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Secret Key Generation and Agreement in UWB Communication Channels

Masoud Ghoreishi Madiseh, Michael L. McGuire, Stephen S. Neville, Lin Cai, Michael Horie

Published Jan 1, 2008• 53 citations
Publisher

Abstract

It has been shown that the radio channel impulse response for a pair of legitimate Ultra-wide band (UWB) transceivers can be used to generate secret keys for secure communications. Past proposed secret key generation algorithms under-exploited the available number of secret key bits from the radio channel. This paper proposes a new efficient method for generation of the shared key where the transceivers use LDPC decoders to resolve the differences in their channel impulse response measurements caused by measurement noise. To ensure secret key agreement, a method of public discussion between the two users is performed using the syndrome from Hamming (7,3) binary codes. An algorithm is proposed to check the equality of generated keys for both legitimate users, and ensure error-free secure communication. The security of this algorithm has been verified by AVISPA. Comparisons are performed with previous work on secret key generation and it has been shown that this algorithm reliably generates longer secret keys in standard UWB radio channels.

DOI
10.1109/glocom.2008.ecp.356

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It has been shown that the radio channel impulse response for a pair of legitimate Ultra-wide band (UWB) transceivers can be used to generate secret keys for secure communications. Past proposed secret key generation algorithms under-exploited the available number of secret key bits from the radio channel. This paper proposes a new efficient method for generation of the shared key where the transceivers use LDPC decoders to resolve the differences in their channel impulse response measurements caused by measurement noise. To ensure secret key agreement, a method of public discussion between the two users is performed using the syndrome from Hamming (7,3) binary codes. An algorithm is proposed to check the equality of generated keys for both legitimate users, and ensure error-free secure communication. The security of this algorithm has been verified by AVISPA. Comparisons are performed with previous work on secret key generation and it has been shown that this algorithm reliably generates longer secret keys in standard UWB radio channels.
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.
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.
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.
The generation of symmetric keys using physical layer measurements (e.g. received signal strength, channel responses etc.) is based on the reciprocity property of wireless channels. However, noise or other transmission artifacts can degrade the link reciprocity and lead to bit mismatching between legitimate users. One of the challenges of this new key management paradigm is to obtain as many identical bits as possible, while guaranteeing good secrecy of the public exchanges that allow the bit correction. Previous studies have provided a proof of concept for exploiting oversampled ultra wideband signals to generate secret keys with practical lengths. In order to improve the security of such schemes with respect to a nearby passive attacker with correlated channel observations, we propose public discussion alternatives including one strategy based on the signal time of flight (ToF). We show that these alternatives can reduce the advantage that such an attacker can have in terms of bit agreement between the legitimate keys and his guess.
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.
To establish a secure communications link between any two transceivers, the communicating parties require some shared secret, or key, with which to encrypt the message so that it cannot be understood by an enemy observer. Using the theory of reciprocity for antennas and electromagnetic propagation, a key distribution method is proposed that uses the ultrawideband (UWB) channel pulse response between two transceivers as a source of common randomness that is not available to enemy observers in other locations. The maximum size of a key that can be shared in this way is characterized by the mutual information between the observations of two radios, and an approximation and upper bound on mutual information is found for a general multipath channel and examples given for UWB channel models. The exchange of some information between the parties is necessary to achieve these bounds, and various information-sharing strategies are considered and their performance is simulated. A qualitative assessment of the vulnerability of such a secret sharing system to attack from a radio in a nearby location is also given.