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International Electronics Symposium (IES)

Implementation of V2V Communication Security on LoRa-Based Physical Layer Key Generation

Ezekiel Furqon Patongai, Mike Yuliana, Amang Sudarsono

Published Aug 5, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

With the rise of connected vehicular networks, Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication has become a fundamental enabler for intelligent transportation systems. However, the open nature of wireless channels introduces risks such as eavesdropping and key compromise. To address these issues, we propose a secure V2V communication scheme based on Physical Layer Key Generation (PLKG) using LoRa technology. The proposed system utilizes Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) measurements between two moving vehicles as the entropy source. To improve the channel correlation, a Savitzky-Golay filter is applied as a preprocessing step. Adaptive multibit quantization is then used to convert the RSSI into binary sequences, followed by the Cascade algorithm for error reconciliation. To enhance randomness, privacy amplification is applied using universal hashing and SHA-1. Finally, the generated key is used for AES-128 encryption. The system is implemented on Raspberry Pi 4B using AcSiP EK-S76SXB and RAK2245 LoRa modules. Experimental validation was conducted in three movement scenarios firstly both vehicle move from opposite-direction at$\mathbf{1 0 ~ k m} / \mathbf{h}$for$\mathbf{3 0 0}$meters, secondly both vehicle move at the same-direction at$\mathbf{1 0 ~ k m} / \mathbf{h}$for$\mathbf{8 0 0}$meters, and lastly same as the second scenario but with different speed at$20 ~\text{km} / \mathrm{h}$. Results shown that the system achieves a reliable key generation rate (KGR) of up to 176075.73 bit/s while maintaining low computation time, demonstrating its feasibility for secure real-time V2V communication.

