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IEEE International Conference on Communications workshops

Secret-key generation from wireless channels: Mind the reflections

Hendrik Vogt, Aydin Sezgin

Published Jun 1, 2014• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1109/iccw.2014.6881295

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•Jan 1, 2015•1 citation
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 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.
Ensuring data privacy of wireless communication systems has been a challenging problem for various reasons. The simplicity of eavesdropping on wireless transmissions makes the barrier to entry lower for wireless than for wired systems. Due to size and power constraints, wireless systems are sometimes unable to implement the complex cryptographic algorithms that can ensure the privacy of their data, leaving them with weaker schemes that are more easily exploited. However, the wireless security problem has one distinct advantage over the wired problem in that the channel seen by the eavesdropper is not usually correlated with the channel seen by the intended receiver. Recent research in the community has suggested that the randomness inherent in the wireless channel may be exploited to create secret keys dynamically, making simple wireless cryptographic schemes extremely strong and in some applications providing perfect secrecy. In this paper, we present some information theory bounds on key lengths for various wireless channel models and discuss the impact such physical channel-derived dynamic re-keying would have on various applications. We also present some thoughts on proving out the concepts in actual systems.
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.
Due to the broadcast nature of wireless channels, wireless communication is vulnerable to eavesdropping, message modification, and node impersonation. Securing the wireless communication requires the shared secret keys between the communicating entities. Traditional security schemes rely on public key infrastructures and cryptographic algorithms to manage secret keys. Recently, many physical-layer-based methods have been proposed as alternative solutions for key generation in wireless networks. These methods exploit the inherent randomness of the wireless fading channel to generate secret keys while providing information-theoretical security without intensive cryptographic computations. This article provides an overview of the existing PHY-based key generation schemes exploiting the randomness of the wireless channels. Specifically, we first introduce the fundamental and general framework of the PHY-based key generation schemes and then categorize them into two classes: received-signal-strength-based and channel- phase-based protocols. Finally, we present a performance comparison of them in terms of key disagreement probability, key generation rate, key bit randomness, scalability, and implementation issues.
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.
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.