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International Conference on Engineering and Telecommunication (EnT)

Experimental Study of Channel Frequency-Correlation in an Indoor Multipath Environment for Wireless Key Generation

Aidar A. Galiev, Сулимов Амир Ильдарович, Arkadiy V. Karpov

Published Nov 24, 2021• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Channel randomness in wireless communication systems can be employed for generating two copies of a key bits sequence in a given pair of nodes. Among others, the differential phase method that uses phase samples of two coherent frequency tones for generating high-entropy key bits sequence seems to be a promising technique. Unfortunately, implementation of the differential phase method relies on correct specification of the frequency separation of the probing tones, which requires additional study of the frequency-correlation properties of the propagation medium. This paper is devoted to experimental study of the channel frequency-correlation properties in a typical indoor environment. Frequency autocorrelation functions are experimentally determined for the signal envelope and carrier phase on four different indoor radio links. The estimates of the channel coherence bandwidth and multipath delay spread are performed, and the influence of the line-of-sight component (LOS) is considered. Our experiments showed that, depending on the LOS intensity, the coherence bandwidth on typical indoor radio links of 20-meters length varies from 8 MHz to 25 MHz (for the correlation level of 0.2), whereas for samples of the carrier phase, the coherence bandwidth is somewhat narrower and varies from 6 MHz to 19 MHz.

