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IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology (ICIT)

Physical Layer Key Sharing for an Off-The-Shelf UWB Module

Dutliff Boshoff, Raphael E. Nkrow, Bruno Silva, Gerhard Petrus Hancke

Published Mar 25, 2024• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Physical Layer Key sharing has become a popular topic in today's literature, as it could act as an alternative to computationally expensive RSA protocols. Its importance is emphasized by a number of resource-constrained, battery-powered autonomous robots and personal devices which need to communicate with a wider network. Physical layer key sharing often explores using temporally and spatially variant characteristics of a signal, such as a Wi-fi's channel state information, to produce the same secret keys at different devices. In recent years, Decawave has released an off-the-shelf plug-and-play ultrawideband (UWB) module, which has opened up new possibilities for key sharing. In this paper, we demonstrate how the channel impulse response (CIR) produced by the Decawave module is able to produce secret keys with a bit agreement rate(BAR) of over 89% at different devices in a network. In addition, we provide detailed information on the CIR and the BAR in different real-life environments as well as different scenarios in those environments. Finally, we examine the effect of different types of attackers and show that our system maintains a high level of security. Our paper aims to pioneer a new branch of UWB physical layer key-sharing, which utilizes off-the-shelf modules compared to complex and time-consuming setups.

DOI
10.1109/icit58233.2024.10541009

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Physical Layer Key sharing has become a popular topic in today's literature, as it could act as an alternative to computationally expensive RSA protocols. Its importance is emphasized by a number of resource-constrained, battery-powered autonomous robots and personal devices which need to communicate with a wider network. Physical layer key sharing often explores using temporally and spatially variant characteristics of a signal, such as a Wi-fi's channel state information, to produce the same secret keys at different devices. In recent years, Decawave has released an off-the-shelf plug-and-play ultrawideband (UWB) module, which has opened up new possibilities for key sharing. In this paper, we demonstrate how the channel impulse response (CIR) produced by the Decawave module is able to produce secret keys with a bit agreement rate(BAR) of over 89% at different devices in a network. In addition, we provide detailed information on the CIR and the BAR in different real-life environments as well as different scenarios in those environments. Finally, we examine the effect of different types of attackers and show that our system maintains a high level of security. Our paper aims to pioneer a new branch of UWB physical layer key-sharing, which utilizes off-the-shelf modules compared to complex and time-consuming setups.
The constraints imposed by the computational and energy capabilities of Internet of Things (IoT) devices are challenging for ensuring secure communication between these devices. One promising solution to address these security challenges is leveraging Physical Layer Security (PHYSEC) principles. This paper investigates in the area of PHYSEC, particularly focusing on the utilization of channel reciprocity for generating a secret key, commonly referred to as Physical Layer Secret Key Generation (PSKG), in Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technology. PSKG usually contain an Information Reconciliation (IR) stage to improve the probability for identical keys, which comes with substantial computational and communication cost. The primary objective of this paper is to eliminate this IR stage and its associated costs while still achieving a high probability for identical keys. To accomplish this goal, we propose a Pre-Processing (PP) stage involving a Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT)-based approach. This approach extracts reciprocal randomness from the Channel Impulse Response (CIR). By exploiting the CIR and our proposed PP stage, we were able to slightly improve the key generation rate while reducing the probability of successful attacks by a significant 87% in dynamic environments compared to the state-of-the-art. Notably, our approach does not require a training phase, making it more efficient for IoT devices.
In wireless decentralized networks, security and privacy become more challenging due to stringent architecture and sometimes low-complexity constraints. Confidentiality of the transmissions is usually achieved by symmetric cryptography, which implies the distribution of identical secret keys to the legitimate nodes. Classical solutions for symmetric key distribution can be too complex from a computational or infrastructural point of view. An alternative would be physical layer key generation, which exploits the radio channel as a source of common information. This paper looks into the generation of secret keys from Impulse Radio - Ultra Wideband (IR-UWB) channels using low-power integrated devices. We investigate the possibility to generate identical secret bit sequences in practical environments (e.g., possibly occupied indoor rooms) and operating conditions (e.g., mobility) under specific hardware limitations inherent to device integration (e.g., time resolution and signal dynamics). The main challenge is to obtain reciprocal and random bits at an acceptable rate. Taking into account these three criteria (i.e., reciprocity, randomness, and key length), we describe and evaluate a new quantization scheme adapted to the channel impulse responses acquired by real devices.
Theoretical models of ultrawideband (UWB) radio channels indicate that pairs of UWB radio transceivers measure their common radio channel with a high degree of agreement and third parties are not be able to accurately estimate the state of the common channels. These properties allow generation of secret keys to support secure communications from UWB channels measurements. In this paper, the results of UWB propagation studies are presented that validate the required properties to support secret key generation in a typical indoor environment. Key generation algorithms are employed on the measured data and key lengths on the order of thousands of bits are obtained capable of supporting most popular cryptographic systems. The paper also reports measurements of the spatial and temporal correlation of the UWB channel from which the relative privacy of the secret keys can be determined as well as the rate new secret keys may be generated.
This paper addresses the confidentiality of wireless communications in industrial internet-of-things environments by investigating the feasibility of secret key generation for link-layer encryption using ultra wideband (UWB) signals. Taking advantage of the nanosecond-level temporal resolution offered by ultra wideband, we exploit channel reciprocity to extract highly detailed, noise-like channel measurements, in line with the physical-layer security paradigm. Three key generation algorithms, operating in both the time and frequency domains, are evaluated using real-world data collected through a dedicated measurement campaign in an industrial setting. The analysis, conducted under realistic conditions, examines the impact of practical impairments, such as imperfect channel reciprocity and timing misalignments, on the key agreement rate and the length of the generated keys. The results confirm the strong potential of ultra wideband technology to enable robust physical-layer security, offering a viable and efficient solution for securing wireless communications in complex and dynamic industrial internet-of-things environments.
It has been shown that the radio channel impulse response for a pair of legitimate Ultra-wide band (UWB) transceivers can be used to generate secret keys for secure communications. Past proposed secret key generation algorithms under-exploited the available number of secret key bits from the radio channel. This paper proposes a new efficient method for generation of the shared key where the transceivers use LDPC decoders to resolve the differences in their channel impulse response measurements caused by measurement noise. To ensure secret key agreement, a method of public discussion between the two users is performed using the syndrome from Hamming (7,3) binary codes. An algorithm is proposed to check the equality of generated keys for both legitimate users, and ensure error-free secure communication. The security of this algorithm has been verified by AVISPA. Comparisons are performed with previous work on secret key generation and it has been shown that this algorithm reliably generates longer secret keys in standard UWB radio channels.
To establish a secure communications link between any two transceivers, the communicating parties require some shared secret, or key, with which to encrypt the message so that it cannot be understood by an enemy observer. Using the theory of reciprocity for antennas and electromagnetic propagation, a key distribution method is proposed that uses the ultrawideband (UWB) channel pulse response between two transceivers as a source of common randomness that is not available to enemy observers in other locations. The maximum size of a key that can be shared in this way is characterized by the mutual information between the observations of two radios, and an approximation and upper bound on mutual information is found for a general multipath channel and examples given for UWB channel models. The exchange of some information between the parties is necessary to achieve these bounds, and various information-sharing strategies are considered and their performance is simulated. A qualitative assessment of the vulnerability of such a secret sharing system to attack from a radio in a nearby location is also given.