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IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications

Channel Frequency Response-Based Secret Key Generation in Underwater Acoustic Systems

Yi Huang, Shengli Zhou, Zhijie Jerry Shi, Lifeng Lai

Published May 24, 2016• 49 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Preestablished secret keys are often used to encrypt and decrypt data in communication systems, which are not secure once the keys are compromised. One desirable method is to generate secret keys dynamically using correlated channel measurements. We explore this concept in underwater acoustic (UWA) channels, and present a protocol that can generate secret keys dynamically based on the channel frequency response (CFR) in orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing systems. The multi-bit quantization is carried out on the amplitude of each tone, and the Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem codes are used for information reconciliation. Part of the protocol was implemented in lake tests, and multiple data sets were collected. The lake test results verify that the amplitude of CFR can be used as a randomness source for key generation in UWA channels, and we also find the low correlation between the mutual channels of the legitimate users. Based on the lake test results, we incorporate two modules into the protocol for performance improvement. The first module employs the adaptively weighted probing signaling to increase the channel correlation, and the second module of block-sliced key verification is used to deal with channel dynamics and increase the key agreement probability. The simulation results demonstrate the improved performance of the enhanced protocol.

DOI
10.1109/twc.2016.2572106

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Preestablished secret keys are often used to encrypt and decrypt data in communication systems, which are not secure once the keys are compromised. One desirable method is to generate secret keys dynamically using correlated channel measurements. We explore this concept in underwater acoustic (UWA) channels, and present a protocol that can generate secret keys dynamically based on the channel frequency response (CFR) in orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing systems. The multi-bit quantization is carried out on the amplitude of each tone, and the Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem codes are used for information reconciliation. Part of the protocol was implemented in lake tests, and multiple data sets were collected. The lake test results verify that the amplitude of CFR can be used as a randomness source for key generation in UWA channels, and we also find the low correlation between the mutual channels of the legitimate users. Based on the lake test results, we incorporate two modules into the protocol for performance improvement. The first module employs the adaptively weighted probing signaling to increase the channel correlation, and the second module of block-sliced key verification is used to deal with channel dynamics and increase the key agreement probability. The simulation results demonstrate the improved performance of the enhanced protocol.
Preestablished secret keys are often used to encrypt and decrypt data in communication systems, including underwater acoustic (UWA) systems. However, once the keys are compromised, the communication is not secure. It is desirable to establish shared secrets in the field. One method is to generate secret keys dynamically using correlated channel measurements, which relies on the randomness in the environment and does not require the secrecy of information exchanged during the process. We explore this concept in UWA channels and lake tests show that secret keys can be dynamically generated based on the channel frequency responses.
One of the basic problems in cryptography is the generation of a common secret key between two legitimate parties in order to prevent eavesdropping. In this paper, we develop an information-theoretic secret key generation method that exploits the physical layer properties of the multipath channel in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems with time division duplexing (TDD), and in particular the amplitude and phase of the estimated channel frequency response (CFR). Both the fast space decorrelation and the independency of the amplitude and phase of the multipath fading channel are used to generate the secret key, leading to increased secrecy bit rate and negligible secrecy leakage. The effect of the channel estimation error, delay and mobility are investigated for the presented method. Simulation results corroborate the increased performance of the proposed method over existing ones.
This letter presents a physical layer secret key generation (PLSKG) protocol utilizing the amplitude of channel frequency response (CFR) of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) subcarriers. Firstly, least squares estimation estimates the CFR. Next, a partition moving average (PMA) algorithm encodes the CFR. PMA re-uses the CFR within a partition by encoding at different overlap sizes, thus increasing the key generation rate (KGR). Then, a 2-bit differential-based quantization at every overlap for each partition is followed for an improved KGR and randomness. Finally, a cyclic redundancy check is performed to select strings with consistent results as candidate key, eliminating streams from less correlated measurements, thus ensuring a 0-bit mismatch. Simulation results have verified that our scheme achieves random 0-bit disagreement keys with a high average key length and reduced complexity compared to the other existing lightweight schemes.
Key generation from the randomness of wireless channels is a promising technique to establish a secret cryptographic key securely between legitimate users. This paper proposes a new approach to extract keys efficiently from the channel responses of individual orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) subcarriers. The efficiency is achieved by: 1) fully exploiting randomness from time and frequency domains and 2) improving the cross-correlation of the channel measurements. Through the theoretical modeling of the time and frequency autocorrelation relationship of the OFDM subcarrier's channel responses, we can obtain the optimal probing rate and use multiple uncorrelated subcarriers as random sources. We also study the effects of non-simultaneous measurements and noise on the cross-correlation of the channel measurements. We find that the cross-correlation is mainly impacted by noise effects in a slow fading channel and use a low-pass filter to reduce the key disagreement rate and extend the system's working signal-to-noise ratio range. The system is evaluated in terms of randomness, key generation rate, and key disagreement rate, verifying that it is feasible to extract randomness from both time and frequency domains of the OFDM subcarrier's channel responses.
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.
As a new way to enhance wireless communication security, secret key generation based on physical layer channel characteristics has emerged. In this paper, we propose a novel secret key generation algorithm based on wireless channel characteristics for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) communication systems. The mean quantization algorithm is applied to quantize the real part and imaginary part of OFDM subcarriers, respectively, which can significantly increase the length of the generated secret key in the OFDM system. To reduce the consistency between the secret keys generated by the eavesdropper and the legitimate communication nodes, a processing method by taking the subcarrier phase as initialization of a scrambling code and scrambling the quantized result is proposed. The simulation and test results show that compared with the existing research, the proposed algorithm can improve the key generation rate (KGR), reduce the key mismatch rate (KMR) and complexity, maintain high randomness, and disturb the eavesdroppers.