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KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems

Secret Key Generation Using Reciprocity in Ultra-wideband Outdoor Wireless Channels

Jing Huang, Ting Jiang

Published Feb 28, 2014• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

To investigate schemes of secret key generation from Ultra-wideband (UWB) channel, we study a statistical characterization of UWB outdoor channel for a campus playground scenario based on extensive measurements.Moreover, an efficient secret key generation mechanism exploiting multipath relative delay is developed, and verification of this algorithm is conducted in UWB Line-of-sight (LOS) outdoor channels.For the first time, we compare key-mismatch probability of UWB indoor and outdoor environments.Simulation results demonstrate that the number of multipath proportionally affects key generation rate and key-mismatch probability.In comparison to the conventional method using received signal strength (RSS) as a common random source, our mechanism achieves better performance in terms of common secret bit generation.Simultaneously, security analysis indicates that the proposed scheme can still guarantee security even in the sparse outdoor physical environment free of many reflectors.

DOI
10.3837/tiis.2014.02.011

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To investigate schemes of secret key generation from Ultra-wideband (UWB) channel, we study a statistical characterization of UWB outdoor channel for a campus playground scenario based on extensive measurements.Moreover, an efficient secret key generation mechanism exploiting multipath relative delay is developed, and verification of this algorithm is conducted in UWB Line-of-sight (LOS) outdoor channels.For the first time, we compare key-mismatch probability of UWB indoor and outdoor environments.Simulation results demonstrate that the number of multipath proportionally affects key generation rate and key-mismatch probability.In comparison to the conventional method using received signal strength (RSS) as a common random source, our mechanism achieves better performance in terms of common secret bit generation.Simultaneously, security analysis indicates that the proposed scheme can still guarantee security even in the sparse outdoor physical environment free of many reflectors.
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.
In this paper, experimental results about secret key extraction from the physical parameters of an ultra-wideband (UWB) channel are presented. In the channel probing phase, the reciprocity of the UWB channel is verified. A quantization scheme is then proposed together with a key alignment technique. The proposed scheme, tested with real measurements in an indoor scenario, is shown to yield raw keys with good randomness properties and tolerable mismatch percentages between Alice and Bob, as well as unfavorable mismatch percentages and random error distribution for Eve.
We develop a secret key generation scheme using phase estimation in ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless fading channels.Based on the reciprocity theorem, two terminals extract the phase of the channel as a common random source to generate secret bits.Moreover, we study the secret key rate by a pair of nodes observing correlated sources and communicating to achieve secret key agreement over public communication channels.As our main results, we establish a more practical upper bound from Cramer-Rao bound (CRB) and compare it with a universally theoretical upper bound on the shared maximum key rate from mutual information of correlated random sources.Derivation and numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the bound.Simulation studies are also provided to validate feasibility and efficiency of the proposed scheme.
This paper addresses the confidentiality of wireless communications in industrial internet-of-things environments by investigating the feasibility of secret key generation for link-layer encryption using ultra wideband (UWB) signals. Taking advantage of the nanosecond-level temporal resolution offered by ultra wideband, we exploit channel reciprocity to extract highly detailed, noise-like channel measurements, in line with the physical-layer security paradigm. Three key generation algorithms, operating in both the time and frequency domains, are evaluated using real-world data collected through a dedicated measurement campaign in an industrial setting. The analysis, conducted under realistic conditions, examines the impact of practical impairments, such as imperfect channel reciprocity and timing misalignments, on the key agreement rate and the length of the generated keys. The results confirm the strong potential of ultra wideband technology to enable robust physical-layer security, offering a viable and efficient solution for securing wireless communications in complex and dynamic industrial internet-of-things environments.
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.
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.