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International Conference on Future Communications and Networks (FCN)

Hybrid Fuzzy and Precise Phase-Based Secret Key Generation for Rail Transit Sensor Networks

Yizhuo Wang, Qinghe Du, Jiyu Chen

Published Nov 18, 2024• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

With the advancement of automation and intelligence in rail transit systems, rail transit sensor networks (RTSN) play a crucial role in detection and maintenance, operation status monitoring, and safety protection. However, the open nature of RTSN makes them susceptible to eavesdropping. This paper proposes a novel key generation algorithm that leverages both fuzzy and precise phase. Contrary to conventional secret key generation (SKG) methods that rely on channel characteristics, our approach eliminates the quantization step. Instead, it utilizes the phase of the channel estimation sequence as the fuzzy phase and maps successfully decoded data as the precise phase. By combining these two types of phases, we rotate the constellation points to achieve encrypted transmission of key information. Numerical results demonstrate that our proposed scheme surpasses traditional methods in terms of reliability and security, significantly enhancing the key generation rate, which provides an effective solution for secure communication on RSTN.

DOI
10.1109/fcn64323.2024.10985423

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•Jan 1, 2015•1 citation
With the advancement of automation and intelligence in rail transit systems, rail transit sensor networks (RTSN) play a crucial role in detection and maintenance, operation status monitoring, and safety protection. However, the open nature of RTSN makes them susceptible to eavesdropping. This paper proposes a novel key generation algorithm that leverages both fuzzy and precise phase. Contrary to conventional secret key generation (SKG) methods that rely on channel characteristics, our approach eliminates the quantization step. Instead, it utilizes the phase of the channel estimation sequence as the fuzzy phase and maps successfully decoded data as the precise phase. By combining these two types of phases, we rotate the constellation points to achieve encrypted transmission of key information. Numerical results demonstrate that our proposed scheme surpasses traditional methods in terms of reliability and security, significantly enhancing the key generation rate, which provides an effective solution for secure communication on RSTN.
Physical layer security (PLS) of wireless communications is becoming increasingly significant with the advent of 6G. The reconciliation of channel-based secret key generation (SKG) methods is necessary to avoid inconsistencies after key generation, resulting in increased communication overhead, leakage of key information, and reduced security performance. This paper proposes a fuzzy secret key generation (FSKG) method that does not require the legitimate user to perform a consistency check after fuzzy extraction of the phase, which is used directly to encrypt the constellation rotation of the key. The proposed scheme allows users to code-decode the key bits to reduce the transmission error probability and improve the key consistency, and the simulation results prove that the proposed FSKG scheme outperforms traditional SKG schemes like CQA and CQG. The simulation results also indicate that the best secure key rate can be achieved by applying PSK modulation.
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.
Wireless communication systems are becoming increasingly important in our daily lives, especially with the rapid expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT). Secure and reliable communication is essential for the correct functioning of critical applications and use cases such as healthcare, finance, transportation, and industrial automation. However, the growing number of connected devices introduces significant challenges to data security and privacy due to the open nature of wireless networks. While traditional encryption methods are effective, they can be resource-intensive and impractical for resource-constrained IoT environments. Physical layer security (PLS) provides a lightweight alternative by leveraging the inherent characteristics of wireless channels to generate symmetric secret keys without requiring third-party infrastructure. The PLS key generation process involves four main stages: channel sampling, quantization, reconciliation, and privacy amplification. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of existing quantization schemes, as this step plays a crucial role in determining the key generation rate (KGR) and key disagreement rate (KDR). Additionally, the paper classifies quantization methods as either lossless or lossy, providing insights into the trade-offs between security and efficiency.
Physical-layer secret key generation (SKG) provides high-level security for data encryption in wireless communications, using the shared unique channel state information between legal partners. Most of SKG schemes focused on only SKG itself, while the combination of SKG and encrypted data transmission using the generated secret keys needs to be explored. Here, we propose and demonstrate a secure wireless communication scheme, where SKG and encrypted data communication are integrated together. For SKG, the randomness originated from the input data is utilized to increase the effective key generation rate (KGR) up to 20.8Kb/s when the input data rate is 250Kb/s. Afterwards, the data is encrypted using the generated secret keys and advanced encryption standard (AES). The feasibility and robustness of the integrated system have been verified by the experimental results. Compared with the system where SKG and encrypted data communication are separated, the time required to transfer the same amount of data will be reduced by 48.04%.
The traditional wireless communication security technology is based on cryptography at the network layer, which exploits computational complexity to make it difficult to crack to achieve encryption. With the ongoing advancement of computing power, computational security may be difficult to maintain. From the viewpoint of information theory, physical layer security technology is an essential instrument for integrating security and communication. This paper mainly studies the quantization steps in the key generation technology of wireless communication physical layer. In this paper, a quantization scheme with extremely low implementation complexity is proposed for key generation. Firstly, utilizing the reciprocity and randomness of the wireless channel, the communication parties conduct channel measurements to collect channel state information (CSI) and study the improvement of CSI extraction by incorporating intelligent reflection surfaces. Then, the proposed hybrid quantization scheme makes full use of CSI and quantizes the CSI and its phase information to obtain key bits. Numerical results show that the proposed scheme improves the quality of key generation and avoids information leakage during transmission, and passes the NIST randomness test.
As an alternative and appealing approach to providing information security in wireless communication systems, secret key generation at physical layer has demonstrated its potential in terms of efficiency and reliability over traditional cryptographic methods. Without the necessity of a management centre for key distribution or reliance on computational complexity, physical layer key generation protocols enable two wireless entities to extract identical and dynamic keys from the randomness of the wireless channels associated with them.\nIn this thesis, the reliability of secret key generation at the physical layer is examined in practical wireless channels with imperfect channel state information (CSI). Theoretical analyses are provided to relate key match rate with channel's signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), degrees of channel reciprocity, and iterations of information reconciliation.\nIn order to increase key match rate of physical layer secret key generation, improved schemes in the steps of channel estimation and sample quantization are proposed respectively. In the channel estimation step, multiple observations of the wireless channels are integrated with a linear processor to provide a synthesized and more accurate estimation of the wireless channel. In the sample quantization step, a magnitude based quantization method with two thresholds is proposed to quantize partial samples, where specific quantization areas are selected to reduce cross-over errors. Significant improvements in key match rate are proven for both schemes in theoretical analysis and numerical simulations. Key match rate can even achieve 100% in both schemes with the assistance of information reconciliation process.\nIn the end, a practical application of physical layer secret key generation is presented, where dynamic keys extracted from the wireless channels are utilized for securing secret data transmission and providing efficient access control.