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IEEE Access

Mapping Cooperative Key Generation to Location-Based Security: A Study on Static Free-Space

Mohammad Reza Yari, Paeiz Azmi, Moslem Forouzesh

Published Jan 1, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In secret key generation (SKG), both communicating parties require access to a reciprocal entropy source. Free-space communication fails to provide this due to its strong line-of-sight (LoS) link and absence of multipath scattering. In general, in a free-space environment, SKG faces two primary challenges: a low key generation rate (KGR) and heightened security threats due to a lack of spatial decorrelation. In static free-space environments, the lack of temporal variation further exacerbates challenges. This paper aims to identify and enhance techniques from SKG literature to enable a location-based approach for secure key establishment. Important solutions include exploiting channel phase information as a common measurable parameter, adopting mutual random phase injection to involve the eavesdropper in the eavesdropping process while improving KGR, and introducing geometric secrecy as a security evaluation framework. A principal design objective in geometric secrecy is reducing the vulnerability region to restrict eavesdropping opportunities. To accomplish this, we propose a cooperative key generation (CKG) scheme to shrink this region. In our proposed CKG scheme, the sampling time is primarily governed by the switching time between transmit and receive modes. For information reconciliation, a selection algorithm for a shortened Bose–Chaudhuri–Hocquenghem (SBCH) code is proposed, and SBCH combined with a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) corrects bit mismatches. Worst-case channel sampling and information reconciliation leakage rates are analyzed. The leftover hash lemma is applied during privacy amplification to render leaked information useless. Simulation results indicate that the proposed CKG scheme achieves enhanced effectiveness with increased the number of quantization levels, while a wider angular guard zone plays a critical role in improving the KGR.

