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IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security

A Unified Framework for Key Agreement Over Wireless Fading Channels

Lifeng Lai, Yingbin Liang, H. Vincent Poor

Published Dec 20, 2011• 96 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The problem of key generation over wireless fading channels is investigated. First, a joint source-channel approach that combines existing source and channel models for key agreement over wireless fading channels is developed. It is shown that, in general, to fully exploit the resources provided by time-varying channel gains, one needs to combine both the channel model, in which Alice sends a key to Bob over a wireless channel, and the source model, in which Alice and Bob generate a key by exploiting the correlated observations obtained from the wireless fading channel. Asymptotic analyses suggest that in the long coherence time regime, the channel model is asymptotically optimal. On the other hand, in the high power regime, the source model is asymptotically optimal. Second, the framework is extended to the scenario with an active attacker. Assuming that the goal of the attacker is to minimize the key rate that can be generated using the proposed protocol and the attacker will employ such an attack strategy, the attacker's optimal attack strategy is identified and the key rate under this attack model is characterized.

DOI
10.1109/tifs.2011.2180527

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The problem of key generation over wireless fading channels is investigated. First, a joint source-channel approach that combines existing source and channel models for key agreement over wireless fading channels is developed. It is shown that, in general, to fully exploit the resources provided by time-varying channel gains, one needs to combine both the channel model, in which Alice sends a key to Bob over a wireless channel, and the source model, in which Alice and Bob generate a key by exploiting the correlated observations obtained from the wireless fading channel. Asymptotic analyses suggest that in the long coherence time regime, the channel model is asymptotically optimal. On the other hand, in the high power regime, the source model is asymptotically optimal. Second, the framework is extended to the scenario with an active attacker. Assuming that the goal of the attacker is to minimize the key rate that can be generated using the proposed protocol and the attacker will employ such an attack strategy, the attacker's optimal attack strategy is identified and the key rate under this attack model is characterized.
A framework that unifies existing source and channel models for key agreement over wireless fading channels is developed in this paper. It is shown that, in general, to fully exploit the resources provided by time-varying channel gains, one needs to combine both the channel model and the source model. Asymptotic analyses suggest that in the long coherence time regime, the channel model is asymptotically optimal. On the other hand, in the high SNR regime, the source model is asymptotically optimal.
The problem of establishing a key over a wireless fading channel in the presence of an active attacker is considered. A key agreement protocol that combines the existing source model approach and channel model approach is adopted. First, the attacker's optimal attack strategy for this protocol is characterized. Then, the rate of the key that can be generated under this attack strategy is quantified. It is shown that, unlike the corresponding situation in wireline communications, it is possible to establish a key in the presence of an active attacker in wireless fading channels.
Most of the existing work on key generation from wireless fading channels requires a direct wireless link between legitimate users so that they can obtain correlated observations from the common wireless link. Furthermore, most of the existing work assumes that the attacker is passive. This paper studies the key generation problem in the two-way relay channel, in which there is no direct channel between the key generating terminals, under active attacks. We propose an effective key generation scheme. We also investigate the effects of the active attacker on the proposed key generation protocol. We characterize the optimal attacker's strategy that minimizes the key rate of the proposed scheme. Furthermore, we establish the maximal attacker's power under which our scheme can still achieve a non-zero key rate.
Most of the existing work on key generation from wireless fading channels requires a direct wireless link between legitimate users so that they can obtain correlated observations from the common wireless link. This paper studies the key generation problem in the two-way relay channel, in which there is no direct channel between the key generating terminals. We propose an effective key generation scheme that achieves a substantially larger key rate than that of a direct channel mimic approach. Unlike existing schemes, there is no need for the key generating terminals to obtain correlated observations in our scheme. We also investigate the effects of an active attacker on the proposed key generation protocol. We characterize the optimal attacker's strategy that minimizes the key rate of the proposed scheme. Furthermore, we establish the maximal attacker's power under which our scheme can still achieve a nonzero key rate.
Most of the existing work on key generation from wireless fading channels requires a direct wireless link between legitimate users so that they can obtain correlated observations from the common wireless link. This paper studies the key generation problem in the two-way relay channel, in which there is no direct channel between the key generating terminals. We propose an effective key generation scheme that achieves a substantially larger key rate than that of a direct channel mimic approach. Unlike existing schemes, there is no need for the key generating terminals to obtain correlated observations in our scheme. We then extend our study to the case of a relay with multiple antennas. For this scenario, we derive the optimal power allocation at the relay that maximizes the key rate achieved using our protocol.
The multipath-rich wireless environment associated with typical wireless usage scenarios is characterized by a fading channel response that is time-varying, location-sensitive, and uniquely shared by a given transmitter-receiver pair. The complexity associated with a richly scattering environment implies that the short-term fading process is inherently hard to predict and best modeled stochastically, with rapid decorrelation properties in space, time, and frequency. In this paper, we demonstrate how the channel state between a wireless transmitter and receiver can be used as the basis for building practical secret key generation protocols between two entities. We begin by presenting a scheme based on level crossings of the fading process, which is well-suited for the Rayleigh and Rician fading models associated with a richly scattering environment. Our level crossing algorithm is simple, and incorporates a self-authenticating mechanism to prevent adversarial manipulation of message exchanges during the protocol. Since the level crossing algorithm is best suited for fading processes that exhibit symmetry in their underlying distribution, we present a second and more powerful approach that is suited for more general channel state distributions. This second approach is motivated by observations from quantizing jointly Gaussian processes, but exploits empirical measurements to set quantization boundaries and a heuristic log likelihood ratio estimate to achieve an improved secret key generation rate. We validate both proposed protocols through experimentations using a customized 802.11a platform, and show for the typical WiFi channel that reliable secret key establishment can be accomplished at rates on the order of 10 b/s.