Pilot Attack Identification and Elimination in Airborne Massive MIMO Systems by Exploiting the Sparse Structures of Channel

In this paper, a pilot attack identification and elimination scheme is proposed to solve the information leakage problem introduced by pilot attack in airborne massive MIMO systems. The OPTICS clustering algorithm and channel beam domain analysis method are employed to identify the existence of pilot attack based on the changes in beam-domain channel structures. Under this basis, a pilot attack elimination mechanism is presented to cancel the pilot contamination due to imbedded eavesdropping channel. The scheme does not require instantaneous and statistical knowledge of channels. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can mitigate the impact of pilot attack on security capacity efficiently.