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International Conference on Signal Processing Systems (ICSPS)

Improving performance of secret key generation from wireless channel using filtering techniques

Mike Yuliana, Wirawan Wirawan, Suwadi Suwadi

Published Apr 17, 2019• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Secure communication in a wireless environment is very vital, and cryptographic schemes are usually used to ensure it. Secret keys that are unknown to the tappers are needed by cryptographic schemes to secure communication between two legitimate users. In recent years the secret key generation scheme that utilizes a wireless channel as a secret key generation source has become a very interesting and promising topic. The main problem of this scheme is the high wireless channel mismatch between two users due to nonsimultaneous measurements and noise from the device. In this paper, we proposed a secret key generation scheme that uses the Savitzky-Golay filter method to reduce the high mismatch wireless channel. The scheme that was built was also equipped with a multibit quantization method to increase the speed of generation of secret keys. The results of our tests show a decrease in wireless channel mismatch between two users and an increase in the speed of generation of secret keys.

DOI
10.1117/12.2521870

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•Jan 1, 2015•1 citation
Secure communication in a wireless environment is very vital, and cryptographic schemes are usually used to ensure it. Secret keys that are unknown to the tappers are needed by cryptographic schemes to secure communication between two legitimate users. In recent years the secret key generation scheme that utilizes a wireless channel as a secret key generation source has become a very interesting and promising topic. The main problem of this scheme is the high wireless channel mismatch between two users due to nonsimultaneous measurements and noise from the device. In this paper, we proposed a secret key generation scheme that uses the Savitzky-Golay filter method to reduce the high mismatch wireless channel. The scheme that was built was also equipped with a multibit quantization method to increase the speed of generation of secret keys. The results of our tests show a decrease in wireless channel mismatch between two users and an increase in the speed of generation of secret keys.
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.
Channel characteristics-based secret key generation is an effective physical-layer security method.The issues of how to remove the effect of random noise and to balance the key generation rate (KGR) and the bit mismatch rate (BMR) are needed to be addressed.In this paper, to reduce the effect of random noise and extract more secret bits, a new quantization scheme with high key generation rate and low bit mismatch rate is proposed.In our proposed scheme, we try to use all measurements and correct the differences caused by noise at the boundary regions instead of simply dropping them.We evaluate and discuss the improvements of our proposed scheme.The results show that our proposed scheme achieves lower bit mismatch rate as well as remaining high key generation rate.
Secure wireless communications is a challenging problem due to the shared nature of the wireless medium. Most existing security protocols apply cryptographic techniques for bit scrambling at the application layer by exploiting a shared secret key between pairs of communicating nodes. However, more recent research argues that multipath propagation - a salient feature of wireless channels - provides a physical resource for secure communications. In this context, we propose a protocol that exploits the inherent randomness in multipath wireless channels for generating secret keys through channel estimation and quantization. Our approach is particularly attractive in wideband channels which exhibit a large number of statistically independent degrees of freedom (DoF), thereby enabling the generation of large, more-secure, keys. We show that the resulting keys are distinct for distinct pairwise links with a probability that increases exponentially with the key-size/channel DoF. We also characterize the probability that the two users sharing a common link generate the same key. This characterization is used to analyze the energy consumption in successful acquisition of a secret key by the two users. For a given key size, our results show that there is an optimum transmit power, and an optimum quantization strategy, that minimizes the energy consumption. The proposed approach to secret key generation through channel quantization also obviates the problem of key pre-distribution inherent to many existing cryptographic approaches.
The rapid technological advancements in wireless networks have resulted in tremendous increase in the number of connected user and machine-type wireless devices. Physical Layer Security (PLS) has a strong potential for providing security to wireless links in massively connected future wireless networks. The key-based PLS methods aim at generating secret key bits for data encryption/decryption at the legitimate communication nodes by exploiting the randomness inherent in wireless channels. This work proposes a novel secret key-bits extraction algorithm named Moving-Window Wrapped-Envelope Secret Key Generation (MWWE-SKG). The proposed algorithm uses first-order statistics from a sliding temporal window of channel samples to select the channel quantization interval for each window from circularly wrapped channel envelope samples. The differences in hardware noise conditions at the legitimate nodes lead to differences in the measurement of ideally reciprocal channels, which further leads to a mismatch in the generated secret key bits, whereas the channel statistics of the same links are more likely to remain unchanged for a reasonably large length of time window over the channel samples. An extensive analysis on the performance of the proposed algorithm is conducted, where the proposed algorithm is observed to provide a promising trade-off between the critical SKG performance metrics namely the Key Generation Rate (KGR), Bit Mismatch Probability (BMP), and the Key Randomness Property (KRP). Furthermore, a comparative performance analysis of the proposed algorithm with other notable techniques is also conducted to demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed algorithm.
The wireless radio communications channel between two legitimate user terminals has long been considered as a renewable source of shared secrecy. As characterization of the channel, the time-varying channel impulse response (CIR) is commonly used for this purpose due to its reciprocity and inherent difficulty in being captured by an adversary. While each terminal generates a secret key at its side, based on its own channel measurements combined with an independent noise component, mismatches may occur in the extracted information or in the obtained bit sequences after a sampling and quantization process. To mitigate such bit mismatches, we propose a method that utilizes the properties of the Golay code to correct or detect the bit mismatches for CIR-based secret key agreement. In our approach, the reconciliation information in the transmission is deliberately designed to hide the original shared information (perfect or imperfect). The correctness of our bit mismatch mitigation algorithm is thoroughly analyzed for all possible scenarios. In addition, the effectiveness of our algorithm is validated through simulations using MATLAB for generated CIR data, the results of which match our theoretical analysis. Our design is shown to be secure and optimal by security analysis and comparisons between our proposed algorithm and its variants. The comparisons with related techniques and the scenarios in which our design can benefit are also discussed.
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.