Spectral fingerprint recognition of mobile signals via Rydberg atomic sensors

Abstract

Rydberg-atom sensors have emerged as a promising quantum technology for broadband radio-frequency detection owing to their intrinsic calibration, wide frequency coverage, and high sensitivity. However, their potential for intelligent identification of real-world wireless signals remains largely unexplored. Here, we demonstrate a quantum-enabled framework for mobile signal classification based on Rydberg electromagnetically induced transparency spectroscopy and deep learning. Three types of wireless emissions, including cellular voice call, Wi-Fi, and 5G signals from three commercial smartphone brands, are measured to construct a spectral-fingerprint dataset. A convolutional neural network trained on this dataset achieves an initial baseline classification accuracy of 93.44\%. To compensate for spectral drifts induced by temporal and environmental variations, a progressive fine-tuning strategy is employed to continuously adapt the pretrained model, enabling robust classification across diverse deployment scenarios. Furthermore, continuous real-time monitoring is demonstrated under dynamically varying wireless conditions, including cellular voice call, Wi-Fi, and their coexistence. The proposed system achieves an overall frame-level recognition accuracy of 87.67\% over a 60-s measurement. These results establish a pathway toward intelligent quantum radio-frequency sensing and highlight the potential of Rydberg-atom platforms for real-time wireless signal awareness and spectrum monitoring.