HoloTrace: a Location Privacy-Preserving Framework for mmWave MIMO-OFDM Systems

Abstract

The technological innovation towards 6G cellular networks introduces unprecedented capabilities for user equipment (UE) localization, but it also raises serious concerns about physical layer location privacy. This paper introduces HoloTrace, a signal-level privacy preservation framework that relies on user-side spoofing of localization-relevant features to prevent the extraction of precise location information from the signals received by a base station (BS) in a mmWave MIMO-OFDM system. Spoofing is performed by the user on location parameters such as angle of arrival (AoA), angle of departure (AoD), and time difference of arrival (TDoA). Without requiring any protocol modification nor network-side support, our method strategically perturbs pilot transmissions to prevent a BS from performing non-consensual UE localization. The methodology allows the UE to spoof its position, keeping the precoder unchanged. We formulate spoofing as a unified rank-constrained projection problem, and provide closed-form solutions under varying levels of channel state information (CSI) at the UE, including scenarios with and without CSI knowledge. Simulation results confirm that the proposed approach enables the UE to deceive the BS, inducing significant localization errors, while the impact on link capacity varies depending on the spoofed position. Our findings establish HoloTrace as a practical and robust privacy-preserving solution for future 6G networks.