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IEEE Globecom Workshops (GC Wkshps)

Physical-layer secret key generation with untrusted relays

Chan Dai Truyen Thai, Jemin Lee, Cheng Chi, Tony Q. S. Quek

Published Dec 1, 2014• 10 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a physical-layer secret key generation scheme for multi-antenna legitimate nodes with the help from multiple untrusted relays with single antenna. The relays' actions conform to the rules but they passively eavesdrop the information. Different from most previous key generation schemes, where a key is generated based on a channel coefficient, in the proposed scheme, we use the linear combination of channel coefficients to generate a key. Simulation results show that the rate leaked to the untrusted relays is low and the secret key rate is therefore high. We also point out that the relay communication can achieve higher secret key rate than the direct communication in several distance ranges.

DOI
10.1109/glocomw.2014.7063627

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In this paper, we propose a physical-layer secret key generation scheme for multi-antenna legitimate nodes with the help from multiple untrusted relays with single antenna. The relays' actions conform to the rules but they passively eavesdrop the information. Different from most previous key generation schemes, where a key is generated based on a channel coefficient, in the proposed scheme, we use the linear combination of channel coefficients to generate a key. Simulation results show that the rate leaked to the untrusted relays is low and the secret key rate is therefore high. We also point out that the relay communication can achieve higher secret key rate than the direct communication in several distance ranges.
In this paper, we propose a physical-layer secret key generation scheme for multiantenna legitimate nodes with the help of multiple untrusted relays, equipped with multiple antennas. The untrusted relays conform to the relaying transmission protocol of legitimate nodes, but they also eavesdrop the confidential information of an legitimate transmitter. The key generation scheme is designed with zero forcing (ZF) and minimum mean square error (MMSE) channel estimators for non-, partially, and fully colluding modes of untrusted relays. Furthermore, we propose a scheme adaptive to channel coherence time. Specifically, to achieve a higher secret key rate (SKR) within the channel coherence time, the number of relay and legitimate nodes' antennas are optimally determined and the most suitable antennas are selected for the key generation. Our results show that the proposed scheme achieves a higher SKR than a prior work, and non- and partially colluding modes provide a higher SKR than the fully colluding mode through the proposed scheme. We also verify that exploiting more antennas of untrusted relays does not always enhance the SKR by showing the existence of the optimal number of antennas of the relays participating in the scheme.
Secret group key generation based on physical layer in wireless communications has a lot of practical applications. A few studies focused on the theoretical bounds of the secret key rate based on the sets of received signals rather than a particular secret key generation scheme. We propose a secret group key generation scheme for an arbitrary number of legitimate nodes, n, in mesh topology in the presence of a passive eavesdropper. In the scheme, after general pilot signal transmissions at all nodes, each node broadcasts a weighted combination of its received signals with optimized coefficients, so that legitimate nodes can obtain the information of channels used for group key generation while the eavesdropper cannot. We also apply different quantization schemes for quantizing and encoding the estimated channels into keys. To provide detailed transmissions and processing steps of group key generation, we also describe the proposed scheme for 4-node mesh topology case. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves a higher secret group key rate and a lower key disagreement rate than a benchmark scheme.
In this paper, we propose a secret group-key generation scheme in physical layer, where an arbitrary number of multi-antenna LNs (LN) exist in mesh topology with a multi-antenna passive eavesdropper. In the first phase of the scheme, pilot signals are transmitted from selected antennas of all nodes and each node estimates channels linked to it. In the second phase, each node sequentially broadcasts a weighted combination of the estimated channel information using selected coefficients. The other LNs can obtain the channel information used for group-key generation while the eavesdropper cannot. Each node then can generate a group key by quantizing and encoding the estimated channels into keys. We apply well-known quantization schemes, such as scalar and vector quantizations, and compare their performance. To further enhance the key-generation performance, we also provide how to determine the antennas at each node used for group-key generation and the coefficients used in the broadcast phase. The simulation results verify the performance of the proposed secret group-key generation scheme using various key-related metrics. We also verify the practical robustness of our scheme by implementing a testbed using universal software radio peripheral. After generating secret common key among three nodes, we also test it using the National Institute of Standards and Technology test suit. The generated key passes the test and it is random enough for communication secrecy.
Secret group key generation based on physical layer in wireless communications has a lot of practical applications. A few studies focused on the theoretical bounds of the secret key rate based on the sets of received signals rather than a particular secret key generation scheme. We propose a secret group key generation scheme for an arbitrary number of legitimate nodes, n, in mesh topology in the presence of a passive eavesdropper. In the scheme, after general pilot signal transmissions at all nodes, each node broadcasts a weighted combination of its received signals with optimized coefficients, so that legitimate nodes can obtain the information of channels used for group key generation while the eavesdropper cannot. We also apply different quantization schemes for quantizing and encoding the estimated channels into keys. To provide detailed transmissions and processing steps of group key generation, we also describe the proposed scheme for 4-node mesh topology case. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves a higher secret group key rate and a lower key disagreement rate than a benchmark scheme.
The impact of relay nodes on the secret key generation via the physical layer resources is investigated. A novel relay-assisted strategy is proposed to improve the generated secret key rate. The main idea is to exploit the random channels associated with relay nodes in the network as additional random sources for the key generation. This approach is particularly useful when the channels between legitimate nodes change slowly. Four increasingly sophisticated yet more practical scenarios are studied, for which relay-assisted key generation protocols are proposed and are shown to be optimal or order-optimal in terms of the key rate. It is also shown that the multiplexing gain in the key rate scales linearly with the number of relays, which demonstrates that relay-assisted schemes substantially increase the key rate. This is in sharp contrast to scenarios with relays helping information transmission, in which the multiplexing gain does not scale with the number of relays. Furthermore, a cooperative scheme is also proposed in which relays help key generation but the generated keys are kept secure from these relays.
The impact of relay nodes on the secret key generation via the physical layer resources is investigated. A novel relay-assisted strategy is proposed to improve the generated secret key rate. The main idea is to exploit the random channels associated with relay nodes in the network as additional random sources for the key generation. This approach is particularly useful when the channels between legitimate nodes change slowly. Three increasingly sophisticated yet more practical scenarios are studied, for which relay-assisted key generation protocols are proposed and are shown to be optimal or order-optimal in terms of the key rate. It is also shown that the presence of relay node increases the multiplexing gain. This is in sharp contrast to scenarios with relay helping information transmission, in which the relay node does not increase the multiplexing. Furthermore, a cooperative scheme is also proposed in which relays help key generation but the generated keys are kept secure from these relays.