  Fake base station (FBS) attack is a great security challenge to wireless user
equipment (UE). During the cell selection stage, the UE receives multiple
synchronization signals (SSs) from multiple nearby base stations (BSs), and
then synchronizes itself with the strongest SS. A FBS also can transmit a SS
with sufficient power to confuse the UE, which makes the UE connect to the FBS,
and may lead to the leakage of private information. In this letter,
countermeasure to the FBS attack by utilizing the location information is
investigated. Two location awareness based FBS-resistance schemes are proposed
by checking the received signal strength according to the position of the UE
and a legitimate BS map. The successful cheating rate (SCR) definded as the
probability that the UE will connect to the FBS is investigated. Numeric
results show that with the two proposed schemes, the SCR can be greatly reduced
especially when the transmit power of the FBS is large. Beyond that, a
cooperation aided method is further proposed to improve the performance, and we
show that the cooperation aided method can further suppress the SCR when the
signal strength from the FBS is similar to that from the legitimate BS.