DOI
10.1109/access.2026.3733976

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In secret key generation (SKG), both communicating parties require access to a reciprocal entropy source. Free-space communication fails to provide this due to its strong line-of-sight (LoS) link and absence of multipath scattering. In general, in a free-space environment, SKG faces two primary challenges: a low key generation rate (KGR) and heightened security threats due to a lack of spatial decorrelation. In static free-space environments, the lack of temporal variation further exacerbates challenges. This paper aims to identify and enhance techniques from SKG literature to enable a location-based approach for secure key establishment. Important solutions include exploiting channel phase information as a common measurable parameter, adopting mutual random phase injection to involve the eavesdropper in the eavesdropping process while improving KGR, and introducing geometric secrecy as a security evaluation framework. A principal design objective in geometric secrecy is reducing the vulnerability region to restrict eavesdropping opportunities. To accomplish this, we propose a cooperative key generation (CKG) scheme to shrink this region. In our proposed CKG scheme, the sampling time is primarily governed by the switching time between transmit and receive modes. For information reconciliation, a selection algorithm for a shortened Bose–Chaudhuri–Hocquenghem (SBCH) code is proposed, and SBCH combined with a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) corrects bit mismatches. Worst-case channel sampling and information reconciliation leakage rates are analyzed. The leftover hash lemma is applied during privacy amplification to render leaked information useless. Simulation results indicate that the proposed CKG scheme achieves enhanced effectiveness with increased the number of quantization levels, while a wider angular guard zone plays a critical role in improving the KGR.
Given the inherent constraint of low key generation rates in physical layer key generation schemes, mutual random phase injection is considered a viable solution for establishing common randomness quantities among legitimate nodes. This paper analyzes the confidentiality of a phase-based group key generation scheme for uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) communications, which is designed for a star topology and evaluated in a static environment. To this end, a geometric secrecy approach is utilized to determine both vulnerability and secrecy regions, incorporating a variety of eavesdropping strategies for a comprehensive analysis. In static environments characterized by a dominant line of sight (LoS), spatial correlation presents a security vulnerability in non-proximity regions. This issue is addressed using multiple carrier frequencies during the channel probing stage to enhance the secrecy regions. Accordingly, the extent of vulnerability regions is substantially affected by the selected carrier frequencies and the intervals between them. Furthermore, the analysis determined the significant dependence of the system’s optimal performance on the number of legitimate nodes and their spatial layouts. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated by analyzing both the required number of time slots for key generation and the bit mismatch rate (BMR), which is introduced to measure the quality of the generated keys. Moreover, the analysis confirms the randomness of the generated bit sequences via the NIST test suite and highlights the high scalability of our approach compared to existing work.
Mutual random phase injection can be considered an appropriate solution for tackling the low key generation rate issue in physical layer key generation schemes. In this paper, the confidentiality of a phase-based group secret key generation scheme has been analyzed by employing a geometric secrecy approach in a static environment. Accordingly, we exploit this approach to achieve some common randomness quantities in our group model. For this purpose, the process of key generation is defined for a star topology. Next, both vulnerability and secrecy regions are identified. To address the challenge of security vulnerability in non-proximity areas due to the spatial correlation in static environments with dominant line-of-sight (LoS), multiple carrier frequencies have been employed at the channel probing stage to enhance the secrecy regions. Finally, the key error probability is provided not only to establish an appropriate evaluation of the quality of the generated keys but also to show the efficiency of our proposed scheme in comparison with previous works.
The Secret Key Generation (SKG) scheme that exploits the reciprocity and uniqueness of wireless channel between two users plays a significant part in a new increasing distributed security system. The scheme performance can be distinguished based on the low value of Key disagreement Rate (KDR), the high value of Key Generation Rate (KGR), as well as the fulfillment of the NIST randomness standard. The previous SKG scheme has a high KDR due to a direct quantization of a measurement result of the Received Signal Strength (RSS). To overcome the above issue, we conduct a pre-processing of measurement result before quantization with the Kalman method. The pre-process is carried out to improve the channel reciprocity between two legitimate users with the objective to reduce the bit mismatch. Through an experiment, we propose a new quantization scheme called a Modified Multi-Bit (MMB) that uses a multi-bit system on every level of quantization. The test results show that the proposed combination of preprocessing and the MMB scheme has a better performance compared to the existing schemes in terms of KDR and KGR. The Secret Key generated by our scheme also fulfills the NIST randomness standard.
With the advent of innovative wireless technologies and the rapid growth of diverse connected devices, ensuring communication security has become a critical challenge for the future massively connected beyond 5th generation (B5G) wireless networks. The physical layer security (PLS) approach leverages the inherent physical medium characteristics of communication networks to provide secure communications. In particular, the wireless channel-based secret key generation (SKG) is a PLS approach that creates symmetric keys for message encryption/decryption by exploiting the randomness inherent in wireless channels while relying on the channel to be reciprocal between the nodes. This work proposes a novel SKG algorithm that emphasizes the pre-processing and quantization stages with the aim to increase the key generation rate (KGR) and the key agreement rate (KAR) between the legitimate nodes. The algorithm employs biasing of selective samples and sliding-window weighted averaging of the Generalized Gamma fading channel samples based on the channel’s average contiguous duration (ACD) metric, a second-order fading statistic, to enhance the channel reciprocity. The proposed scheme may also be used to improve the key randomness rate (KRR) by using a non-contiguous multi-level quantization strategy that evenly sets the quantization intervals to accommodate a similar number of channel samples across these intervals. Thus, a desired trade-off between the KGR, KAR, and KRR to meet operational requirements can be achieved with the proposed scheme. Finally, a comprehensive analysis of the performance gains of the proposed scheme in relation to other notable works is conducted by investigating the impact of several channel and algorithmic parameters on the KGR, KAR, and KRR of these schemes.
Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks generally contain resource-constrained devices that require an energy-efficient key generation procedure to producing secure keys at a faster rate. The physical characteristics of the wireless channel can be exploited to secure communication within IoT networks. In particular, secret keys can be generated by leveraging on the randomness of the wireless physical channel between two communicating parties. The conventional mechanism of generating keys at the physical layer, i.e., using channel probing, quantization, information reconciliation, and privacy amplification, may not be preferable for IoT devices. In addition, in some cases IoT devices may be deployed in static environments, wherein the channel coherence time is too high to generate keys at a faster rate and with the desired randomness. This study proposes a mapping table-based key distribution scheme for IoT environments, wherein multiple characteristics of the random channel are combined to improve not only the key generation rate (KGR) but also the key agreement rate (KAR) and bit error rate (BER). In the proposed scheme, both the channel magnitude and the phase are exploited in the key generation process. The proposed scheme is immune to channel estimation errors while providing sufficient randomness in the static environment. Additionally, the scheme is thoroughly investigated for different scenarios including the case of a smarter eavesdropper, which attempts to estimate the channel between the legitimate nodes. This case verifies the robustness of the proposed scheme in different settings and attack models.
The inherent randomness of wireless radio channels can be employed to extract secrets, whenever the channel reciprocity holds. Privacy amplification is an ingredient step for removing the redundancy of key, of which, the mount of information leaked to potential eavesdroppers, is often difficult to determine. In this paper, we propose a secret-key generation scheme without privacy amplification, of which the disagreement of key is coordinated through the reconciliation of sample positions as did in the level-crossing scheme. Compared to the level-crossing scheme, the proposed approach accumulates the reliable samples and further employs multi-bit quantization for improving the rate of secret-key generation. The accumulated samples should be decorrelated for generating random keys. Through extensive simulations, we find that the Karhunen-Loève transform for decorrelation is very sensitive in implementation.