Patent ID: 8018883

Claim:
A method of operating a receiving station of a wireless network, the method comprising: wirelessly receiving at the receiving station a signal transmitted from a transmitting station in the wireless network, the signal including a network identifier of the transmitting station; detecting a transient part of the received signal; determining from samples of the transient part of the received signal one or more RF waveform characteristics of the transient part of the received signal; decoding the received signal to determine the network identifier; determining one or more behavior characteristics from the received signal; and using the decoded network identifier and a combination of the one or more waveform characteristics of the transient part and the one or more behavior characteristics to ascertain whether or not the network identifier is a spoofed address, the ascertaining using historical samples of combinations for different network identifiers, wherein the one or more behavior characteristics include at least one of the set consisting of: a measure of error vector magnitude of the received signal as a function of the data rate, the measure of the error vector magnitude determined by an element included in the wireless receiver configured to determine the measure of the error vector magnitude, a measure of whether a variation in the received signal strength indication is accompanied by a change in a difference in time of arrival of the received signal and a signal from a second transmitting station, and at least one measure of variations in the frequency offset as determined by a frequency offset determining element included in the wireless receiver as an indication of the variation of frequency in a day of any oscillator used in the transmitting station.