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arXiv:2307.02391

Physical Layer Secret Key Agreement Using One-Bit Quantization and Low-Density Parity-Check Codes

John A. Snoap

Published Jan 1, 2016• 1 citation
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Abstract

Physical layer approaches for generating secret encryption keys for wireless systems using channel information have attracted increased interest from researchers in recent years. This paper presents a new approach for calculating log-likelihood ratios (LLRs) for secret key generation that is based on one-bit quantization of channel measurements and the difference between channel estimates at legitimate reciprocal nodes. The studied secret key agreement approach, which implements advantage distillation along with information reconciliation using Slepian-Wolf low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, is discussed and illustrated with numerical results obtained from simulations. These results show the probability of bit disagreement for keys generated using the proposed LLR calculations compared with alternative LLR calculation methods for key generation based on channel state information. The proposed LLR calculations are shown to be an improvement to the studied approach of physical layer secret key agreement.

DOI
10.25777/waqt-q825

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Physical layer approaches for generating secret encryption keys for wireless systems using channel information have attracted increased interest from researchers in recent years. This paper presents a new approach for calculating log-likelihood ratios (LLRs) for secret key generation that is based on one-bit quantization of channel measurements and the difference between channel estimates at legitimate reciprocal nodes. The studied secret key agreement approach, which implements advantage distillation along with information reconciliation using Slepian-Wolf low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, is discussed and illustrated with numerical results obtained from simulations. These results show the probability of bit disagreement for keys generated using the proposed LLR calculations compared with alternative LLR calculation methods for key generation based on channel state information. The proposed LLR calculations are shown to be an improvement to the studied approach of physical layer secret key agreement.
Physical layer approaches for generating secret encryption keys for wireless systems using channel information has attracted increased interest from researchers in recent years. This paper presents a new approach for secret key generation that is based on one-bit quantization of channel measurements along with log-likelihood ratios (LLRs) that are calculated based on the difference between channel estimates at legitimate reciprocal nodes. The proposed approach, which implements advantage distillation along with information reconciliation using Slepian-Wolf low-density parity check (LDPC) codes, is discussed and illustrated with numerical results obtained from simulations. These show the probability of bit disagreement for keys generated through the proposed approach and compare it with that of alternative methods for key generation based on channel state information.
The problem of key reconciliation based on Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) codes and Slepian-Wolf coding for physical layer key generation is investigated.When using the channel-state-information (CSI) of a reciprocal wireless channel for key generation between two legitimate users, independent noise components, quantization, and synchronization errors at the end nodes give rise to key differences that need to be corrected by sending side information.We provide a comparison of three different quantization schemes in terms of key disagreement rate and output probability distributions and present the loglikelihood formulations required by a soft decision LDPC decoder to perform key reconciliation, for the investigated quantization methods.
Secret key generation using channel measurements has emerged as a meaningful approach to enhance the security of a wireless link at the physical layer. This paper presents a novel approach to key generation based on precoding of the MIMO channel measurements, that does not require information on the channel statistics and has the ability to generate key bits at a rate that is independent of the channel coherence time. The proposed approach is illustrated with numerical results obtained from simulations showing the probability of bit disagreement between keys generated at transmitter/receiver side and Slepian-Wolf encoding with LDPC codes is used for key reconciliation.
Physical layer key generation (PLKG) offers a lightweight and low-complexity key management solution for future emerging wireless communication networks. However, current PLKG schemes face challenges in effective integration with practical communication systems, hindering their practical deployment. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a key generation scheme integrated with the 5 G physical layer protocol, leveraging the Demodulation Reference Signal (DM-RS) to extract channel estimation for PLKG, enabling efficient key generation. Furthermore, a soft-decision quantization method based on Multibit Adaptive Quantization is proposed which makes key reconciliation input compatible with the soft-decision input requirements of the Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) decoder in 5G channel coding module. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme successfully integrates into the 5G standard communication framework while still maintaining favorable key disagreement rate (KDR) performance, the key reconciliation using keys derived by soft-decision quantization method can achieve better key agreement performance than using keys derived by binary quantization.
As an alternative and appealing approach to providing information security in wireless communication systems, secret key generation at physical layer has demonstrated its potential in terms of efficiency and reliability over traditional cryptographic methods. Without the necessity of a management centre for key distribution or reliance on computational complexity, physical layer key generation protocols enable two wireless entities to extract identical and dynamic keys from the randomness of the wireless channels associated with them.\nIn this thesis, the reliability of secret key generation at the physical layer is examined in practical wireless channels with imperfect channel state information (CSI). Theoretical analyses are provided to relate key match rate with channel's signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), degrees of channel reciprocity, and iterations of information reconciliation.\nIn order to increase key match rate of physical layer secret key generation, improved schemes in the steps of channel estimation and sample quantization are proposed respectively. In the channel estimation step, multiple observations of the wireless channels are integrated with a linear processor to provide a synthesized and more accurate estimation of the wireless channel. In the sample quantization step, a magnitude based quantization method with two thresholds is proposed to quantize partial samples, where specific quantization areas are selected to reduce cross-over errors. Significant improvements in key match rate are proven for both schemes in theoretical analysis and numerical simulations. Key match rate can even achieve 100% in both schemes with the assistance of information reconciliation process.\nIn the end, a practical application of physical layer secret key generation is presented, where dynamic keys extracted from the wireless channels are utilized for securing secret data transmission and providing efficient access control.
Physical Layer-based Secret Key Generation (PLSKG) between the legitimate nodes from the reciprocal wireless channel is a vastly studied area of Physical Layer Security (PLS). PLSKG aims to secure the wireless link between the legitimate nodes by symmetrically encrypting the wirelessly transmitted information via a secret key that is extracted from the common randomness of the stochastic wireless channel. PLSKG encompasses the intermediate steps of channel sampling, quantization, information reconciliation, and privacy amplification. The PLSKG algorithms are evaluated in terms of quantifiers such as Key Generation Rate (KGR), Key Agreement Probability (KAP), and randomness. The practical PLSKG algorithms (level-crossing algorithms) extract a secret key by analyzing the channel samples and assigning bit sequences to the channel samples lying in different quantization regions. Level-crossing algorithms are lossy and extract a secret key from the central samples of matched excursions between the legitimate nodes. This results in a reduced KGR as there is a scarcity of such matched excursions considering the fast variations of the wireless link between the legitimate nodes. This paper proposes a Two-Round Channel Parsing (TRCP) algorithm that exploits the correlation between the excursion lengths of the channel samples in addition to the sample correlation. TRCP effectively utilize the channel samples by reducing the sample losses incurred by lossy quantizers exploring a new dimension of correlated excursions of the channel samples between legitimate nodes. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed TRCP scheme enhances the KGR and KAP performance of the secret key and also passes the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) test suite of randomness.