The clock has to be pretty fast, but you can get a secure time of flight measurement, so you can absolutely know the distance of the radio signal path.
The clock has to be pretty fast, but you can get a secure time of flight measurement, so you can absolutely know the distance of the radio signal path.
I did research in this area a few years ago. Here's a research paper [1] from 1993 that goes into more detail about this type of "distance bounding" solution (i.e. authenticating received signal only if 1) it is received within a few nanoseconds AND 2) the decrypted received signal contains the previously sent random number) in order to defend against "relay attacks". The paper discloses many variations to this general solution as well.
[1] Brands and Chaum, "Distance-Bounding Protocols"
edit - thanks for the link, having a read through.