DOI
10.1109/ies67184.2025.11160708

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With the rise of connected vehicular networks, Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication has become a fundamental enabler for intelligent transportation systems. However, the open nature of wireless channels introduces risks such as eavesdropping and key compromise. To address these issues, we propose a secure V2V communication scheme based on Physical Layer Key Generation (PLKG) using LoRa technology. The proposed system utilizes Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) measurements between two moving vehicles as the entropy source. To improve the channel correlation, a Savitzky-Golay filter is applied as a preprocessing step. Adaptive multibit quantization is then used to convert the RSSI into binary sequences, followed by the Cascade algorithm for error reconciliation. To enhance randomness, privacy amplification is applied using universal hashing and SHA-1. Finally, the generated key is used for AES-128 encryption. The system is implemented on Raspberry Pi 4B using AcSiP EK-S76SXB and RAK2245 LoRa modules. Experimental validation was conducted in three movement scenarios firstly both vehicle move from opposite-direction at10 km/h\mathbf{1 0 ~ k m} / \mathbf{h}10 km/hfor300\mathbf{3 0 0}300meters, secondly both vehicle move at the same-direction at10 km/h\mathbf{1 0 ~ k m} / \mathbf{h}10 km/hfor800\mathbf{8 0 0}800meters, and lastly same as the second scenario but with different speed at20 km/h20 ~\text{km} / \mathrm{h}20 km/h. Results shown that the system achieves a reliable key generation rate (KGR) of up to 176075.73 bit/s while maintaining low computation time, demonstrating its feasibility for secure real-time V2V communication.
Since the emergence of Internet of Things (IoT) technology on the surface a few years ago, this IoT technology has been advancing. It has attracted the attention of cybercriminals. One of the cybercrime targets is the security of key management systems and their distribution schemes. This paper offers a solution to this issue by using a physical layer key generation (PLKG) scheme which utilizes the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) from a Long Range (LoRa) device as a key extraction source. The proposed scheme utilizes several methods. Polynomial fitting is used for the initial fitting process, 2-Ary quantization for conversion of RSSI to multibit, BCH to correct the difference in bits obtained between the two authorized users, privacy amplification for increased randomness, and AES-128 for encryption of sent messages. The expected outcome of this paper is that the scheme developed can generate keys with high approximate entropy and fulfills randomness requirements so that there is no need to distribute keys between authorized users. Testing the success of the scheme will be carried out in indoor and outdoor environments with static user positions. The test results show that the keys generated in all scenarios meet the randomness requirements with approximate entropy values above 0.01.
Physical-layer security (PLS) schemes use the randomness of the channel parameters, namely, channel state information (CSI) and received signal strength indicator (RSSI) to generate the secret keys. There has been limited work in PLS schemes in long-range (LoRa) wide-area networks (LoRaWANs) which hinder their widespread application. Limitations observed in existing studies include the requirement of high correlation between channel parameter measurements for secret key generation in the proposed schemes and the evaluation of the schemes has only been done in either fully indoor or outdoor environments. The real-world wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and LoRa use cases might not meet both requirements thus making the current PLS schemes inappropriate for these systems. By considering the limitations found in existing PLS schemes, this article proposes LoRA-LiSK, a practical and efficient shared secret key generation scheme for LoRa networks. Our proposed LoRa-LiSK scheme consists of several preprocessing techniques (timestamp matching, two sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov tests, and a Savitzky–Golay filter), multilevel quantization, information reconciliation using Bose–Chaudhuri–Hocquenghem (BCH) codes, and finally, privacy amplification using secure hash algorithm SHA-2. The LoRa-LiSK scheme is extensively evaluated on real WSN/IoT devices in practical application scenarios: 1) indoor to outdoor and 2) LoRa static and mobile outdoor links. It outperforms existing schemes by generating keys with channel parameter measurements of low correlation values (0.2–0.6), while still essentially achieving high key generation rates, and low key disagreement rates (10%–20%). The scheme updates a key in approximately 1 h using an application profile with high transmission rate compared to 3 h reported by existing works while still respecting the duty cycle regulation. It also incurs less communication overhead compared to the existing works.
Low-Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) has emerged as the dominant open specification in recent years due to its ability to offer affordable connectivity to the low-power devices distributed over large geographical areas. However, security issues have not been fully addressed in LPWAN specifications, especially, key distribution and key management. Physical layer key generation, which exploits wireless channel reciprocity and randomness to generate secure keys, has attracted considerable attention in recent years. In this paper, we exploit the physical layer key generation problem in LPWAN communication and present a distributed and lightweight key generation scheme for Long Range (LoRa) based network. It explores the shared randomness extracted from measured RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) as consensus information to generate secure keys. To negotiate the RSSI signal as a bidirectional consistent key sequence, we propose a novel level-crossing quantization algorithm with an improved Cascade key agreement protocol to improve the key generation rate, as well as to avoid information leakage during transmission. We implement the proposed physical layer key generation scheme in a LoRa network prototype. Then we conduct extensive experiments in stationary and mobile indoor environments to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed key generation scheme. Experimental results show that its achievable key rate can reach 29.5% in stationary scenario and 35.5% in mobile scenario. Its key generation rate can exceed 1 bit/s with a lightweight implementation on the LoRa network prototype. For the 128-bit key sequence, it passes the the NIST suite of statistical tests.
Due to the sensitivity of the information exchanged in Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) communication, generating secret keys is critical to secure these communications. As nature is open access, distributed keys are more vulnerable to attacks in the vehicular environment. Physical layer key generation methods using wireless channel characteristics show promise in preventing such attacks, generating keys independently, and removing the need for distribution. In this paper, we present a novel key generation approach in a real vehicular environment based on Channel State Information (CSI), including a new algorithm for key bit extraction. We implemented our algorithm using USRP B210 Software-Defined Radios (SDR) and the industry-standard V2X communication protocol: IEEE 802.11p. The proposed key generation protocol uses the CSI values of each sub-carrier as a source of randomness, from which bits are extracted using a new QAM demodulator quantizer (QAM-Dem-Quan). We compared our technique to state-of-the-art Received Signal Strength (RSS)-based approaches, and show that our method achieves better performance. Moreover, we reached a min-entropy of approximately 70% for the generated keys and a key generation rate of less than150 μs150~\mu \text{s}150 μs/key for key lengths ranging from 16 to 128 bits.
Recent years have witnessed the remarkable growth of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV). Due to the high dynamics and ad-hoc nature of IoV communication, the lack of effective secret key establishment in IoV remains a security bottleneck. Physical layer key generation has emerged as a promising technology to establish a pair of cryptographic keys in a lightweight and information-theoretic secure way. However, prior works mainly focus on legacy communication technologies such as Wi-Fi, ZigBee, and 5G which can only achieve short range IoV communications. The emergence of Long-range (LoRa) communication technology that features long-range, low power, and extremely low data rate, brings new challenges for key generation in long range IoV scenarios. In this paper, we present Vehicle-Key, which is a secret key generation system to secure LoRa-enabled IoV communications. In Vehicle-Key, we design a novel deep learning model that can achieve channel prediction and quantization simultaneously. Additionally, we propose an autoencoder-based reconciliation method that improves the key agreement rate significantly. Extensive real-world experiments show that Vehicle-Key improves the key agreement rate by 15.10%–49.81% and key generation rate by 9–14× compared with the state-of-the-art. Security analysis demonstrates that Vehicle-Key is secure against several common attacks. Moreover, we implement Vehicle-Key on a Raspberry Pi and show that it can be executed in 3.4 ms.
In intelligent transportation systems (ITS), communications between vehicles, i.e. vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications are of greatest importance to facilitate autonomous driving. The current state-of-the-art for secure data exchange in V2V communications relies on public-key cryptography (PKC) consuming significant computational and energy resources for the encryption/decryption process and large bandwidth for the key distribution. To overcome these limitations, physical-layer security (PLS) has emerged as a lightweight solution by exploiting the physical characteristics of the V2V communication channel to generate symmetric cryptographic keys. Currently, key-generation algorithms are designed via empirical parameter settings, without resulting in optimum key-generation performance. In this paper, we devise a key-generation algorithm for PLS in V2V communications by introducing a novel channel response quantisation method that results in optimum performance via analytical parameter settings. Contrary to the current state-of-the-art, the channel responses incorporate all V2V channel attributes that contribute to temporal variability, such as three dimensional (3D) scattering and scatterers' mobility. An extra functionality, namely, Perturbe-Observe (PO), is further incorporated that enables the algorithm to adapt to the inherent non-reciprocity of the V2V channel responses at the legitimate entities. Optimum performance is evidenced via maximisation of the key bit generation rate (BGR) and key entropy (H) and minimisation of the key bit mismatch rate (BMR). A new metric is further introduced, the so-called secret-bit generation rate (SBGR), as the ratio of the number of bits which are successfully used to compose keys to the total amount of channel samples. SBGR unifies BGR and BMR and is thus maximised by the proposed algorithmic process.