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International Conference on Communications

Zero reconciliation secret key extraction in MIMO backscatter wireless systems

Shichao Lv, Xiang Lu, Zhuo Lu, Xiaoshan Wang, Ning Wang, Limin Sun

Published May 1, 2016• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new security design, called as Zero Reconciliation Secret Key Extraction, for backscatter wireless systems, in which a reader needs to establish secret keys for multiple tags. Our design is able to eliminate the reconciliation process in conventional physical layer based key establishment, therefore improving the efficiency while still maintaining security in such a process. The essence in our design is to use a channel state information (CSI) characteristic, named CSI Ratio, at the reader to differentiate multiple tags, then employ multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) precoding for legitimate tags to effectively and securely establish secret keys, at the same time leveraging artificial jamming to forestall eavesdropping attacks in the network. We evaluate our design with real-world experimental data and show that the proposed approach can achieve relatively high secret key extraction rates and maintain low bit error rates.

DOI
10.1109/icc.2016.7510987

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In this paper, we propose a new security design, called as Zero Reconciliation Secret Key Extraction, for backscatter wireless systems, in which a reader needs to establish secret keys for multiple tags. Our design is able to eliminate the reconciliation process in conventional physical layer based key establishment, therefore improving the efficiency while still maintaining security in such a process. The essence in our design is to use a channel state information (CSI) characteristic, named CSI Ratio, at the reader to differentiate multiple tags, then employ multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) precoding for legitimate tags to effectively and securely establish secret keys, at the same time leveraging artificial jamming to forestall eavesdropping attacks in the network. We evaluate our design with real-world experimental data and show that the proposed approach can achieve relatively high secret key extraction rates and maintain low bit error rates.
As an alternative and appealing approach to providing information security in wireless communication systems, secret key generation at physical layer has demonstrated its potential in terms of efficiency and reliability over traditional cryptographic methods. Without the necessity of a management centre for key distribution or reliance on computational complexity, physical layer key generation protocols enable two wireless entities to extract identical and dynamic keys from the randomness of the wireless channels associated with them.\nIn this thesis, the reliability of secret key generation at the physical layer is examined in practical wireless channels with imperfect channel state information (CSI). Theoretical analyses are provided to relate key match rate with channel's signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), degrees of channel reciprocity, and iterations of information reconciliation.\nIn order to increase key match rate of physical layer secret key generation, improved schemes in the steps of channel estimation and sample quantization are proposed respectively. In the channel estimation step, multiple observations of the wireless channels are integrated with a linear processor to provide a synthesized and more accurate estimation of the wireless channel. In the sample quantization step, a magnitude based quantization method with two thresholds is proposed to quantize partial samples, where specific quantization areas are selected to reduce cross-over errors. Significant improvements in key match rate are proven for both schemes in theoretical analysis and numerical simulations. Key match rate can even achieve 100% in both schemes with the assistance of information reconciliation process.\nIn the end, a practical application of physical layer secret key generation is presented, where dynamic keys extracted from the wireless channels are utilized for securing secret data transmission and providing efficient access control.
Secret key establishment is considered to be one of the main challenging issues in cryptography. Many security algorithms are implemented in practice using complicated mathematical methods to exchange secret keys, but those methods are not desirable in power limited terminals such as cellular and sensor networks. In this paper, we propose a physical layer method for exchanging secret key bits in precoding based multi-input multi-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. The proposed method uniquely relates the key bits to the indices of the precoding matrix used for MIMO channel precoding. The basic idea of the technique is to utilize a MIMO-OFDM precoding codebook. Comparative analysis with respect to the average number of mismatch bits, named key error rate (KER), shows an interesting lead for the new method relative to existing work. In addition, it will be shown that the proposed technique requires lower computation per byte per secret key.
