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IEEE International Conference on Ultra-Wideband (ICUWB)

Secret key extraction from a UWB channel: Analysis in a real environment

Francesco Marino, Enrico Paolini, Marco Chiani

Published Sep 1, 2014• 34 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In this paper, experimental results about secret key extraction from the physical parameters of an ultra-wideband (UWB) channel are presented. In the channel probing phase, the reciprocity of the UWB channel is verified. A quantization scheme is then proposed together with a key alignment technique. The proposed scheme, tested with real measurements in an indoor scenario, is shown to yield raw keys with good randomness properties and tolerable mismatch percentages between Alice and Bob, as well as unfavorable mismatch percentages and random error distribution for Eve.

DOI
10.1109/icuwb.2014.6958955

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In this paper, experimental results about secret key extraction from the physical parameters of an ultra-wideband (UWB) channel are presented. In the channel probing phase, the reciprocity of the UWB channel is verified. A quantization scheme is then proposed together with a key alignment technique. The proposed scheme, tested with real measurements in an indoor scenario, is shown to yield raw keys with good randomness properties and tolerable mismatch percentages between Alice and Bob, as well as unfavorable mismatch percentages and random error distribution for Eve.
In wireless decentralized networks, security and privacy become more challenging due to stringent architecture and sometimes low-complexity constraints. Confidentiality of the transmissions is usually achieved by symmetric cryptography, which implies the distribution of identical secret keys to the legitimate nodes. Classical solutions for symmetric key distribution can be too complex from a computational or infrastructural point of view. An alternative would be physical layer key generation, which exploits the radio channel as a source of common information. This paper looks into the generation of secret keys from Impulse Radio - Ultra Wideband (IR-UWB) channels using low-power integrated devices. We investigate the possibility to generate identical secret bit sequences in practical environments (e.g., possibly occupied indoor rooms) and operating conditions (e.g., mobility) under specific hardware limitations inherent to device integration (e.g., time resolution and signal dynamics). The main challenge is to obtain reciprocal and random bits at an acceptable rate. Taking into account these three criteria (i.e., reciprocity, randomness, and key length), we describe and evaluate a new quantization scheme adapted to the channel impulse responses acquired by real devices.
This paper addresses the confidentiality of wireless communications in industrial internet-of-things environments by investigating the feasibility of secret key generation for link-layer encryption using ultra wideband (UWB) signals. Taking advantage of the nanosecond-level temporal resolution offered by ultra wideband, we exploit channel reciprocity to extract highly detailed, noise-like channel measurements, in line with the physical-layer security paradigm. Three key generation algorithms, operating in both the time and frequency domains, are evaluated using real-world data collected through a dedicated measurement campaign in an industrial setting. The analysis, conducted under realistic conditions, examines the impact of practical impairments, such as imperfect channel reciprocity and timing misalignments, on the key agreement rate and the length of the generated keys. The results confirm the strong potential of ultra wideband technology to enable robust physical-layer security, offering a viable and efficient solution for securing wireless communications in complex and dynamic industrial internet-of-things environments.
To investigate schemes of secret key generation from Ultra-wideband (UWB) channel, we study a statistical characterization of UWB outdoor channel for a campus playground scenario based on extensive measurements.Moreover, an efficient secret key generation mechanism exploiting multipath relative delay is developed, and verification of this algorithm is conducted in UWB Line-of-sight (LOS) outdoor channels.For the first time, we compare key-mismatch probability of UWB indoor and outdoor environments.Simulation results demonstrate that the number of multipath proportionally affects key generation rate and key-mismatch probability.In comparison to the conventional method using received signal strength (RSS) as a common random source, our mechanism achieves better performance in terms of common secret bit generation.Simultaneously, security analysis indicates that the proposed scheme can still guarantee security even in the sparse outdoor physical environment free of many reflectors.
New approaches that generate secret keys from radio channel characteristics have been recently proposed. The security of these schemes usually relies on the reciprocity principle which states that the channel fluctuations can be a source of common randomness for two communicating peers and these fluctuations can't be measured by any eavesdropper. A validation of these properties for indoor environments is presented in this work. The shared keys are created by measuring the reciprocal channel features and converting this information to binary vectors using a quantization algorithm. This paper addresses the problem of quantization. It identifies an important weakness of existing key generation algorithms and it shows that the secret bits extraction has a significant impact on the robustness and security of these algorithms. A new adaptive quantization algorithm for secret key generation is presented. This method has the advantages to create sufficient long secret keys with a high key agreement ratio between authorized users without revealing information to the attacker. The new scheme is experimentally validated using Ultra Wide Band technology.
We develop a secret key generation scheme using phase estimation in ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless fading channels.Based on the reciprocity theorem, two terminals extract the phase of the channel as a common random source to generate secret bits.Moreover, we study the secret key rate by a pair of nodes observing correlated sources and communicating to achieve secret key agreement over public communication channels.As our main results, we establish a more practical upper bound from Cramer-Rao bound (CRB) and compare it with a universally theoretical upper bound on the shared maximum key rate from mutual information of correlated random sources.Derivation and numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the bound.Simulation studies are also provided to validate feasibility and efficiency of the proposed scheme.
Secure communications in UWB based on cryptographic keys generated from channel measurements without a trusted third party have been developed. The fine time resolution of UWB allows high levels of mutual information to be obtained by a given A and B through independent characterizations of their shared communication channel. This mutual information determines the maximum secret key rate available to A and B. Since UWB channel gains change drastically with small antenna movements, it is inherently difficult for eavesdroppers to obtain channel measurements and reduce the secret key rate. In essence, UWB can provide spatial-temporal specific secret keys. Upper bounds on the secret key rate for standard UWB channels are calculated. It is demonstrated that high secure key generation rates are possible. It is shown that these key rates can be generated over a wide range of signal to noise ratios and channel synchronization errors.