RF-Mehndi: A Fingertip Profiled RF Identifier

Abstract

This paper presents RF-Mehndi, a passive commercial RFID tag array formed identifier. The key RF-Mehndi novelty is that when the user’s fingertip touching on the tag array surface during the communication, the backscattered signals by the tag array become user-dependent and unique. Hence, if we enhance the communication modality of many personal cards nowadays by RF-Mehndi, in case that a card gets lost or stolen, it cannot be used illegally by the adversaries. To harvest such a benefit, we have two key observations in designing RF-Mehndi. The first observation is when tags are nearby, their interrogated currents can change each other’s circuit characteristics, based on which unique phase features can be obtained from backscattered signals. The second observation is that when the user’s fingertip touches the tag array surface during communication, the phase feature can be further profiled by this user. Based on these observations, the card and its holder can be potentially authenticated at the same time. To transfer the RF-Mehndi idea to a practical system, we further address technical challenges. We implement a prototype system. Extensive evaluations show the effectiveness of RF-Mehndi, achieving excellent authentication performance.