Physical layer techniques to mitigate the handover process vulnerabilities

Abstract

An apparatus and system to mitigate non-genuine handovers are described. The handovers include handovers based on fake measurements and handovers to malicious cells. To mitigate these, a mitigation procedure is initiated when excessive handovers are detected. Location information obtained from the UE, estimation of PHY layer properties by the serving and/or target cell, or AI modeling of the best serving cell at the UE location is used to determine whether the handover is valid. If not, the handover is canceled and the UE is stopped from initiating new handovers for a specified time, the UE may be instructed to perform re-authentication with the network, and/or the serving cell recommends to the network authentication entity to revoke the UE authentication. To ensure that the target cell is legitimate, an AI model is used to classify the target cell as known/unknown and the result sent to the network in NAS signaling.