A Channel State Information-Based Key Generation Scheme for Internet of Things

Abstract

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.

Key Generation Technique Based on Channel Characteristics for MIMO-OFDM Wireless Communication Systems

“…This proposed technique combines with a special guard band scheme to achieve a better secret key disagreement ratio performance. In [13], the authors suggested extracting the secret key for Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices in a static environment. In this method, both the channel phase and amplitude are utilized in the key generation procedure.…”

RIS-Enabled Secret Key Generation for Secured Vehicular Communication in the Presence of Denial-of-Service Attacks

“…The unique properties of wireless channels, such as their time-varying, short-term reciprocity, and space-time uniqueness within the coherence interval T c , provide a natural source for generating secret keys [7]. The key-generation process involves channel probing, measurement quantization, information reconciliation, and privacy amplification, resulting in the establishment of a secure shared key between the sender and receiver [8]. The secret key capacity is a crucial aspect of this field of study.…”