Journal of King Saud University - Computer and Information Sciences

Adaptive physical-layer key generation via RIS phase-shift matrix design in quasi-static environment

Qiangqiang Gao, Weijie Tan, Xin Cao, Lisha Zhang, P.X. Yan, Chunguo Li

Published Aug 20, 2026• 0 citations

Abstract

Abstract In quasi-static environment, the performance of physical-layer key generation (PKG) is limited by low entropy. Deploying reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is a mainstream method to solve this problem. However, the secret key performance (SKP) is generally insufficient at low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In this paper, we propose an RIS-assisted adaptive PKG scheme. Specifically, we design phase based uniform quantization to enhance the randomness of the RIS channel while simplifying computations. Then, we present an RIS phase shift matrix design based on rejection sampling to adapt the quantization algorithm, which can reduce bit disagreement rate (BDR) and improve key generation rate (KGR). Furthermore, to balance the system’s requirements for low BDR and high KGR, we derive a theoretical model for estimating the BDR probability. By computing the theoretical BDR, we determine the maximum quantization order for different SNRs. Combined with a discard strategy, this enables adaptive selection of the quantization order. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme achieves lower BDR and higher KGR than existing approaches. Moreover, it does not require complex algorithms, making it suitable for resource-constrained internet of things scenarios. (RIS_Assist_PKG: https://github.com/GQQ1206/RIS_Assist_PKG )

DOI: 10.1007/s44443-026-01160-0

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