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arXiv:1308.1336

Secret-key generation from wireless channels: Mind the reflections

Hendrik Vogt, Aydin Sezgin

Published Aug 6, 2013• 0 citations
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Abstract

Secret-key generation in a wireless environment exploiting the randomness and reciprocity of the channel gains is considered. A new channel model is proposed which takes into account the effect of reflections (or re-radiations) from receive antenna elements, thus capturing an physical property of practical antennas. It turns out that the reflections have a deteriorating effect on the achievable secret-key rate between the legitimate nodes at high signal-to-noise-power-ratio (SNR). The insights provide guidelines in the design and operation of communication systems using the properties of the wireless channel to prevent eavesdropping.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1308.1336

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Secret-key generation in a wireless environment exploiting the randomness and reciprocity of the channel gains is considered. A new channel model is proposed which takes into account the effect of reflections (or re-radiations) from receive antenna elements, thus capturing an physical property of practical antennas. It turns out that the reflections have a deteriorating effect on the achievable secret-key rate between the legitimate nodes at high signal-to-noise-power-ratio (SNR). The insights provide guidelines in the design and operation of communication systems using the properties of the wireless channel to prevent eavesdropping.
We study the problem of secret-key generation in a wireless environment by exploiting the inherent randomness and reciprocity of the channel gain. A channel model is proposed which takes into account the effect of reflections (or re-radiations) from receive antenna elements, thus capturing a physical property of practical antennas. It turns out that the reflections have a deteriorating effect on the achievable secret-key rate at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). These insights provide guidelines in the design and operation of communication systems using the properties of the wireless channel to prevent eavesdropping.
Secret key generation from reciprocal multi-antenna channels is an interesting alternative to cryptographic key management in wireless systems without infrastructure access. In this work, we study the secret key rate for the basic source model with a MIMO channel. First, we derive an expression for the secret key rate under spatial correlation modelled by the Kronecker model and with spatial precoding at both communication nodes. Next, we analyze the result for uncorrelated antennas to understand the optimal precoding for this special case, which is equal power allocation. Then, the impact of correlation is characterized using Majorization theory. Surprisingly for small SNR, spatial correlation increases the secret key rate. For high SNR, the maximum secret key rate is achieved for uncorrelated antennas. The results indicate that a solid system design for reciprocal MIMO key generation is required to establish the secret key rate gains.
Wireless channel reciprocity can be successfully exploited as a common source of randomness for the generation of a secret key by two legitimate users willing to achieve confidential communications over a public channel. This paper presents an analytical framework to investigate the theoretical limits of secret-key generation when wireless multi-dimensional Gaussian channels are used as source of randomness. The intrinsic secrecy content of wide-sense stationary wireless channels in frequency, time and spatial domains is derived through asymptotic analysis as the number of observations in a given domain tends to infinity. Some significant case studies are presented where single and multiple antenna eavesdroppers are considered. In the numerical results, the role of signal-to-noise ratio, spatial correlation, frequency and time selectivity is investigated.
Abstract The vast majority of existing secret key generation protocols exploit the inherent randomness of the wireless channel as a common source of randomness. However, independent noise added at the receivers of the legitimate nodes affects the reciprocity of the channel. In this paper, we propose a new simple technique to generate the secret key that mitigates the effect of noise. Specifically, we exploit the estimated channel to generate a secondary random process (SRP) that is common between the two legitimate nodes. We compare the estimated channel gain and phase to a preset threshold. The moving differences between the locations at which the estimated channel gain and phase exceed the threshold are the realization of our SRP. We study the properties of our generated SRP and derive a closed form expression for the probability mass function of the realizations of our SRP. We simulate an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing system and show that our proposed technique provides a drastic improvement in the key bit mismatch rate between the legitimate nodes when compared with the techniques that exploit the estimated channel gain or phase directly. In addition to that, the secret key generated through our technique is longer than that generated by conventional techniques. Moreover, we compute the conditional probabilities used to estimate the secret key capacity. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An emerging area of research in wireless communications is the generation of secret encryption keys based on the shared (or common) randomness of the wireless channel between two legitimate nodes in a communication network. However, to date, little work has appeared on methods to use the increased randomness available when the network nodes have multiple antennas. This paper provides theoretical performance bounds associated with using multi-antenna communications and proposes two practical methods for generating secret keys exploiting the increased randomness. Performance simulations reveal the efficiency of the methods.
Physical layer secret key generation exploits the reciprocal channel randomness for key generation and has proven to be an effective addition security layer in wireless communications. However, static or scarcely random channels require artificially induced dynamics to improve the secrecy performance, e.g., using intelligent reflecting surface (IRS). One key challenge is that the induced random phase from IRS is also reflected in the direction to eavesdroppers (Eve). This leakage enables Eve nodes to estimate the legitimate channels and secret key via a globally known pilot sequence. To mitigate the secret key leakage issue, we propose to exploit random matrix theory to inform the design of a new physical layer secret key generation (PL-SKG) algorithm. We prove that, when sending appropriate random Gaussian matrices, the singular values of Alice's and Bob's received signals follow a similar probability distribution. Leveraging these common singular values, we propose a random Gaussian matrix based PL-SKG (RGM PL-SKG), which avoids the usages of the globally known pilot and thereby prevents the aforementioned leakage issue. Our results show the following: (i) high noise resistance which leads to superior secret key rate (SKR) improvement (up to 300%) in low SNR regime, and (ii) general improved SKR performance against multiple colluded Eves. We believe our combination of random matrix theory and PL-SKG shows a new paradigm to secure the wireless communication channels.