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IEEE International Conference on Computer and Communications (ICCC)

Physical-Layer Secret Key Generation with Correlated Eavesdropping Channel

Henglei Jin, Kaizhi Huang, Liang Jin, Zhong Zhou, Yajun Chen

Published Dec 1, 2018• 9 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Key generation technique generates symmetric keys based on the temporal variation, reciprocity and spatial decorrelation of the wireless channel. Most key generation schemes, however, assume that the eavesdropping channels are independent of the main channel and neglect the influence of the eavesdroppers. In this paper, we analyze the secret key capacity taking into account the information leaked to eavesdroppers, and the security analysis shows the eavesdropping channel correlation will reduce the secret key capacity. Then we propose a security channel estimating (SCE) scheme to resist eavesdroppers and the scheme is shown to be efficient. Finally, we use the Monte Carlo simulation verifies the theoretical analysis results.

DOI
10.1109/compcomm.2018.8780793

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Key generation technique generates symmetric keys based on the temporal variation, reciprocity and spatial decorrelation of the wireless channel. Most key generation schemes, however, assume that the eavesdropping channels are independent of the main channel and neglect the influence of the eavesdroppers. In this paper, we analyze the secret key capacity taking into account the information leaked to eavesdroppers, and the security analysis shows the eavesdropping channel correlation will reduce the secret key capacity. Then we propose a security channel estimating (SCE) scheme to resist eavesdroppers and the scheme is shown to be efficient. Finally, we use the Monte Carlo simulation verifies the theoretical analysis results.
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.
The reciprocity of the wireless channel is the basis of the secret key generation on the physical layer as an emerging method for information security enhancement. Due to the duplex mode of communication systems, the channel responses detected by two connected legitimate nodes are not completely reciprocal. In this paper, an efficient physical layer secret key generation scheme is proposed based on an autoencoder to extract reciprocal features from weakly correlated channel estimates. The encoder part after training is equipped at both nodes to generate features for quantization in various channel environments. Simulation results show lower mean squared error (MSE) and better mutual information of the extracted features comparing to the most efficient linear generation method, the principal component analysis (PCA) based one. It reveals the great potential to generate symmetric secret keys with better performance, particularly in low SNR scenarios.
In this paper, we propose a novel physical-layer secret key generation (SKG) scheme, which is based on reduced random pilot selection at a legitimate transmitter and channel interpolation at a legitimate receiver. As a result, the proposed scheme is capable of reducing pilot overhead and increasing secret key capacity (SKC) while suppressing information leakage to an eavesdropper in a correlated eavesdropping channel. More specifically, a subset of full pilot sequence is activated based on the legitimate channels at the legitimate transmitter, and the full channel coefficients are estimated from the received pilot symbol subset at the legitimate receiver with the aid of our channel interpolation. Additionally, despite the non-reciprocal channel due to the presence of a Doppler shift and an additive noise, our scheme achieves high SKG reliability in comparison to that without our reduced pilot selection or channel interpolation. We also derive the theoretical SKC for the proposed scheme. Our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed SKG scheme exhibits a higher performance in terms of both the SKC and key disagreement ratio.
Physics layer key, as an emerging method to enhance information security, is generated based on the reciprocity and spatial decorrelation of wireless channels. However, due to the half-duplex mode of the communication systems, the channels detected by the legitimate sides are not completely reciprocal. Meanwhile, when the eavesdropper is extremely close to the legitimate side, the spatial correlation could be very strong and threaten the information security. This paper combines the autoencoder and the multi-task learning into a novel physical layer key generation scheme, i.e., Multi-Task Autoencoder (MTAE). MTAE extracts the reciprocal features from the weakly correlated channel estimates of the legitimate sides while reducing its correlation with eavesdropper. Simulation results show good randomness and consistency with the primary keys generated based on MTAE for the legitimate sides, while increasing the difference in the extracted features between eavesdropper and its adjacent node. The proposed method has great potential in scenarios requiring high security.
There is growing interest in wireless security methods that provide strong or even perfect secrecy by taking advantage of features of the physical propagation channel. In advantage-based methods, high channel quality in an average or opportunistic sense is exploited between two legitimate nodes, such that nonzero secrecy capacity can be achieved. Since such methods require bounds on the quality of the eavesdropper channel, they are somewhat impractical. Secret key generation based on tracking channel evolution in time division duplex systems is a more attractive option, where two nodes generate secret key bits based on a mutually known random channel. Since the eavesdropper channel is typically independent of the legitimate channel, the key can only be broken by brute force attacks, which are difficult when new keys are continuously generated. In this paper, the information theoretic limits of key generation schemes are investigated, based on the level of estimation error, temporal correlation, and dependence of the eavesdropper and legitimate channels. Three practical candidate key generation schemes are also considered: channel quantization and channel quantization with guardband.
When the eavesdropping channel has a certain correlation with the legitimate channel, the physical layer key is susceptible to eavesdroppers. To ensure the security of the secret key, we propose a two-layer secure (TLS) quantization algorithm in this paper. First, we model the correlation between the distance and the channel correlation and derive the joint probability density function of channel phase and the key capacity. Then, we describe the detail of the TLS algorithm and prove the validity of our algorithm. Finally, we evaluate the performances of the TLS quantization algorithm using two parameters-key rate and bit disagreement rate. The Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the algorithm.