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IEEE Information Theory Workshop (ITW)

Jamming-resistant frequency hopping system with secret key generation from channel observations

Chia‐Yu Liu, Y.-W. Peter Hong, Pin-Hsun Lin, Eduard Axel Jorswieck

Published Sep 1, 2016• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This work proposes a jamming-resistant frequency hopping (FH) system that utilizes local channel observations for secret key generation (SKG). FH is a spread spectrum technique used in both military and consumer wireless applications to avoid jamming attacks, but requires pre-shared secret keys among communicating terminals, say Alice and Bob, to ensure that the same FH sequence is used at both sides. In our scheme, Alice and Bob utilize local observations of the channel between them as the source of common randomness to generate the shared secret key. By gathering multiple time slots into a frame, the sequence of channels observed in each frame can be used to determine the FH sequence in the next frame. In this case, the key generation rate must be high enough to identify the FH sequence in the next frame and, thus, to sustain the operation over time. However, by further considering the data transmission, an interesting tradeoff exists between the power allocated for SKG and channel estimation in the training phase and that for communication in the data transmission phase. Given the number of FH channels and the number of channels that the adversary can jam at once, we derive the minimum pilot signal power required for sustainability and also determine the optimal power allocation between pilot and data signals that maximizes the ergodic rate between the two users. Simulations are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

