Active Time Domain Reflectometry for Tamper Indication in Unattended Safeguards Systems

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) continues to expand its use of unattended measurement systems. An increasing number of systems and an expanding family of instruments create challenges in terms of deployment efficiency and the implementation of data authentication measures. In collaboration with the IAEA, tamper-indicating measures to address data-transmission authentication challenges with unattended safeguards systems are under investigation. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is studying the viability of active time-domain reflectometry (TDR) along two parallel but interconnected paths: (1) swept-frequency TDR as the highly flexible, laboratory gold standard to which field-deployable options can be compared, and (2) a low-cost commercially available spread-spectrum TDR technology as one option for field implementation. This paper describes the TDR methods under investigation and the associated benchtop test-bed, tampering scenarios of interest, and viability measurement results to date (e.g., comparison of relative sensitivity to tamper scenarios).