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EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking

Efficient physical layer key generation technique in wireless communications

Rushan Lin, Li Xu, He Fang, Chuan Zhen Huang

Published Jan 9, 2020• 37 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract Wireless communications between two devices can be protected by secret keys. However, existing key generation schemes suffer from the high bit disagreement rate and low bit generation rate. In this paper, we propose an efficient physical layer key generation scheme by exploring the Received Signal Strength (RSS) of signals. In order to reduce the high mismatch rate of the measurements and to increase the key generation rate, a pair of transmitter and receiver separately apply adaptive quantization algorithm for quantifying the measurements. Then, we implement a randomness extractor to further increase key generation rate and ensure randomness of generated of keys. Several real-world experiments are implemented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. The results show that compared with the other related schemes, our scheme performs better in bit generation rate, bit disagreement rate, and randomness.

DOI
10.1186/s13638-019-1634-7

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Abstract Wireless communications between two devices can be protected by secret keys. However, existing key generation schemes suffer from the high bit disagreement rate and low bit generation rate. In this paper, we propose an efficient physical layer key generation scheme by exploring the Received Signal Strength (RSS) of signals. In order to reduce the high mismatch rate of the measurements and to increase the key generation rate, a pair of transmitter and receiver separately apply adaptive quantization algorithm for quantifying the measurements. Then, we implement a randomness extractor to further increase key generation rate and ensure randomness of generated of keys. Several real-world experiments are implemented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. The results show that compared with the other related schemes, our scheme performs better in bit generation rate, bit disagreement rate, and randomness.
In symmetric cryptography systems have problems in the distribution of secret keys. The two users who will communicate require sharing keys through the public channel. The proposed solution to overcome these problems is to utilize information from the physical layer (e.g. RSS). Received Signal Strength (RSS) is an indicator for measuring the power received by wireless devices. The advantage of secret key extraction using physical layer information from a wireless channel is that it allows both devices within the transmission range to extract the secret key together. In this paper, we propose a secret key generation scheme adopted from an existing scheme with modifications to improve performance. Our proposed system is applied to static and dynamic conditions to test performance. The proposed algorithm is able to obtain a reduction in KDR (Key Disagreement Rate) up to 48.42% and an increase in the KGR (Key Generation Rate) up to 23.35% when compared to the existing scheme. Our proposed system also successfully passed the randomness using the NIST test with the approximate value of entropy generated 0.80 in static conditions and 0.81 in dynamic conditions.
Shared key generation between two users to exploit the randomness of wireless channels as a source of secret key bits extraction has become an attractive alternative to ensure security in a mobile environment. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of key extraction scheme using measurement results of Received Signal Strength (RSS) on several variations of settings and types of movement. We add the moving average method before the quantization process so our scheme becomes more adaptive to the low variation of RSS, and the use of modified Level Crossing Algorithm to reduce Key Disagreement Rate (KDR) due to half-duplex mode, device limitation, and different types of devices. The results show that our proposed schemes, compared with the existing scheme produce bit stream with the highest entropy, a significant decrease of KDR and passed randomness test from NIST statistical suite.
In order to find an effective secret key generation scheme in wireless networks, many based on received signal strength methods have been proposed.However, the secret bit rates of existing schemes are relatively low.To resolve the problem of low generation rate, a vector quantization scheme is proposed in this paper where channel measurements are reused and every measurement can be quantified into two bits without increasing mismatching rate.Performance simulation results show that our proposed scheme improves the key generation rate almost twice at high entropy in comparison to the traditional schemes.At the same time, our scheme passes the randomness tests of the NIST test suite.
We evaluate the effectiveness of secret key extraction, for private communication between two wireless devices, from the received signal strength (RSS) variations on the wireless channel between the two devices. We use real world measurements of RSS in a variety of environments and settings. Our experimental results show that (i) in certain environments, due to lack of variations in the wireless channel, the extracted bits have very low entropy making these bits unsuitable for a secret key, (ii) an adversary can cause predictable key generation in these static environments, and (iii) in dynamic scenarios where the two devices are mobile, and/or where there is a significant movement in the environment, high entropy bits are obtained fairly quickly. Building on the strengths of existing secret key extraction approaches, we develop an environment adaptive secret key generation scheme that uses an adaptive lossy quantizer in conjunction with Cascade-based information reconciliation [7] and privacy amplification [14]. Our measurements show that our scheme, in comparison to the existing ones that we evaluate, performs the best in terms of generating high entropy bits at a high bit rate. The secret key bit streams generated by our scheme also pass the randomness tests of the NIST test suite [21] that we conduct.
This manuscript aims to generate a secret key for a PHY layer to evaluate the channel characteristics in wireless communications. An algorithmic approach is adopted for multimedia encryption to generate a secret key between two entities communicating with each other in a real time simulation environment such as MATLAB. Two classes of PHY key generation schemes are analyzed for designing the algorithm such as received-signal-strength-based and channel- phase-based protocols. We present a performance comparison of them in terms of key disagreement probability, key generation rate, key bit randomness, scalability, and implementation issues.
Due to the broadcast nature of wireless channels, wireless communication is vulnerable to eavesdropping, message modification, and node impersonation. Securing the wireless communication requires the shared secret keys between the communicating entities. Traditional security schemes rely on public key infrastructures and cryptographic algorithms to manage secret keys. Recently, many physical-layer-based methods have been proposed as alternative solutions for key generation in wireless networks. These methods exploit the inherent randomness of the wireless fading channel to generate secret keys while providing information-theoretical security without intensive cryptographic computations. This article provides an overview of the existing PHY-based key generation schemes exploiting the randomness of the wireless channels. Specifically, we first introduce the fundamental and general framework of the PHY-based key generation schemes and then categorize them into two classes: received-signal-strength-based and channel- phase-based protocols. Finally, we present a performance comparison of them in terms of key disagreement probability, key generation rate, key bit randomness, scalability, and implementation issues.