One of the basic problems in cryptography is the generation of a common secret key between two legitimate parties in order to prevent eavesdropping. In this paper, we develop an information-theoretic secret key generation method that exploits the physical layer properties of the multipath channel in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems with time division duplexing (TDD), and in particular the amplitude and phase of the estimated channel frequency response (CFR). Both the fast space decorrelation and the independency of the amplitude and phase of the multipath fading channel are used to generate the secret key, leading to increased secrecy bit rate and negligible secrecy leakage. The effect of the channel estimation error, delay and mobility are investigated for the presented method. Simulation results corroborate the increased performance of the proposed method over existing ones.
One of the basic problems in cryptography is the generation of a common secret key between two legitimate parties in order to prevent eavesdropping. In this paper, we develop an information-theoretic secret key generation method that exploits the physical layer properties of the multipath channel in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems with time division duplexing (TDD), and in particular the amplitude and phase of the estimated channel frequency response (CFR). Both the fast space decorrelation and the independency of the amplitude and phase of the multipath fading channel are used to generate the secret key, leading to increased secrecy bit rate and negligible secrecy leakage. The effect of the channel estimation error, delay and mobility are investigated for the presented method. Simulation results corroborate the increased performance of the proposed method over existing ones.
One of the fundamental problems in cryptography is the generation of a common secret key between two legitimate parties to prevent eavesdropping. In this paper, we propose an information-theoretic secret key generation (SKG) method for time division duplexing (TDD)-based orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems over multipath fading channels. By exploring physical layer properties of the wireless medium, i.e., the reciprocity, randomness, and privacy features of the radio channel, an SKG method is proposed to maximize the number of secret bits given a target secret key disagreement ratio (SKDR). In the proposed SKG method, the phase information of the estimated channel state information (CSI) is distilled for SKG, and a special guard band (GB) scheme is designed to achieve the target SKDR with a small phase information loss. The proposed GB consists of both the amplitude GB (AGB) and phase GB (PGB), where the AGB is determined by the average signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR), whereas the PGB adapts itself to the instantaneous SINR and thus incurs a smaller phase information loss in the higher SINR region. Analyses show that this GB scheme trades off a small loss of channel phase information for a better SKDR performance, and achieves a much larger number of quantization levels for a given SKDR due to the fact that the PGB decreases quickly as the SINR increases. Based on the performance analysis on the SKDR, the average secret key length, the phase information loss percentage (PILP), and the optimal GB and quantization level of the adaptive quantizor are derived for a given target SKDR. Both analytical and simulation results are presented to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed scheme for TDD-OFDM systems over frequency-selective fading channels.
Physical layer key generation techniques aim to extract secret keys from the information contained in wireless channels. However, existing key generation schemes often rely on time-frequency domain waveforms for channel estimation, which not only makes secret extraction less reliable but may also compromise the confidentiality of the extracted secret information. This paper presents physical layer key generation methods relying on the Orthogonal Time Frequency and Space (OTFS) waveform. We present analysis showing that the delay-Doppler domain channel estimates obtained using OTFS are conducive to more secure and reliable secret extraction than time-frequency domain channel estimates obtained using the prevalent Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM). This analysis provides theoretical guarantees under certain simple assumptions. We then relax those assumptions in extensive time-division duplex (TDD) simulations and show that under realistic settings, OTFS offers the expected benefits to reliability and security. Our simulations show that the introduced OTFS schemes can reliably extract secret keys from channel estimates in scenarios where time-frequency domain methods deteriorate.
Channel reciprocity is limited in frequency division duplex (FDD) system, and thus those channel reciprocity-based secret key extraction methods which are widely adopted in time division duplex (TDD) systems can hardly be implemented in FDD systems. In this paper, a novel secret key extraction method in OFDM-FDD system is proposed to achieve physical-layer security, by which the channel frequency response (CFR) in the uplink at the same time is estimated by the communication pair with the aid of a specially designed forwarding strategy based on confidential probing signal, and then the secret key is extracted from the CFR estimates. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by numerical simulations.
Channel reciprocity is an inherent feature of time division duplex (TDD) system while in frequency division duplex (FDD) system it is limited due to different frequencies being used for the uplink and the downlink. As a consequence, channel reciprocity-based secret generating methods used in TDD systems cannot be applied directly to FDD systems. In this paper, we present a novel secret key generation method for FDD system, for which the communication pair estimate the channel state information (CSI) of the same time in the uplink by a specially designed forwarding strategy and generate the secret key from the CSI estimates. Numerical simulations are implemented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.
ABSTRACT This work proposes a secret key extraction technique from the complex impulse response (CIR) for secure orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) wireless communication systems. Using time division duplexing (TDD), the legitimate transceivers exchange pilot tones within the channel coherence time to estimate their CIRs, from which the dominant peaks are selected and quantised into binary sequences using a mean‐referenced Heaviside rule. Simulations are conducted in MATLAB for OFDM systems over Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) and Rayleigh fading channels with Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK) and Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) modulation schemes. The proposed method is evaluated in terms of randomness, key disagreement rate (KDR), and key generation rate (KGR). For key lengths of 128 bits, 100,000 bits, and 1,000,000 bits, the generated key sequences pass 8, 9 and 15 tests, respectively, in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) statistical test suite, with all p ‐values greater than 0.01. Since the simulations are performed under ideal reciprocal channel conditions, the keys generated by the two legitimate users are identical, resulting in a KDR of 0 prior to any reconciliation process. In addition, because 16 dominant CIR peaks are extracted from each realisation and each peak contributes one bit, the proposed method achieves a constant KGR of 16 bits per CIR realisation. The results show that the proposed scheme provides a scalable and deterministic key generation mechanism with strong randomness, zero disagreement in simulation, and controllable generation efficiency.
This letter presents a physical layer secret key generation (PLSKG) protocol utilizing the amplitude of channel frequency response (CFR) of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) subcarriers. Firstly, least squares estimation estimates the CFR. Next, a partition moving average (PMA) algorithm encodes the CFR. PMA re-uses the CFR within a partition by encoding at different overlap sizes, thus increasing the key generation rate (KGR). Then, a 2-bit differential-based quantization at every overlap for each partition is followed for an improved KGR and randomness. Finally, a cyclic redundancy check is performed to select strings with consistent results as candidate key, eliminating streams from less correlated measurements, thus ensuring a 0-bit mismatch. Simulation results have verified that our scheme achieves random 0-bit disagreement keys with a high average key length and reduced complexity compared to the other existing lightweight schemes.