a
known set of phase-shift keying (PSK) symbols to detect pilot
contamination. The scheme only requires two training periods
without any prior channel knowledge. Our analysis demonstrates
that using the proposed technique in a massive MIMO system, the
detection probability of pilot contamination attacks can be made
arbitrarily close to 1. Simulation results reveal that the proposed
technique can significantly increase the detection probability and
is robust to noise power as well as the eavesdropper’s power.