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Applying Intelligent Reflective Surface to Channel Phase Probing in Wireless Secret Key Generation

Xinjin Lu, Jing Lei, Yuxin Shi, Wei Li

Published Apr 4, 2022• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract Aiming at the problem of secret key generation in the static wireless communication environment, this paper proposes a scheme applying intelligent reflective surface to channel phase probing (IRS-CPP) in wireless secret key generation. Firstly, both legitimate parties utilize OFDM signals for channel probing to obtain the corresponding channel phase response. Secondly, the passive elements in the IRS are used to reflect the probing signal, which can effectively change the signal phases. Finally, the secret key can be obtained after reconciliation and privacy amplification. This scheme makes full use of the reciprocity of the phase response in wireless channels, and applys the IRS elements to change the static environment indirectly. Compared with the existing key generation scheme, the proposed scheme effectively improves the performance of secret key generation in static environments.

DOI
10.21203/rs.3.rs-1468291/v1

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•Dec 18, 2020•99 citations
Abstract Aiming at the problem of secret key generation in the static wireless communication environment, this paper proposes a scheme applying intelligent reflective surface to channel phase probing (IRS-CPP) in wireless secret key generation. Firstly, both legitimate parties utilize OFDM signals for channel probing to obtain the corresponding channel phase response. Secondly, the passive elements in the IRS are used to reflect the probing signal, which can effectively change the signal phases. Finally, the secret key can be obtained after reconciliation and privacy amplification. This scheme makes full use of the reciprocity of the phase response in wireless channels, and applys the IRS elements to change the static environment indirectly. Compared with the existing key generation scheme, the proposed scheme effectively improves the performance of secret key generation in static environments.
Focusing on the issue of secret key generation for transportation systems and electronic devices in possible less-dynamic channel conditions, this paper proposes an intelligent reflective surface aided channel phase probing scheme (IRS-CPP) for improving physical layer key generation. Specifically, we consider the model that both legitimate nodes first acquire the secret key from the channel phase response by employing channel probing. Then, the passive IRS are utilized to enhance the probing signal by using random phase shifts, which can effectively modify the signal phases. Furthermore, we provide the performance analysis of the proposed scheme in terms of the theoretical key capacity to estimate performance of the scheme. Finally, comprehensive results including the key capacity, key generation rate (KGR), key inconsistency rate (KIR) and key randomness are investigated. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can effectively enhance the physical layer key generation performance in the static scenario compared with the benchmark key generation schemes.
Physical layer secret key generation (SKG) is a promising supplement for high-level encryption, which leverages the channel reciprocity and the natural randomness of wireless channel. However, practical implementations often exhibit static environment. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a novel secret key generation scheme assisted by an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) which can smartly reconfigure the radio signal propagation to improve the secret key rate of SKG. Specially, we formulate the minimum achievable secret key capacity in the IRS-assisted multiple-input single-output (MISO) system with multiple eavesdroppers. Then, an optimization framework for designing IRS reflecting coefficients based on the secret key capacity lower bound is proposed. Numerical results show that our optimal IRS-assisted SKG scheme can achieve much higher achievable secret key capacity when compared with two benchmark schemes.
Physical layer secret key generation is a promising candidate to achieve one-time-pad encryption approach for the wireless communication system. However, in a static environment, the secret key rate is low due to the lack of channel time-variation. To solve this problem, this letter proposes a novel secret key generation scheme assisted by an intelligent reflecting surface with discrete phase shifts. In the scheme, legitimate nodes construct the dynamic time-varying channel by rapidly and randomly switching the phase of IRS elements. Then, channel coefficients are used to generate the secret key. Based on the IRS channel model, we derive the probability distribution of the channel coefficient and the expressions of the secret key rate. Furthermore, we optimize the secret key rate by adjusting the switching time of the IRS phase. Monte Carlo simulation and numerical results show that our proposed scheme can update the secret key in a static environment.
Physical layer key generation is a promising candidate for cryptographic key establishment between two wireless communication parties. It offers information-theoretic security and is an attractive alternative to public-key techniques. Here, the inherent randomness of wireless radio channels is used as a shared entropy source to generate cryptographic key material. However, practical implementations often suffer from static channel conditions which exhibit a limited amount of randomness. In the past, considerable research efforts have been made to address this fundamental limitation. However, current solutions are not generic or require dedicated hardware extensions such as reconfigurable antennas. In this paper, we propose a novel wireless key generation architecture based on randomized channel responses from an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS). Due to its passive nature, a cooperative IRS is well-suited to provide randomness for conventional resource-constrained radios. We conduct the first practical studies to successfully demonstrate IRS-based physical-layer key generation with an OFDM system. In a static environment, using a single subcarrier only, our IRS-assisted prototype system achieves a key generation rate (KGR) of 97.39 bps with 6.5% key disagreement rate (KDR) after quantization, while passing standard randomness tests.
Symbiotic radio (SR) has recently emerged as a promising technology to boost spectrum efficiency of wireless communications by allowing reflective communications underlying the active RF communications. In this paper, we leverage SR to boost physical layer security by using an array of passive reflecting elements constituting the intelligent reflecting surface (IRS), which is reconfigurable to induce diverse RF radiation patterns. In particular, by switching the IRS’s phase shifting matrices, we can proactively create dynamic channel conditions, which can be exploited by the transceivers to extract common channel features and thus used to generate secret keys for encrypted data transmissions. As such, we firstly present the design principles for IRS-assisted key generation and verify a performance improvement in terms of the secret key generation rate (KGR). Our analysis reveals that the IRS’s random phase shifting may result in a non-uniform channel distribution that limits the KGR. Therefore, to maximize the KGR, we propose both a heuristic scheme and deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to control the switching of the IRS’s phase shifting matrices. Simulation results show that the DRL approach for IRS-assisted key generation can significantly improve the KGR.
We propose and analyze secret key generation using intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted wireless communication networks. To this end, we first formulate the minimum achievable secret key capacity for an IRS acting as a passive beamformer in the presence of multiple eavesdroppers. Next, we develop an optimization framework for the IRS reflecting coefficients based on the secret key capacity lower bound. To derive a tractable and efficient solution, we design and analyze a semidefinite relaxation (SDR) and successive convex approximation (SCA) based algorithm for the proposed optimization. Simulation results show that employing our IRS-based algorithm can significantly improve the secret key generation capacity for a wide-range of wireless channel parameters.