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Conference on Local Computer Networks

DLINK: Dual link based radio frequency fingerprinting for wearable devices

Girish Revadigar, Chitra Javali, Wen Song Hu, Sanjay Kumar Jha

Published Oct 1, 2015• 43 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Exploiting unique wireless channel characteristics like signal strength for secret key generation has been recently studied by researchers. These schemes are lightweight and suitable for resource constrained wearable devices. However, a major drawback of existing schemes is that the successive channel samples with small sampling interval will have high correlation in time. This reduces the entropy and bit rate of keys. In this paper, we present dual-link based Radio Frequency fingerprinting solution - DLINK, which dynamically identifies the suitable multipath link to generate secret keys with improved entropy and bit rate in fast as well as slow fading channel conditions. We conduct an extensive set of experiments with real sensor devices mounted on subjects in multiple indoor environments. Our results show that, DLINK reduces the correlation of successive channel samples by 67%, and has 5 times higher bit rate, and improved entropy in all channel conditions compared to existing solutions.

DOI
10.1109/lcn.2015.7366327

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Exploiting unique wireless channel characteristics like signal strength for secret key generation has been recently studied by researchers. These schemes are lightweight and suitable for resource constrained wearable devices. However, a major drawback of existing schemes is that the successive channel samples with small sampling interval will have high correlation in time. This reduces the entropy and bit rate of keys. In this paper, we present dual-link based Radio Frequency fingerprinting solution - DLINK, which dynamically identifies the suitable multipath link to generate secret keys with improved entropy and bit rate in fast as well as slow fading channel conditions. We conduct an extensive set of experiments with real sensor devices mounted on subjects in multiple indoor environments. Our results show that, DLINK reduces the correlation of successive channel samples by 67%, and has 5 times higher bit rate, and improved entropy in all channel conditions compared to existing solutions.
A less expensive and more flexible solution to the problem of sharing secret keys between wireless nodes is to use the inherent randomness in the wireless channel between them as the source for extracting bits of the secret key between these nodes. We propose a new secret key distribution approach that utilizes the uniformly distributed phase information of channel responses to extract shared cryptographic keys under narrowband multipath fading models. Compared to existing approaches which only support pair wise key distribution, our scheme is highly scalable and can support efficient group key distribution. Various key distribution schemes are appraised to determine the level of security and connectivity. Simulated results show that key distribution exploiting channel phase has improved resilience against node capture. them as the source for extracting bits of the secret key between these nodes. Shared secret key distribution from channel measurements is an application which benefits from the randomnessof the multipath channel. It would not, for example, work in a truly free-space environment (such as deep space radio links). Secret sharing benefits from: • Reciprocity of the wireless radio channel: The multipath properties of the radio channel (gains, phase shifts, and delays) at any point in time and on any given frequency channel are identical on both directions of the link. • Temporal variations in the radio channel: Over time, the multipath channel changes due to movement of either end of the link, and any motion of people and objects in the environment near the link. An application may specifically request a user to move or shake the wireless device in order to generate more temporal variation. • Spatial variations: The properties of the radio channel are unique to the locations of the two endpoints of the link. An eavesdropper at a third location more than a few wavelengths from either endpoint will measure a different, uncorrelated radio channel. The proposed scheme is more flexible and can be applied in both static and mobile environments. Our scheme introduces phase randomness to bit distribution and removes the reliance on node mobility to obtain high entropy bits. We evaluate the proposed schemes through both analytical and simulation studies. The parameters of the scheme can be selected such that a desired level of key distribution accuracy and reliability is achieved with high efficiency.
To guarantee a secure wireless communication between any two transceivers, the shared secret key is a requirement. Communication parties need to encrypt the message with the key to impede an adversary's eavesdropping. By exploiting Ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless fading channels as a source of common randomness, two transceivers with correlated observations can generate secret keys with information-theoretical security. The state of the art of existing works, however, has neglected to consider efficient channel probing. In this paper, we define a channel probing factor to adaptively change probing interval for obtaining more correlated measurements at the endpoints of wireless communicating link. We use multipath relative delay of UWB channel to generate secret keys. Simulation results show that this dynamic secret key generation mechanism extracting multipath relative delay can achieve good performance in terms of secret key generation rate, key randomness and key-mismatch probability, especially key-mismatch probability compared with received signal strength (RSS)-based method and our prior approach. Furthermore, security analysis is also provided to validate feasibility of the scheme.
Passive Wi-Fi is a technology to generate 802.11b transmissions using backscatter communication, with power consumption 10000× lower than existing Wi-Fi chipsets. Since wearable devices are typically limited in resources such as power and storage, classical cryptographic security schemes are problematic for them. We instead propose to use wireless channel characteristics to secure data transfer. It has been shown that communicating wireless transceivers are able to generate shared secret keys by measuring channel characteristics at a single frequency. These methods are not applicable to passive Wi-Fi, which uses two different frequencies. In this paper, we describe a method to generate a shared secret key based on wireless channel characteristics in the passive Wi-Fi scenario where the two parties are using dual frequencies.
Channel randomness in wireless communication systems can be employed for generating two copies of a key bits sequence in a given pair of nodes. Among others, the differential phase method that uses phase samples of two coherent frequency tones for generating high-entropy key bits sequence seems to be a promising technique. Unfortunately, implementation of the differential phase method relies on correct specification of the frequency separation of the probing tones, which requires additional study of the frequency-correlation properties of the propagation medium. This paper is devoted to experimental study of the channel frequency-correlation properties in a typical indoor environment. Frequency autocorrelation functions are experimentally determined for the signal envelope and carrier phase on four different indoor radio links. The estimates of the channel coherence bandwidth and multipath delay spread are performed, and the influence of the line-of-sight component (LOS) is considered. Our experiments showed that, depending on the LOS intensity, the coherence bandwidth on typical indoor radio links of 20-meters length varies from 8 MHz to 25 MHz (for the correlation level of 0.2), whereas for samples of the carrier phase, the coherence bandwidth is somewhat narrower and varies from 6 MHz to 19 MHz.
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.
Physical layer key generation that exploits reciprocity and randomness of wireless fading channels has attracted considerable attention in recent years. Despite much research efforts in this field, the problem of wireless key generation at long distance and low data rate remains unknown and has not been studied. In this paper, we conduct extensive experiments and analysis in real indoor and outdoor environments to explore the feasibility of wireless key generation for long range (LoRa)-based network. Our experimental results show that: 1) the low transmission rate will lead to low channel reciprocity which makes wireless key generation significantly challenging and 2) when the requirement of high reciprocity is fulfilled, two nodes can generate the same secret key even when they are far away from each other (a few kilometers). Building on the strengths of existing secret key extraction approaches, we present LoRa-Key, the first complete key establishment protocol for LoRa network by exploring the shared randomness extracted from measured received signal strength indicator. LoRa-Key employs a number of signal processing techniques to improve key generation rate significantly. Moreover, we propose a novel compressive sensing-based reconciliation framework to reduce mismatch rate. Experimental results show that LoRa-Key can achieve key establishment rates of 18 bit/s in stationary scenario and 31 bit/s in mobile scenario. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that studies key generation protocol for LoRa network.