# Practical Adversarial Attacks Against AI-Driven Power Allocation in a Distributed MIMO Network

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.09305 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.09305/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 8 of its 13 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Jan 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Explaining and Harnessing Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6572/) (2014)
- [Intriguing properties of neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6199/) (2013)
- [Adversarial examples in the physical world](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.02533/) (2016)
- [Practical Black-Box Attacks against Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.02697/) (2016)
- [Universal adversarial perturbations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.08401/) (2016)
- [Foundations of User-Centric Cell-Free Massive MIMO](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.02541/) (2021)
- [Exploiting epistemic uncertainty of the deep learning models to generate adversarial samples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.04150/) (2021)
- [Universal Adversarial Attacks on Neural Networks for Power Allocation in a Massive MIMO System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.04731/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In distributed multiple-input multiple-output (D-MIMO) networks, power control is crucial to optimize the spectral efficiencies of users and max-min fairness (MMF) power control is a commonly used strategy as it satisfies uniform quality-of-service to all users. The optimal solution of MMF power control requires high complexity operations and hence deep neural network based artificial intelligence (AI) solutions are proposed to decrease the complexity. Although quite accurate models can be achieved by using AI, these models have some intrinsic vulnerabilities against adversarial attacks where carefully crafted perturbations are applied to the input of the AI model. In this work, we show that threats against the target AI model which might be originated from malicious users or radio units can substantially decrease the network performance by applying a successful adversarial sample, even in the most constrained circumstances. We also demonstrate that the risk associated with these kinds of adversarial attacks is higher than the conventional attack threats. Detailed simulations reveal the effectiveness of adversarial attacks and the necessity of smart defense techniques.