Authenticated Data Transmission Using Analog Function Computation

Conventional analog function computation (AFC) is an effective data aggregation technique that combines communication and computation to improve time efficiency and scalability. In this letter, different from the conventional AFC, we study distinguishing individual observations from the aggregated data by including unique prime identifiers to pre-processing functions. Prime identifiers can be used to equip the network with a simple authentication mechanism while removing the dependency on public key algorithms or trusted third parties. The resilience of the proposed scheme to spoofing attacks and non-ideal conditions including the channel estimation errors and the thermal noise is investigated with computer simulations.