DOI
10.1109/itw.2016.7606793

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This work proposes a jamming-resistant frequency hopping (FH) system that utilizes local channel observations for secret key generation (SKG). FH is a spread spectrum technique used in both military and consumer wireless applications to avoid jamming attacks, but requires pre-shared secret keys among communicating terminals, say Alice and Bob, to ensure that the same FH sequence is used at both sides. In our scheme, Alice and Bob utilize local observations of the channel between them as the source of common randomness to generate the shared secret key. By gathering multiple time slots into a frame, the sequence of channels observed in each frame can be used to determine the FH sequence in the next frame. In this case, the key generation rate must be high enough to identify the FH sequence in the next frame and, thus, to sustain the operation over time. However, by further considering the data transmission, an interesting tradeoff exists between the power allocated for SKG and channel estimation in the training phase and that for communication in the data transmission phase. Given the number of FH channels and the number of channels that the adversary can jam at once, we derive the minimum pilot signal power required for sustainability and also determine the optimal power allocation between pilot and data signals that maximizes the ergodic rate between the two users. Simulations are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.
Jamming attacks have been shown to disrupt secret key generation (SKG) in systems that exploit the reciprocity of the wireless medium to generate symmetric keys at two remote locations through public discussion. In this study, the use of frequency hopping/spreading in Rayleigh block fading additive white Gaussian noise (BF-AWGN) channels is investigated as a means to counteract such attacks. The competitive interaction between a pair of legitimate users and a jammer is formulated as a zero-sum game and the corresponding Nash equilibria (NE) are characterized analytically and in closed form. It is found that the jammer's optimal strategy is to spread its power across the entire spectrum. On the contrary, the pair of legitimate users should use frequency spreading only in favorable transmission conditions, and frequency hopping otherwise (e.g., low signal to jamming power ratio). Numerical results show that frequency hopping/spreading in BF-AWGN channels is an effective technique for combating jamming attacks in SKG systems; a modest increase of the system bandwidth can substantially increase the SKG rates.
Jamming attacks represent a critical vulnerability for wireless secret key generation (SKG) systems. In this paper, two counter-jamming approaches are investigated for SKG systems: first, the employment of energy harvesting (EH) at the legitimate nodes to turn part of the jamming power into useful communication power, and, second, the use of channel hopping or power spreading in block fading channels to reduce the impact of jamming. In both cases, the adversarial interaction between the pair of legitimate nodes and the jammer is formulated as a two-player zero-sum game and the Nash and Stackelberg equilibria are characterized analytically and in closed form. In particular, in the case of EH receivers, the existence of a critical transmission power for the legitimate nodes allows the full characterization of the game's equilibria and also enables the complete neutralization of the jammer. In the case of channel hopping versus power spreading techniques, it is shown that the jammer's optimal strategy is always power spreading while the legitimate nodes should only use power spreading in the high signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) regime. In the low SIR regime, when avoiding the jammer's interference becomes critical, channel hopping is optimal for the legitimate nodes. Numerical results demonstrate the efficiency of both counter-jamming measures.
The Internet-of-Things (IoT) spans various applications in healthcare filed, from smart wearable or implantable sensors to remote monitoring of elderly, and medical device networking. In this paper, a jamming-resistant scheme for the healthcare IoT is proposed to provide secure and reliable data transmission in a two-hop cooperative network, where a source communicates with a destination in the presence of an untrusted relay and an active adversary. The untrusted relay is an authorized necessary helper who may wiretap the confidential information, e.g., the secret measured data of a patient, while the jammer is an external attacker who tries to interrupt the communication. Different from traditional frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) techniques that require a pre-determined pattern between communicating nodes, in our proposed scheme, the source an destination enjoy the local observations of the two-hop channel exploited as the source of common randomness to generate shared secret keys, which facilitates secure communication. To obtain the shared FHSS sequence, a three-phase key generation scheme with minimum mean square error (MMSE) channel estimators is implemented. For the proposed FHSS-based scheme, we derive new closed-form expressions for characterizing the achievable secret key rate (SKR) to highlight the efficiency of our proposed scheme compared to the state-of-the-arts. Finally, several numerical examples and discussions are presented to gain engineering insights behind the studied communication scenario.
In this paper, we propose a light-weight jamming-resistant scheme for the Internet-of-Things (IoT) in 5G networks to ensure high-quality communication in a two-hop cooperative network. In the considered system model, a source communicates with a destination in the presence of an untrusted relay and a powerful multi-antenna adversary jammer. The untrusted relay is an authorized necessary helper who may wiretap the confidential information. Meanwhile, the jammer is an external attacker who tries to damage both the training and transmission phases. Different from traditional frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) techniques that require a pre-determined pattern between communicating nodes, in our scheme, the source and destination enjoy the local observations of the two-hop channels. Then they exploit the measured channel as the source of common randomness to generate shared secret keys. By collecting multiple time slots into a frame, the sequence of channels observed in each frame is utilized to specify the adopted FHSS sequence in the next frame. Based on the derived FHSS sequence from the key generation phase, the source starts to transmit its message supporting by the the destination-assisted cooperative jamming (DACJ) technique which prevents the untrusted relay from discovering the secret message. For the mentioned system model, we present new closed-form expressions for characterizing the achievable secret key rate (SKR) and ergodic secrecy rate (ESR) to highlight the efficiency of our proposed scheme compared to the state-of-the-art. We next determine the optimal power allocation (OPA) between the pilot and data transmission phases that maximizes the ESR performance while escaping from jamming attack. Finally, several numerical examples and discussions are presented to gain engineering insights behind the studied communication scenario.
Secret key generation (SKG) from shared randomness at two remote locations has been shown to be vulnerable to denial of service attacks in the form of jamming. Typically, such attacks are alleviated with frequency hopping/spreading techniques that rely on expansion of the system bandwidth. In the present study, energy harvesting (EH) is exploited as a novel counter-jamming approach that alleviates the need for extra bandwidth resources. Assuming the legitimate users have EH capabilities, the idea is that part of the jamming signal can potentially be harvested and converted into useful communication power. In this framework, the competitive interaction between a pair of legitimate users and a jammer is formulated as a zero-sum game. A critical transmission power for the legitimate users is identified which allows to completely characterize the unique NE of the game in closed form. Remarkably, this threshold also provides the option to effectively neutralize the jammer, i.e., prevent the jammer from carrying out the attack altogether. Through numerical evaluations, EH is shown to be a counter-jamming approach that can offer substantial gains in terms of relative SKG rates.
The emergence of Internet of things (IoT) applications brings the challenge of finding lightweight schemes for secret key distribution. A promising solution coming from the physical layer is the so called secret key generation (SKG) from shared randomness. SKG allows two communicating parties to extract the shared randomness already present in wireless channels. This work investigates the achievable SKG rates using received signal strength (RSS) as a key generation parameter. A multi-path scenario is considered and the probability density function of the RSS in different channel conditions is evaluated. Next, through a numerical evaluation, the SKG rates are derived in the form of mutual information (MI) estimates, using a 3GPP standard channel model. The simulations are performed for different values of bandwidth and delay spread. We demonstrate that while both parameters have similar impact on how multi-path components are resolved, their effect on the MI is opposite.