Attack-Resilient Secure Localization for Underwater Acoustic Networks via Frequency-Diverse DRSS

Differential received signal strength (DRSS)-based localization is increasingly preferred for resource-constrained underwater acoustic sensor networks due to its low measurement complexity and ease of implementation. However, DRSS measurements are inherently sensitive to power perturbations induced by malicious anchor attacks, and these effects are further aggravated by severe ambient noise and strong multipath propagation, leading to degraded localization accuracy. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a multi-frequency DRSS-based underwater secure localization scheme that explicitly accounts for power-attack-induced distortions. By integrating a multipath propagation loss model with multi-frequency DRSS measurements, a robust localization model is established to suppress both power attack effects and multipath-induced uncertainties. Frequency diversity is exploited to replace spatial redundancy, enabling three-dimensional localization using only two anchors while maintaining localization reliability. Furthermore, channel impulse response simplifies the localization model by establishing relative multipath constraints, converting it into a worst-case uncertainty-aware optimization problem to handle power attacks, with a semidefinite programming (SDP) estimator proposed to turn this into a convex SDP problem for accurate sensor position estimates. Simulation results and field experiments demonstrate that the proposed scheme achieves improved localization accuracy and reliability under power attacks and other adverse measurement conditions.