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International Symposium on Wireless Communication Systems

Real-time Physical Layer Secure Key Generation in a mmWave Communication System

Navaneetha Channiganathota Manjappa, Lara Wimmer, Nebojša Maletić, Eckhard Grass

Published Sep 6, 2021• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Physical layer security is one of the trending research areas in tackling data security issues of wireless networks. The main focus of this work is to explore practically the possibilities and performance of secret key generation solutions exploiting wireless channel randomness. This paper describes the implementation of a real-time secure key generation algorithm in a 60 GHz millimetre wave (mmWave) communication system. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated systematically for different parameter combinations to find the optimal parameter values for the system in an indoor static office environment.

DOI
10.1109/iswcs49558.2021.9562194

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International Symposium on Networks, Computers and Communications (ISNCC)•Oct 22, 2024•1 citation
Physical layer security is one of the trending research areas in tackling data security issues of wireless networks. The main focus of this work is to explore practically the possibilities and performance of secret key generation solutions exploiting wireless channel randomness. This paper describes the implementation of a real-time secure key generation algorithm in a 60 GHz millimetre wave (mmWave) communication system. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated systematically for different parameter combinations to find the optimal parameter values for the system in an indoor static office environment.
Secret key generation based on wireless channel reciprocity is a promising area of research towards ensuring secure wireless communication. In this paper, we propose a method of generating secret keys using channel diversity obtained via millimeter wave (mmWave) beamforming at 60 GHz. The pro-posed method is simulated using the QuaDRiGa channel model considering an industrial nonline of sight (NLOS) environment. We verify the method by conducting experiments using a 60 GHz software-defined-radio (SDR) communication system with a linear phased-array-antenna of 16 dual patch elements. Further, we present a composite key generation method in which both the real and imaginary parts of the channel state information (CSI) are utilised, and several sub-keys obtained from individual beam directions are appended. As a result, we can generate long composite keys with high entropy and secrecy. The keys randomness are assessed employing the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) statistical test suite, showing the generated keys are highly random.
In recent years, physical layer security has become one of the core technologies for wireless communication system security. Physical layer encryption is based on the inherent reciprocity, time-varying, spatial uniqueness and unpredictability of wireless communication systems to generate keys, which are naturally unforgeable and steganography-proof. However, the research of physical layer key generation technology also faces many challenges, such as the problem of poor key generation performance due to signal interference, the problem of lower randomness and slower key generation rate in quasi-static channel environment, and the problem of lower key consistency between two legitimate communication parties due to the existence of channel estimation errors; this paper provides a systematic explanation of the traditional model of key generation for wireless channels and a typical solution for this series of problems. In this paper, the traditional model of wireless channel key generation is systematically explained, and the typical solutions to this series of problems are studied, analysed and compared in terms of performance.
Extracting secret keys from millimeter wave (mmWave) wireless channels fast and efficiently for securing communications between mmWave electronic devices is a challenge due to the limitations of static environments. In this paper, we propose a random beam switching (RBS) based physical layer key generation (PLKG) scheme in the mmWave systems. Utilizing the sparsity characteristics of mmWave channels between electronic devices, we apply virtual angles of effective-beams and activated-beams as the random source. Through channel detection, we establish an RBS space between the transmitter and receiver. Then they randomly select beams from the RBS space and transmit reference signals to generate consistent keys. Furthermore, by using information theory, we analyze the effectiveness, reliability and security performance of RBS scheme theoretically. Specifically, we derive the theoretical expression of key generation rate (KGR) and then obtain its upper bound. We also prove that the key mismatch ratio (KMR) approaches zero in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) region. Then we demonstrate that the eavesdropper cannot obtain any information about the activated-beams. Numerical results are provided to verify our theoretical analysis. We demonstrate that the RBS scheme can provide sufficient secret keys even in static environments while achieving good secrecy performance to safeguard electronic devices.
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.
Secret key generation in physical layer security exploits the unpredictable random nature of wireless channels. The millimeter-wave (mmWave) channels have limited multipath and channel randomness in static environments. In this paper, for mmWave secret key generation of physical layer security, we use a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) to induce randomness directly in wireless environments, without adding complexity to transceivers. We consider RIS to have continuous individual phase shifts (CIPS) and derive the RIS-assisted reflection channel distribution with its parameters. Then, we propose continuous group phase shifts (CGPS) to increase the randomness specifically at legal parties. Since the continuous phase shifts are expensive to implement, we analyze discrete individual phase shifts (DIPS) and derive the corresponding channel distribution, which is dependent on the quantization bit. We then derive the secret key rate (SKR) to evaluate the randomness performance. With the simulation results verifying the analytical results, this work explains the mathematical principles and lays a foundation for future mmWave evaluation and optimization of artificial channel randomness.
The performance of practical millimetre wave (mmWave) communication systems is affected by different hardware impairments. This can significantly impact the channel reciprocity-based physical layer security (PLS) methods. This paper studies the impact of in-and quadrature-phase (IQ) imbalance on the physical layer secure key generation algorithm performance. Numerical analysis is performed in MATLAB by modelling and simulating the IQ imbalance, which is then applied to the 60 GHz channel used to generate secret keys. The study's outcome shows that IQ imbalance increases bit mismatches up to an average of 5% for an amplitude imbalance of 1.4 dB and a phase imbalance of 7°. However, additional iterations of parity bit sequence exchanges can recover these in the reconciliation phase. As a result, the information is slightly more exposed to an eavesdropper.