Physical-layer integrity for wireless messages

Among the different physical-layer characteristics, we focus on delay attacks in which an attacker delays a message sent from victim A to a nearby victim B. Such attacks can be used on time-synchronization, distance measurement, and other time-sensitive measurements such as phasor measurements in power grids. In that context, we speak of message temporal integrity (MTI) as characteristic targeted by the attack. Informally, MTI is preserved if the message is neither advanced nor delayed in transmission. We discuss how to detect attacks on MTI, and propose a message temporal integrity protocol based on special message encoding, modulation, and detection.