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arXiv:2112.10043 · IEEE Wireless Communications

Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface for Physical Layer Key Generation: Constructive or Destructive?

Guyue Li, Lei Hu, Paul Staat, Harald Elders-Boll, Christian Zenger, Christof Paar, Aiqun Hu

Published May 9, 2022• 61 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Physical layer key generation (PKG) is a promising means to provide on-the-fly shared secret keys by exploiting the intrinsic randomness of the radio channel. However, the performance of PKG is highly dependent on the propagation environments. Due to its feature of controlling the wireless environment, reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is appealing to be applied in PKG. In this article, in contrast to the existing literature, we investigate both the constructive and destructive effects of RIS on the PKG scheme. For the constructive aspect, we have identified static and wave-blockage environments as two RIS-empowered-PKG applications in future wireless systems. In particular, our experimental results in a static environment showed that RIS can enhance the entropy of the secret key, achieving a key generation rate (KGR) of 97.39 bit/s with a bit disagreement rate (BDR) of 0.083. In multi-user systems where some remote users are in worse channel conditions, the proposed RIS-assisted PKG algorithm improves the sum secret key rate by more than 2 dB, compared to the literature. Furthermore, we point out that RIS could be utilized by an attacker to perform new jamming and leakage attacks and give countermeasures, respectively. Finally, we outline future research directions for PKG systems in light of the RIS.

DOI
10.1109/mwc.007.2100545

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Physical layer key generation (PKG) is a promising means to provide on-the-fly shared secret keys by exploiting the intrinsic randomness of the radio channel. However, the performance of PKG is highly dependent on the propagation environments. Due to its feature of controlling the wireless environment, reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is appealing to be applied in PKG. In this article, in contrast to the existing literature, we investigate both the constructive and destructive effects of RIS on the PKG scheme. For the constructive aspect, we have identified static and wave-blockage environments as two RIS-empowered-PKG applications in future wireless systems. In particular, our experimental results in a static environment showed that RIS can enhance the entropy of the secret key, achieving a key generation rate (KGR) of 97.39 bit/s with a bit disagreement rate (BDR) of 0.083. In multi-user systems where some remote users are in worse channel conditions, the proposed RIS-assisted PKG algorithm improves the sum secret key rate by more than 2 dB, compared to the literature. Furthermore, we point out that RIS could be utilized by an attacker to perform new jamming and leakage attacks and give countermeasures, respectively. Finally, we outline future research directions for PKG systems in light of the RIS.
Physical layer key generation (PKG) is a promising means to provide on-the-fly shared secret keys by exploiting the intrinsic randomness of the radio channel. However, the performance of PKG is highly dependent on the wireless propagation environment. Due to its feature of controlling the wireless environment, reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is appealing to be applied in PKG. In this chapter, we explore the effects of RIS on PKG from both constructive and destructive perspectives. For the constructive aspect, we have identified static and wave-blockage environments as two RIS-empowered-PKG applications in future wireless systems. Furthermore, we also point out that RIS could be utilized by an attacker to perform new jamming and leakage attacks and provide countermeasures, respectively. At last, possible directions for future research have also been given.
Physical layer key generation (PLKG) is a promising technology to obtain symmetric keys between a pair of wireless communication users in a plugand- play manner. The shared entropy source almost entirely comes from the intrinsic randomness of the radio channel, which is highly dependent on the wireless environments. However, in some static/ block fading wireless environments, it is hard to guarantee the intrinsic randomness of the wireless channel. Thanks to reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) with their excellent ability on electromagnetic wave control, the wireless channel environment can now be customized. In this article, we overview the RIS-aided PLKG in static indoor environments, including its channel model and hardware architectures. Then we propose potential application scenarios and analyze the design challenges of RIS-aided PLKG, including channel reciprocity, RIS reconfiguration speed, and RIS deployment via proof-of-concept experiments on a RIS-aided PLKG prototype system. In particular, our experimental results show that the key generation rate is 15-fold higher than that without RIS in a static indoor environment. Next, we design a RIS jamming attack via a prototype experiment and discuss its possible attack-defense countermeasures. Finally, several conclusions and future directions are identified.
Abstract In quasi-static environment, the performance of physical-layer key generation (PKG) is limited by low entropy. Deploying reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is a mainstream method to solve this problem. However, the secret key performance (SKP) is generally insufficient at low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In this paper, we propose an RIS-assisted adaptive PKG scheme. Specifically, we design phase based uniform quantization to enhance the randomness of the RIS channel while simplifying computations. Then, we present an RIS phase shift matrix design based on rejection sampling to adapt the quantization algorithm, which can reduce bit disagreement rate (BDR) and improve key generation rate (KGR). Furthermore, to balance the system’s requirements for low BDR and high KGR, we derive a theoretical model for estimating the BDR probability. By computing the theoretical BDR, we determine the maximum quantization order for different SNRs. Combined with a discard strategy, this enables adaptive selection of the quantization order. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme achieves lower BDR and higher KGR than existing approaches. Moreover, it does not require complex algorithms, making it suitable for resource-constrained internet of things scenarios. (RIS_Assist_PKG: https://github.com/GQQ1206/RIS_Assist_PKG )
Due to the capability of controlling wireless environments, reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) can be exploited to assist radio channel-based physical-layer key generation (PKG). However, this may also pose great security threats to PKG when it is controlled by an attacker. To this end, this letter studies a RIS leakage (RISL) attack that assists the attacker to manipulate the generated keys between the legitimate ends in PKG systems. Specifically, in block fading environments, by alternatingly adapting the RIS reflection coefficients to all 0s and 1s in each block, the received signal strength (RSS) at the legitimate ends is likely to be boosted and attenuated regularly across time, causing predictable 0s and 1s in the quantized bits. To resist this attack, we propose a countermeasure based on dynamic private pilots (CDPP) and prove that the RISL success probability can be significantly reduced by CDPP. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed attack and countermeasure, highlighting the importance of introducing artificial randomness for secret key security in block fading channels.
The attacker can manipulate a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) to jamming attack to break the channel reciprocity, resulting in an increasing key disagreement rate (KDR) to interrupt the physical layer key generation (PKG). In this letter, a countermeasure for PKG is proposed to resist the RIS jamming attack. The proposed countermeasure includes the atomic norm minimization (ANM)-based multipath separation algorithm and statistic feature-based path detection algorithm, which can reconstruct the reciprocal channel without needing a wide frequency band. Simulation results show that the proposed countermeasure can significantly reduce KDR from 0.33 to 0.03 when SNR is 10 dB and achieve an excellent key generation rate (KGR) compared with existing schemes.
This paper presents an optimal shifting scheme using reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) to aid physicallayer key generation (PKG) and enhance communication and key generation rate (KGR) in static environments. Our approach involves designing a protocol for RIS-aided key generation and optimizing RIS coefficients to introduce phase randomization in the wireless channel while maximizing power reception. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed protocol in improving both communication performance and KGR under static conditions.