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IEEE International Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications (SPAWC)

Experimental aspects of secret key generation in indoor wireless environments

Alexandre J. Pierrot, Rémi A. Chou, Matthieu R. Bloch

Published Jun 1, 2013• 32 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This paper proposes a proof-of-principle design of a secret key generation system along with the desirable secrecy analysis to guarantee information-theoretic security. We conduct physical experiments on programmable radios in an indoor environment to analyze the statistical characteristics of the induced source that we employ to generate secret keys. We also provide a generic security analysis of the system, and we give an estimate of the achievable secret key rates for a target information leakage in the finite block-length regime.

DOI
10.1109/spawc.2013.6612134

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This paper proposes a proof-of-principle design of a secret key generation system along with the desirable secrecy analysis to guarantee information-theoretic security. We conduct physical experiments on programmable radios in an indoor environment to analyze the statistical characteristics of the induced source that we employ to generate secret keys. We also provide a generic security analysis of the system, and we give an estimate of the achievable secret key rates for a target information leakage in the finite block-length regime.
This paper investigates the role of the eavesdropper's statistics in the implementation of a practical secret-key generation system. We carefully conduct the information-theoretic analysis of a secret-key generation system from wireless channel gains measured with software-defined radios. In particular, we show that it is inaccurate to assume that the eavesdropper gets no information because of decorrelation with distance. We also provide a bound for the achievable secret-key rate in the finite key-length regime that takes into account the presence of correlated eavesdropper's observations. We evaluate this bound with our experimental gain measurements to show that operating with a finite number of samples incurs a loss in secret-key rate on the order of 20%.
In the recent years, a set of works have addressed inherent characteristics of the fading propagation channel in an information-theoretic framework oriented towards security. In particular, for cryptographic purposes, secure key bits can be extracted from reciprocal radio channels, seen as a shared source of randomness between any two entities. In this paper we intend to assess the impact of true radio channel features on the security performance, by quantizing the complex channel coefficients into discrete key bits. To this end, indoor channel measurements were performed and investigated in different scenarios, e.g. LOS/NLOS condition, narrowband (NB) as well as wide band (WB) targeting OFDM systems. Secret key robustness is firstly studied for the legitimate terminals in terms of key bit disagreement ratio and key randomness, and secondly by considering an eavesdropper in a wide set of positions around these terminals and by evaluating the difference between the generated keys. A simplified channel model is also analyzed in comparison with the measured channels, as regards the characteristics of generated key bits.
Theoretical models of ultrawideband (UWB) radio channels indicate that pairs of UWB radio transceivers measure their common radio channel with a high degree of agreement and third parties are not be able to accurately estimate the state of the common channels. These properties allow generation of secret keys to support secure communications from UWB channels measurements. In this paper, the results of UWB propagation studies are presented that validate the required properties to support secret key generation in a typical indoor environment. Key generation algorithms are employed on the measured data and key lengths on the order of thousands of bits are obtained capable of supporting most popular cryptographic systems. The paper also reports measurements of the spatial and temporal correlation of the UWB channel from which the relative privacy of the secret keys can be determined as well as the rate new secret keys may be generated.
The open and broadcast nature of wireless channels leads to the inherent security problem of information leakage in wireless communication. We can utilize endogenous security functions to resolve this problem. The fundamental solution is channel-based mechanisms, like physical layer secret keys. Unfortunately, current investigations have not fully exploited the randomness of wireless channels, making secret key rates not high. Consequently, user data can be encrypted by reducing the data rate to match the secret key rate. Based on the analysis of the endogenous wireless security principle, we proposed that the channel-based endogenous secret key rate can nearly match the maximum data rate in the fast-fading environments. After that, we validated the proposition in an instantiation system with multiple phase shift keying (MPSK) inputs from the perspectives of both theoretical analysis and simulation experiments. The results indicate that it is possible to accomplish the onetime pad without decreasing the data rate via channel-based endogenous keys. Besides, we can realize high-speed endogenously secure transmission by introducing independent channels in the domains of frequency, space, or time. The conclusions derived provide a new idea for wireless security and promote the application of the endogenous security theory.
A few years ago, physical layer based techniques have started to be considered as a way to improve security in wireless communications. A well known problem is the management of ciphering keys, both regarding the generation and distribution of these keys. A way to alleviate such difficulties is to use a common source of randomness for the legitimate terminals, not accessible to an eavesdropper. This is the case of the fading propagation channel, when exact or approximate reciprocity applies. Although this principle has been known for long, not so many works have evaluated the effect of radio channel properties in practical environments on the degree of randomness of the generated keys. To this end, we here investigate indoor radio channel measurements in different environments and settings at either 2.4625 GHz or 5.4 GHz band, of particular interest for WIFI related standards. Key bits are extracted by quantizing the complex channel coefficients and their randomness is evaluated using the NIST test suite. We then look at the impact of the carrier frequency, the channel variability in the space, time, and frequency degrees of freedom used to construct a long secret key, in relation to the nature of the radio environment such as the LOS/NLOS character.
The open and broadcast nature of wireless channels makes eavesdropping possible, leading to the inherent problem of information leakage. Inherent problems should be solved by endogenous security functions. Accordingly, wireless security problems should be resolved by channel-based endogenous security mechanisms. Firstly, this paper analyzes the endogenous security principle of the physical-layer-secret-key method. Afterward, we propose a novel conjecture that in a fast-fading environment, there must exist wireless systems where the endogenous secret key rate can match the user data rate. Moreover, the conjecture is well founded by the instantiation validation in a wireless system with BPSK inputs from the perspectives of both theoretical analysis and simulation experiments. These results indicate that it is possible to accomplish the one-time pad via endogenous secret keys in wireless communication.