We evaluate the effectiveness of secret key extraction, for private communication between two wireless devices, from the received signal strength (RSS) variations on the wireless channel between the two devices. We use real world measurements of RSS in a variety of environments and settings. The results from our experiments with 802.11-based laptops show that in certain environments, due to lack of variations in the wireless channel, the extracted bits have very low entropy making these bits unsuitable for a secret key, an adversary can cause predictable key generation in these static environments, and in dynamic scenarios where the two devices are mobile, and/or where there is a significant movement in the environment, high entropy bits are obtained fairly quickly. Building on the strengths of existing secret key extraction approaches, we develop an environment adaptive secret key generation scheme that uses an adaptive lossy quantizer in conjunction with Cascade-based information reconciliation and privacy amplification. Our measurements show that our scheme, in comparison to the existing ones that we evaluate, performs the best in terms of generating high entropy bits at a high bit rate. The secret key bit streams generated by our scheme also pass the randomness tests of the NIST test suite that we conduct. We also build and evaluate the performance of secret key extraction using small, low-power, hand-held devices-Google Nexus One phones-that are equipped 802.11 wireless network cards. Last, we evaluate secret key extraction in a multiple input multiple output (MIMO)-like sensor network testbed that we create using multiple TelosB sensor nodes. We find that our MIMO-like sensor environment produces prohibitively high bit mismatch, which we address using an iterative distillation stage that we add to the key extraction process. Ultimately, we show that the secret key generation rate is increased when multiple sensors are involved in the key extraction process.
Physical-layer secret key generation is a meaningful approach to enhance the security of wireless links by taking advantages of wireless channels. However eavesdroppers may obtain the secret key bits if their channels become correlated to the legitimate channels. In this paper, to increase the mismatch rate at the eavesdroppers, we propose a new secret key generation scheme for polar coded multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems by applying MIMO precoding and adding signal-like noise on the transmitted signals. Furthermore, considering the channel polarization phenomenon of polar codes, we propose to adaptively send messages that are used for secret key generation over the less reliable channel-bits of eavesdroppers. In addition, we propose to add randomness to messages to ensure that eavesdroppers are unable to generate the secret key bits even when their channels are highly correlated to the legitimate channels. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed scheme prevents eavesdroppers to generate the secret key with an extremely high probability.
At present, there has been a large amount of research on secrecy rate optimization. However, the reliability analysis of secure transmission is equally important although relatively less attention has been dedicated to. Therefore, this paper proposes a secure transmission method with artificial noise for the physical layer security issues in the transmission process of Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) wireless communication systems. Firstly, we establish an artificial noise assisted MIMO systems model. Then, the channel state information (CSI) matrix is subjected to singular value decomposition to obtain the reasonable precoding and artificial noise matrices. Finally, the impact of artificial noise on the bit error rate performance of potential eavesdropper is analyzed, and based on the analysis, the problem of maximizing the system secrecy rate is established. The concave-convex procedure (CCCP) method is used to obtain the optimal power allocation, which significantly improves the security of MIMO systems. The simulation results show that using the null space of CSI matrix and artificial noise for signal encryption effectively improves the bit error rate of potential eavesdropping nodes. In addition, the secrecy rate obtained by the CCCP algorithm is consistent with the performance obtained by the particle swarm optimization algorithm, which verifies the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
The backscatter communication system has tremendous potential in commercial applications, still very less work has been done to study the benefits of it. Backscatter communication system is the backbone of many low cost and low power distributed wireless systems. The data transmission between various nodes in wireless communication system always comes with the risk of third party interception. This leads to privacy and security breaches of the information. In this paper, physical layer security of backscatter wireless system for multiple eavesdropper, single tag, and single reader case is studied. Unique characteristics of the channel are used to provide security to signal transmission. In order to degrade the reception of the signal by eavesdropper, a noise injection scheme is proposed. The advantages of this approach are discussed for various cases while evaluating the impact of the key factors like antenna gain and location of the eavesdropper on the secrecy of the transmission. Analytical results indicate that if properly employed, the noise injection scheme improves the performance of backscatter wireless system.