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China Communications

Secret key generation based on two-way randomness for TDD-SISO system

Shengjun Zhang, Liang Jin, Yangming Lou, Zhong Zhou

Published Jul 1, 2018• 29 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A novel secret key generation (SKG) method based on two-way randomness is proposed for TDD-SISO system. The legitimate transceivers mutually transmit their own random signal via reciprocal wireless channel, then the multiplication of transmitted and received signal is used as common randomness to generate secret keys. In quasi-static channel, the theoretical SKG rates (SKGRs) of the three SKG methods, namely wireless channel based, one-way randomness and two-way randomness, are derived and compared. Further, two practical SKG schemes based on two-way randomness, Scheme-1bit and Scheme-3bit, are completely designed and simulated. Generally, Scheme-1bit applies to low signal to noise ratio (SNR) scenarios and achieves 0.13~0.86bit/TsSKGR and 10-2~10-5level secret key outage probability (SKOP), while Scheme-3bit fits high SNR situation and obtains 0.93~1.35bit/TsSKGR and 10-3~10-4level SKOP. At last, the national institute of standards and technology (NIST) test is conducted to evaluate the secret key randomness (SKRD) and the test results show that both of the proposed schemes have passed the test.

DOI
10.1109/cc.2018.8424614

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A novel secret key generation (SKG) method based on two-way randomness is proposed for TDD-SISO system. The legitimate transceivers mutually transmit their own random signal via reciprocal wireless channel, then the multiplication of transmitted and received signal is used as common randomness to generate secret keys. In quasi-static channel, the theoretical SKG rates (SKGRs) of the three SKG methods, namely wireless channel based, one-way randomness and two-way randomness, are derived and compared. Further, two practical SKG schemes based on two-way randomness, Scheme-1bit and Scheme-3bit, are completely designed and simulated. Generally, Scheme-1bit applies to low signal to noise ratio (SNR) scenarios and achieves 0.130.86bit/TsSKGR and 10-210-5level secret key outage probability (SKOP), while Scheme-3bit fits high SNR situation and obtains 0.931.35bit/TsSKGR and 10-310-4level SKOP. At last, the national institute of standards and technology (NIST) test is conducted to evaluate the secret key randomness (SKRD) and the test results show that both of the proposed schemes have passed the test.
Most secret key generation (SKG) methods need channel estimation and provide insufficient performance especially in time division duplex single input single output (TDD-SISO) system and quasi-static channel scenario. This paper proposed a two-way SKG method which can completely avoid channel estimation and achieve higher SKG rate (SKGR). Firstly, the legitimate users mutually send their own random signal via the reciprocal channel. Then, the multiplication of local random signal and the received signal can be used as common randomness to generate keys. The theoretical and practical SKGRs of the three methods, namely wireless channel based, one-way randomness and two-way randomness, are derived and compared. Simulation and estimation results show that the proposed TW method acquires a better performance not only in theory but also in practice, and the practical SKGR of TW method is time-linear which provides a feasible scheme to significantly improve the SKGR for quasi-static channel scenario.
The secret key generation rate (SKGR) of current physical layer security methods is not high enough for practical requirements. A novel SKG method based on the cross multiplication (XM) of two-way random signals is proposed for TDD-MIMO system. The principle concealed beneath the XM method is found that the XM operation not only derives the common random source for both legitimate partners, but also employs new generated cross-terms due to bilinear operation to provide more measurements of the random source and more secret keys accordingly, which is essentially superior to the existing paired multiplication (PM) method. Then, the theoretical SKGR of two-way random signals is analyzed and it is validated that SKGR is determined by the randomness of the reciprocal channel and the two-way secure transmission rates collectively. Furthermore, SKGR of XM and PM methods are derived in closed-form respectively under infinite antenna condition and the former shows a linear increase with the channel coherence interval, which are also approximately valid for finite antenna. The innovative conclusion means the slow-changing property of some channel environments can be further exploited and the proposed XM method can be applied to solve the low SKGR problem in static or quasi-static channel environment such as IoT. Finally, the simulations verify the theoretical results and show that the XM method achieves several orders of magnitude higher SKGR than the PM method.
Physical layer security (PLS) techniques hold promise for augmenting secure communications in the 5thgeneration of mobile wireless networks. Secret key generation (SKG) is a PLS technique which exploits the wireless propagation channel's randomness to generate symmetric key bits for information encryption and decryption. This work proposes symmetric key generation based on non-uniform quantization of the received signal strength (RSS) samples of a Nakagami-mmm fading channel. The proposed strategy for non-uniform quantization for SKG aims to set quantization thresholds for maximal key randomness and high values of key generation rate (KGR) and key agreement probability (KAP). Finally, a framework is proposed to use single node RSS measurements, readily available in the literature, to generate RSS samples at the other link end. This framework facilitates the testing of new SKG algorithms that require simultaneous RSS measurements by the legitimate nodes, which are not readily available in the open literature. The effectiveness of the proposed SKG scheme is validated through Monte Carlo methods and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) test suite for assessing the randomness of the generated key sequence.
The Secret Key Generation (SKG) scheme that exploits the reciprocity and uniqueness of wireless channel between two users plays a significant part in a new increasing distributed security system. The scheme performance can be distinguished based on the low value of Key disagreement Rate (KDR), the high value of Key Generation Rate (KGR), as well as the fulfillment of the NIST randomness standard. The previous SKG scheme has a high KDR due to a direct quantization of a measurement result of the Received Signal Strength (RSS). To overcome the above issue, we conduct a pre-processing of measurement result before quantization with the Kalman method. The pre-process is carried out to improve the channel reciprocity between two legitimate users with the objective to reduce the bit mismatch. Through an experiment, we propose a new quantization scheme called a Modified Multi-Bit (MMB) that uses a multi-bit system on every level of quantization. The test results show that the proposed combination of preprocessing and the MMB scheme has a better performance compared to the existing schemes in terms of KDR and KGR. The Secret Key generated by our scheme also fulfills the NIST randomness standard.
One of the fundamental problems in cryptography is the generation of a common secret key between two legitimate parties to prevent eavesdropping. In this paper, we propose an information-theoretic secret key generation (SKG) method for time division duplexing (TDD)-based orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems over multipath fading channels. By exploring physical layer properties of the wireless medium, i.e., the reciprocity, randomness, and privacy features of the radio channel, an SKG method is proposed to maximize the number of secret bits given a target secret key disagreement ratio (SKDR). In the proposed SKG method, the phase information of the estimated channel state information (CSI) is distilled for SKG, and a special guard band (GB) scheme is designed to achieve the target SKDR with a small phase information loss. The proposed GB consists of both the amplitude GB (AGB) and phase GB (PGB), where the AGB is determined by the average signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR), whereas the PGB adapts itself to the instantaneous SINR and thus incurs a smaller phase information loss in the higher SINR region. Analyses show that this GB scheme trades off a small loss of channel phase information for a better SKDR performance, and achieves a much larger number of quantization levels for a given SKDR due to the fact that the PGB decreases quickly as the SINR increases. Based on the performance analysis on the SKDR, the average secret key length, the phase information loss percentage (PILP), and the optimal GB and quantization level of the adaptive quantizor are derived for a given target SKDR. Both analytical and simulation results are presented to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed scheme for TDD-OFDM systems over frequency-selective fading channels.
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.