Dynamic and Open-Set RF Fingerprinting and Localization in Crowded Indoor Environments through Contrastive Channel State Information Learning

Abstract: Radio Frequency Fingerprinting (RFF) using deep learning has gained attention as a complementary approach to cryptographic authentication, offering resistance to spoofing, replay attacks, and key leakage. While most RFF approaches rely on In-Phase and Quadrature (IQ) samples, Channel State Information (CSI) has emerged as a more accessible alternative, enabling device authentication through physical-layer characteristics. In this work, we propose ContraCSI, a CSI-based contrastive learning framework for RFF using low-cost ESP32 devices. We investigate multiple encoder backbones, including a Vision Transformer (ViT), a lightweight 3D-CNN (Lite3D-CNN), and R3D18, to learn joint CSI and device-ID embeddings for transmitter authentication. For closed-set identification, the ViT variants achieve the best overall performance. We further study open-set authentication by applying a Geometric Entropy Minimization (GEM)-based anomaly score and sequential CUSUM (Cumulative Sum) test on embeddings learned by Lite3D-CNN-Contra, enabling rejection of unseen or non-enrolled transmitters rather than forcing a closed-set label. To evaluate robustness in highly dynamic and crowded indoor environments with human motion, multipath fading, and varying device orientations and distances, we conduct extensive experiments in a real-world setting. Our results demonstrate high authentication accuracy, strong generalization in non-ideal conditions, and effective rejection of unknown transmitters. Additionally, we explore CSI-based indoor localization via trilateration, illustrating the potential for integrated authentication and localization in practical indoor deployments.