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What Is Wi-Fi Shield?

Wi-Fi Shield is an innovative wireless security technology developed by Huawei. It sends extra interference signals to ensure that only the target station (STA) can accurately receive data packets and signals cannot be demodulated at other locations. This prevents malicious users from intercepting the packets.

What Issue Does Wi-Fi Shield Try to Solve?

Thanks to the convenience of wireless networks, more and more people are accessing the Internet through Wi-Fi. However, Wi-Fi signals are transmitted in the air and can be received by anyone within a certain area. This brings opportunities for malicious users to intercept data of authorized users. On a complex Wi-Fi network, malicious users can deploy rogue devices near authorized users to capture and decrypt wireless data packets of authorized users.

Unauthorized interception
Unauthorized interception

To block unauthorized interception, Huawei develops the innovative Wi-Fi Shield technology. This technology ensures wireless security by preventing malicious users from identifying packets of authorized users.

Differences and Relationships Between Wi-Fi Shield and Traditional Encryption Technologies

Traditional Wi-Fi security technologies usually use encryption algorithms to encrypt wireless data packets. As such, malicious users can intercept packets but cannot understand them.

Leveraging the beamforming capability of APs, Huawei's Wi-Fi Shield technology sends extra interference signals. Malicious users can only receive a disordered superposition of the valid signals and interference signals, and cannot demodulate the signals. In other words, they cannot even intercept the signals.

Can we use Wi-Fi Shield and traditional encryption technologies together?

The answer is yes. Wi-Fi Shield and traditional encryption technologies are independent of each other in different phases of data transmission. Traditional encryption technologies may still be cracked. Therefore, when users have high requirements on data security, a combination of data encryption and Wi-Fi Shield can be used to further enhance security.

Working Principles of Wi-Fi Shield

The Wi-Fi Shield technology is based on the beamforming capability of APs. An AP has multiple antennas. When signals of different antennas are superimposed, they affect each other. Beamforming changes the shape of beams by compensating phases of transmit antennas. As such, wireless signals can be transmitted to target STAs in a centralized and directional manner.

Beamforming implementation
Beamforming implementation

However, in general radio signal transmission, although a sending direction may be adjusted, a receiving location is not accurate enough. In addition to the main lobe area with the most concentrated energy, some energy is usually distributed to the side lobe area. As a result, signals may also be received at other locations.

To make the signal receiving location more accurate, Wi-Fi Shield uses an additional antenna to transmit interference signals, including human interference that cannot be identified by STAs. After a STA that needs to be protected normally accesses the Wi-Fi network, the AP determines the location of the STA before sending data, and adjusts the transmission direction of the interference signal based on the location information. In this way, the interference is 0 only at the location of the target STA, and the data received by the authorized user is not affected. Interference signals overlap with valid signals at other positions and cannot be identified, causing a data demodulation failure for unauthorized STAs.

Working principles of Wi-Fi Shield
Working principles of Wi-Fi Shield

To ensure that the target STA is protected while it is moving, Wi-Fi Shield dynamically updates the location information of the STA, ensuring consistent Wi-Fi security for users wherever they go. Compared with smart antennas featuring always-on signals for users, Wi-Fi Shield has different principles and purposes. Smart antennas directly adjust the direction of valid signals to enhance signal strength. In contrast, Wi-Fi Shield adjusts the direction of interference signals to accurately send data in point-to-point mode.

Even when there are multiple users on the network, Wi-Fi Shield can still ensure data security of these users. If there are multiple STAs to be protected, Wi-Fi Shield provides independent protection for each STA, customizing interference signals when data is sent to each STA.

Which Devices Support Wi-Fi Shield?

For the data receiver, a STA needs to support Wi-Fi 6 or a later protocol standard.

For the data sender, some Huawei AirEngine series Wi-Fi 7 AP models support this function. For more information about Wi-Fi 7 APs, see Huawei Wi-Fi 7 APs.

About This Topic
  • Author: Liu Jiayu
  • Updated on: 2024-08-29
  • Views: 1896
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