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International Conference on Wireless Communications and Signal Processing (WCSP)

Secret key generation via random beamforming in stationary environment

Longwang Cheng, Wei Li, Dongtang Ma

Published Oct 1, 2015• 15 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Extracting secret key from the common randomness of wireless channel has gained significant interest as a mechanism for providing secure point-to-point communications. Current works focus on the methods of exploiting channel characterizations based on Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI), channel phase and Channel Impulse Response (CIR) under different propagation environments. However, when the channel fading is static or quasi-static, the secret key bits derived from the channel may be identical or nearly identical. In this paper, we propose a method to solve this problem in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems based on random beamforming. Compared with single antenna systems, MIMO systems offer more randomness available. Furthermore we consider the worst scenario where the eavesdropper Eve knows perfect knowledge of the legitimate channel. The quantization error probability at Eve is simulated to assess the security of the proposed method.

DOI
10.1109/wcsp.2015.7341290

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Extracting secret key from the common randomness of wireless channel has gained significant interest as a mechanism for providing secure point-to-point communications. Current works focus on the methods of exploiting channel characterizations based on Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI), channel phase and Channel Impulse Response (CIR) under different propagation environments. However, when the channel fading is static or quasi-static, the secret key bits derived from the channel may be identical or nearly identical. In this paper, we propose a method to solve this problem in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems based on random beamforming. Compared with single antenna systems, MIMO systems offer more randomness available. Furthermore we consider the worst scenario where the eavesdropper Eve knows perfect knowledge of the legitimate channel. The quantization error probability at Eve is simulated to assess the security of the proposed method.
Wireless secret key generation (WKG) methods based on communications channel characterizations have gained significant interest as a mechanism for providing secure point-to-point communications. Ultra-wide band (UWB) WKG solutions provide an advantage over narrow- and wide-band approaches in that they can generate secure keys even when Alice and Bob, the two communicating parties, and all objects within the environment in which they exist, are stationary (i.e., in scenarios involving zero movement). This creates a secondary problem in that the high temporal correlations of such environments can lead to successive WKG processes producing identical or nearly identical secret keys, whereas the ideal is that all generated keys from successive WKG processes should be independent. This work shows that one method available to address this problem is to move to multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO)-based antenna systems and the use of random beamforming. The security of the resulting approach is assessed with respect to the worst case scenario whereby the eavesdropper, Eve, is assumed to possess perfect knowledge of Alice and Bob's MIMO channel and is able to estimate, with some degree of error, the coefficients of Alice and Bob's independent random beamformers.
Much attention has recently been paid to methods of shared secret key generation that exploit the random characteristics of the amplitude and phase of a received signal and common channel symmetry in wireless communication systems. Protocols based on the phase of a received signal, due to the uniform distribution phase of fading channel, are suitable in both static and dynamic environments and, they have a key generation rate (KGR) higher than protocols based on received signal strength (RSS).In addition, previous works have generally focused on key generation protocol for single-antenna (SISO) systems but these have not produced a significant KGR. So in this paper to increase the randomness and key generation rate are used received signal phase estimations on multiple-antenna (MIMO) systems because they have the potential to present more random variables in key generation compared to SISO systems. The results of simulation show that the KGR of the proposed protocol is 4 and 9 times more than the KGR of a SISO system, when the numbers of transmitter and receiver antennas are the same and equal to 2 and 3, respectively. Also, the key generation rate will increase considerably, when to extract the secret key bits using multilevel quantization.
Generating a secret key between two parties by extracting the shared randomness in the wireless fading channel is an emerging area of research. Previous works focus mainly on single-antenna systems. Multiple-antenna devices have the potential to provide more randomness for key generation than single-antenna ones. However, the performance of key generation using multiple-antenna devices in a real environment remains unknown. Different from the previous theoretical work on multiple-antenna key generation, we propose and implement a shared secret key generation protocol, Multiple-Antenna KEy generator (MAKE) using off-the-shelf 802.11n multiple-antenna devices. We also conduct extensive experiments and analysis in real indoor and outdoor mobile environments. Using the shared randomness extracted from measured Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) to generate keys, our experimental results show that using laptops with three antennas, MAKE can increase the bit generation rate by more than four times over single-antenna systems. Our experiments validate the effectiveness of using multi-level quantization when there is enough mutual information in the channel. Our results also show the trade-off between bit generation rate and bit agreement ratio when using multi-level quantization. We further find that even if an eavesdropper has multiple antennas, she cannot gain much more information about the legitimate channel.
Wireless secret key generation (WKG) methods based on wireless channel characterizations have gained significant interest as a mechanism for providing secure point-to-point communications. The secrecy of the generated wireless channel keys mainly depends on the spatial and temporal correlation properties of the channel which arises due to the channel's physical constraints. Ultra-wide band (UWB) WKG solutions can generate secure keys even when the two communicating parties and all objects within the environment in which they exist are stationary (i.e., in scenarios involving zero movement). But for a stationary environment successively generated secret keys are same which degrades the security of the system. Thus the proposed system to increase security is to generate secret keys using elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA) and to transition the two communicating parties from using single antenna system to use multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna systems in combination with random beamforming as a solution to the undesirable effects of high temporal correlations in stationary environments. This allows adding directionality to the signal transmission and reception processes, which is unknown to the intruders. Security is further increased by increasing the number of antennas in the MIMO multiplexing system.
Dynamic secret key generation from wireless channel characteristics is a promising technique for physical layer security. One of the important issues in this field is extending the secret key’s length while preserving its uniformity and randomness. This paper proposes a key generation method based on time-varying and the reciprocity of wireless channels for Multiple-Input Multiple-Output Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) wireless communication systems. In the proposed technique, the complex impulse response (CIR) of the estimated channel state information (CSI) is extracted, and a quantization algorithm is designed to convert the maximum peaks of the CIR into secret key bits. The effectiveness of the proposed key generation technique is assessed in terms of the randomness of the produced key bits with different key lengths by using a statistical test suite of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The proposed technique is employed in the MIMO-OFDM systems with different modulation schemes through Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) and Rayleigh channels. The simulation results show that the secret keys with various key lengths generated from the proposed technique for the MIMO-OFDM systems guarantee randomness. Moreover, the proposed CSI-based key generation technique provides better effectiveness in terms of security when compared to some existing techniques.
An emerging area of interest in wireless security is the generation of secret encryption keys by leveraging the features of the physical propagation channel. The shared randomness of the wireless channel between two legitimate nodes in a communication network is exploited to provide strong secrecy. The secret keys are generated based on fluctuations or evolution of the wireless channel state. However, to the best of our knowledge, little work has been performed on algorithms to exploit the increased randomness available to wireless nodes equipped with MIMO antennas. In this paper, we present a practical key generation scheme for MIMO channels based on quantization performed on blind channel estimates. Our schemes generate random keys for transmitter and receiver by simultaneously quantizing the blind channel estimates. Our schemes are simulated for a realistic fading channel model, and performance metrics for error rate and efficiency are provided.