DOI
10.1109/ent50460.2021.9681779

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Channel randomness in wireless communication systems can be employed for generating two copies of a key bits sequence in a given pair of nodes. Among others, the differential phase method that uses phase samples of two coherent frequency tones for generating high-entropy key bits sequence seems to be a promising technique. Unfortunately, implementation of the differential phase method relies on correct specification of the frequency separation of the probing tones, which requires additional study of the frequency-correlation properties of the propagation medium. This paper is devoted to experimental study of the channel frequency-correlation properties in a typical indoor environment. Frequency autocorrelation functions are experimentally determined for the signal envelope and carrier phase on four different indoor radio links. The estimates of the channel coherence bandwidth and multipath delay spread are performed, and the influence of the line-of-sight component (LOS) is considered. Our experiments showed that, depending on the LOS intensity, the coherence bandwidth on typical indoor radio links of 20-meters length varies from 8 MHz to 25 MHz (for the correlation level of 0.2), whereas for samples of the carrier phase, the coherence bandwidth is somewhat narrower and varies from 6 MHz to 19 MHz.
Wireless Key Generation exploits randomness of fast fading of a multipath radio channel to create identical copies of a shared encryption key at two communication nodes. A promising way for creating a highly secure key is use of samples of differential phase, which allows to overcome short-term instability of frequency standards and to make key generation devices smaller. This study examines frequency-correlation properties of the multipath channel to justify a feasibility of encryption keys generation with the differential phase method. By computer simulation, frequency autocorrelation functions of the envelope and carrier phase of a multipath radio signal are obtained, and estimates of the channel coherence bandwidth are made for a typical urban propagation environment. For random variations of the differential phase of a two-sine probe signal, a probability distribution is analyzed, its uniformity tests are done, and estimates of Shannon entropy at various frequency separations of the two probing tones are made. An effect of the line-of-sight wave and the number of multipaths on the channel frequency-correlation function and on probabilistic properties of the differential phase is considered.
The Wireless Key Distribution is one of the most promising and fast growing areas in modern applied cryptography. This area covers various techniques of secure secret key distribution between two legitimate users who share a common radio channel with unpredictable signal fading in a multipath environment. In essence, the pair of legitimate nodes uses their multipath radio channel as a source of common randomness to establish a shared encryption key. There are a number of studies have been presented in recent publications devoted to experimental implementation of the Wireless Key Distribution using random variations in the received power of fading signal. Despite a number of valuable benefits, there is a much fewer experimental verifications of phase method with all of them are limited to a key distribution within some indoor environments only. Apparently, this is due to the technical difficulties of precise synchronization of legitimate users' equipment to provide coherent carrier phase measurements in a microwave radio frequency range. In this regard, our experiments can be considered as the first experimental verification of secure Wireless Key Distribution by observing random variations in the carrier phase of multipath signal at moving a mobile user within a real outdoor environment. To perform this, we used wireless Internet transmission of concurrent service data to maintain a required level of synchronization of one stationary and one mobile legal nodes. Despite the humble key generation rates we have achieved in practice, our results show possibility of secure wireless key distribution between the base station and mobile subscriber in a cellular communications scenario.
A less expensive and more flexible solution to the problem of sharing secret keys between wireless nodes is to use the inherent randomness in the wireless channel between them as the source for extracting bits of the secret key between these nodes. We propose a new secret key distribution approach that utilizes the uniformly distributed phase information of channel responses to extract shared cryptographic keys under narrowband multipath fading models. Compared to existing approaches which only support pair wise key distribution, our scheme is highly scalable and can support efficient group key distribution. Various key distribution schemes are appraised to determine the level of security and connectivity. Simulated results show that key distribution exploiting channel phase has improved resilience against node capture. them as the source for extracting bits of the secret key between these nodes. Shared secret key distribution from channel measurements is an application which benefits from the randomnessof the multipath channel. It would not, for example, work in a truly free-space environment (such as deep space radio links). Secret sharing benefits from: • Reciprocity of the wireless radio channel: The multipath properties of the radio channel (gains, phase shifts, and delays) at any point in time and on any given frequency channel are identical on both directions of the link. • Temporal variations in the radio channel: Over time, the multipath channel changes due to movement of either end of the link, and any motion of people and objects in the environment near the link. An application may specifically request a user to move or shake the wireless device in order to generate more temporal variation. • Spatial variations: The properties of the radio channel are unique to the locations of the two endpoints of the link. An eavesdropper at a third location more than a few wavelengths from either endpoint will measure a different, uncorrelated radio channel. The proposed scheme is more flexible and can be applied in both static and mobile environments. Our scheme introduces phase randomness to bit distribution and removes the reliance on node mobility to obtain high entropy bits. We evaluate the proposed schemes through both analytical and simulation studies. The parameters of the scheme can be selected such that a desired level of key distribution accuracy and reliability is achieved with high efficiency.
A few years ago, physical layer based techniques have started to be considered as a way to improve security in wireless communications. A well known problem is the management of ciphering keys, both regarding the generation and distribution of these keys. A way to alleviate such difficulties is to use a common source of randomness for the legitimate terminals, not accessible to an eavesdropper. This is the case of the fading propagation channel, when exact or approximate reciprocity applies. Although this principle has been known for long, not so many works have evaluated the effect of radio channel properties in practical environments on the degree of randomness of the generated keys. To this end, we here investigate indoor radio channel measurements in different environments and settings at either 2.4625 GHz or 5.4 GHz band, of particular interest for WIFI related standards. Key bits are extracted by quantizing the complex channel coefficients and their randomness is evaluated using the NIST test suite. We then look at the impact of the carrier frequency, the channel variability in the space, time, and frequency degrees of freedom used to construct a long secret key, in relation to the nature of the radio environment such as the LOS/NLOS character.
Randomness of channel in wireless communication systems can be used to generate identical copies of secret encryption key at both sides of radio link. Such possibility is based on the channel reciprocity and on randomness of radio propagation paths between the legitimate users, which are unknown to possible adversaries. Users generate identical encryption keys from measurements of random parameters of multipath signal (e.g. carrier phase). In this paper, we investigate experimentally a possibility of malicious manipulation over the received multipath signal if a hostile transmitter emits an imitating pseudo signal, which contains some deterministic imposing modulation. In this case, the adversary forces the phase of the signal received by legal users to follow the external modulation known to him. Experimental dependence of the cross-correlation level between the phase measurements of the legal users and adversary on the power of imposing pseudo signal is presented.
Exploiting unique wireless channel characteristics like signal strength for secret key generation has been recently studied by researchers. These schemes are lightweight and suitable for resource constrained wearable devices. However, a major drawback of existing schemes is that the successive channel samples with small sampling interval will have high correlation in time. This reduces the entropy and bit rate of keys. In this paper, we present dual-link based Radio Frequency fingerprinting solution - DLINK, which dynamically identifies the suitable multipath link to generate secret keys with improved entropy and bit rate in fast as well as slow fading channel conditions. We conduct an extensive set of experiments with real sensor devices mounted on subjects in multiple indoor environments. Our results show that, DLINK reduces the correlation of successive channel samples by 67%, and has 5 times higher bit rate, and improved entropy in all channel conditions compared to existing solutions.