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Electronics Letters

High‐rate secret key generation aided by multiple relays for Internet of things

Shuaifang Xiao, Yunfei Guo, Kaizhi Huang, Liang Jin

Published Jul 13, 2017• 19 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A multiple relays aided secret key generation algorithm is proposed to improve the generated secret key rate for Internet of things when the wireless channels change slowly. First, the two legitimate users and relays send training sequences in turn to estimate the channels. Then, the relays employ secure network coding technique to help the two legitimate users exploit the randomness of relay channels. Finally, the two legitimate users agree on a secret key without the help of relays. In addition, the optimal relays selection with optimal power allocation algorithm is present to further improve the secret key rate when relay selection is needed. The performances of the proposed algorithms are verified by Monte Carlo simulation results.

DOI
10.1049/el.2017.2346

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A multiple relays aided secret key generation algorithm is proposed to improve the generated secret key rate for Internet of things when the wireless channels change slowly. First, the two legitimate users and relays send training sequences in turn to estimate the channels. Then, the relays employ secure network coding technique to help the two legitimate users exploit the randomness of relay channels. Finally, the two legitimate users agree on a secret key without the help of relays. In addition, the optimal relays selection with optimal power allocation algorithm is present to further improve the secret key rate when relay selection is needed. The performances of the proposed algorithms are verified by Monte Carlo simulation results.
Abstract This paper focuses on high efficiency secret key generation mechanism of physical‐layer communication over fading channels in ubiquitous wireless networks. The secret key rate via traditional physical‐layer approach could be limited when the wireless propagation channels connecting two sensors change slowly. To generate a high‐rate secret key and improve the communication efficiency over quasi‐static block fading channels, a novel multi‐randomness device‐to‐device secret key generation strategy and a cooperative communication mechanism aided by relay nodes are proposed. In the proposed schemes, the legitimate members to send random signals rotationally in every coherent time are set; thus, two legitimate ubiquitous wireless network members, Alice and Bob, can obtain the potential correlated information by exploiting the randomness and the reciprocity of the wireless propagation channels. Considering the reciprocity of wireless channels is variable while the forward channel gain and backward channel gain are correlated in coherent time, a modified secret key generation scheme is proposed via layered coding with theoretical secret key rates derived. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms traditional approaches with favourable application prospects in ubiquitous wireless communications networks and internet of things.
The impact of relay nodes on the secret key generation via the physical layer resources is investigated. A novel relay-assisted strategy is proposed to improve the generated secret key rate. The main idea is to exploit the random channels associated with relay nodes in the network as additional random sources for the key generation. This approach is particularly useful when the channels between legitimate nodes change slowly. Four increasingly sophisticated yet more practical scenarios are studied, for which relay-assisted key generation protocols are proposed and are shown to be optimal or order-optimal in terms of the key rate. It is also shown that the multiplexing gain in the key rate scales linearly with the number of relays, which demonstrates that relay-assisted schemes substantially increase the key rate. This is in sharp contrast to scenarios with relays helping information transmission, in which the multiplexing gain does not scale with the number of relays. Furthermore, a cooperative scheme is also proposed in which relays help key generation but the generated keys are kept secure from these relays.
The impact of relay nodes on the secret key generation via the physical layer resources is investigated. A novel relay-assisted strategy is proposed to improve the generated secret key rate. The main idea is to exploit the random channels associated with relay nodes in the network as additional random sources for the key generation. This approach is particularly useful when the channels between legitimate nodes change slowly. Three increasingly sophisticated yet more practical scenarios are studied, for which relay-assisted key generation protocols are proposed and are shown to be optimal or order-optimal in terms of the key rate. It is also shown that the presence of relay node increases the multiplexing gain. This is in sharp contrast to scenarios with relay helping information transmission, in which the relay node does not increase the multiplexing. Furthermore, a cooperative scheme is also proposed in which relays help key generation but the generated keys are kept secure from these relays.
With a massive amount of wireless sensor nodes in Internet of Things (IoT), it is difficult to establish key distribution and management mechanism for traditional encryption technology. Alternatively, the physical layer key generation technology is promising to implement in IoT, since it is based on the principle of information-theoretical security and has the advantage of low complexity. Most existing key generation schemes assume that eavesdropping channels are independent of legitimate channels, which may not be practical especially when eavesdropper nodes are near to legitimate nodes. However, this paper investigates key generation problems for a multi-relay wireless network in IoT, where the correlation between eavesdropping and legitimate channels are considered. Key generation schemes are proposed for both non-colluding and partially colluding eavesdroppers situations. The main idea is to divide the key agreement process into three phases: 1) we first generate a secret key by exploiting the difference between the random channels associated with each relay node and the eavesdropping channels; 2) another key is generated by integrating the residual common randomness associated with each relay pair; 3) the two keys generated in the first two phases are concatenated into the final key. The secrecy key performance of the proposed key generation schemes is also derived with closed-forms.
Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks generally contain resource-constrained devices that require an energy-efficient key generation procedure to producing secure keys at a faster rate. The physical characteristics of the wireless channel can be exploited to secure communication within IoT networks. In particular, secret keys can be generated by leveraging on the randomness of the wireless physical channel between two communicating parties. The conventional mechanism of generating keys at the physical layer, i.e., using channel probing, quantization, information reconciliation, and privacy amplification, may not be preferable for IoT devices. In addition, in some cases IoT devices may be deployed in static environments, wherein the channel coherence time is too high to generate keys at a faster rate and with the desired randomness. This study proposes a mapping table-based key distribution scheme for IoT environments, wherein multiple characteristics of the random channel are combined to improve not only the key generation rate (KGR) but also the key agreement rate (KAR) and bit error rate (BER). In the proposed scheme, both the channel magnitude and the phase are exploited in the key generation process. The proposed scheme is immune to channel estimation errors while providing sufficient randomness in the static environment. Additionally, the scheme is thoroughly investigated for different scenarios including the case of a smarter eavesdropper, which attempts to estimate the channel between the legitimate nodes. This case verifies the robustness of the proposed scheme in different settings and attack models.
A secret key generation scheme based on stochastic perturbation is proposed to improve the generated secret key rate for quasi-static channels in Internet of Things (IoT). First, the two legitimate nodes send training sequences to estimate the channel information and the initial key is obtained by quantization. Second, each sub-key in the initial key is classified, which the classification label is the column value in the stochastic perturbation matrix. Finally, each sub-key is combined with the corresponding stochastic perturbation sequence through XOR operation to obtain the perturbed key estimation sequence. The simulation results show that with the same SNR, the key generation rate based on stochastic perturbation is faster, and the correlation between the sub-keys is lower. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) randomness test shows that keys generated based on stochastic perturbation have better randomness.