Stabilograms: Testbed Stability in a Pilot Experiment for Cellular Communication Anomaly Detection

Published

October 26, 2022

Author(s)

Michael Frey, Mary Gregg, Jason Coder, Azizollah Kord, Melissa Midzor, Anna Otterstetter, Jeanne Quimby, Alec Weiss

Abstract

The National Institute of Standards and Technology's Communications Technology Laboratory conducted a cellular communication system pilot experiment in the summer of 2021. This pilot experiment was done to prepare for a broad-scope experiment to demonstrate anomaly detection from radiated emissions, possibly due to cyberattack. A goal of the pilot experiment was to check the experiment testbed for instabilities. A testbed is stable if measurements made over time with identical experiment settings exhibit no systematic variation. The data collected in the pilot experiment evidenced strong instabilities in the testbed's operation. These instabilities are seen in sequence plots of the experiment responses and, especially, in stabilograms devised expressly for this purpose in this work. Stabilograms are an intuitive and easy way to assess testbed instability. The instabilities reflected in the stabilograms are large enough to foreclose further analysis of the pilot data. The stabilograms from this study, though, suggest that if the testbed's instabilities can be effectively addressed, anomaly detection might be accomplished in the scenario under consideration.

Citation

Technical Note (NIST TN) - 2231

Report Number

2231

NIST Pub Series

Technical Note (NIST TN)

Pub Type

NIST Pubs

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.TN.2231

Local Download

Keywords

Anomaly detection, ANOVA model, cellular communication, pilot experiment, testbed stability.

Citation

Frey, M. , Gregg, M. , Coder, J. , Kord, A. , Midzor, M. , Otterstetter, A. , Quimby, J. and Weiss, A. (2022), Stabilograms: Testbed Stability in a Pilot Experiment for Cellular Communication Anomaly Detection, Technical Note (NIST TN), National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, [online], https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.TN.2231, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=934684 (Accessed October 9, 2025)