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Cooperative Physical Layer Secret Key Generation by Virtual Link Estimation

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Physical Layer Security

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Abstract

In recent years, researchers have studied physical layer security (PLS) using unique radio propagation characteristics between two devices for extracting symmetric keys. However, the state of the art has following limitations: (a) paying attention to scenarios when devices are in communication ranges, and (b) considering only mobile devices. Secret key generation for devices which are not in communication ranges and for stationary nodes is a challenging task. In this work, we study the feasibility of generating secret keys between two devices which do not possess any direct link with the help of a trusted relay. We propose a novel key generation protocol for unreachable nodes, and a multi-level quantization mechanism. We implement our solution using off-the-shelf commercially available resource constrained devices suitable for IoT and wireless body area networks. We conduct an extensive set of experiments in indoor environments for various scenarios involving stationary and mobile nodes. Our results reveal that an eavesdropper cannot obtain sufficient useful information about the shared keys when at least any one of the three legitimate devices is mobile. The entropy of shared keys obtained between the legitimate devices ranges from ≈0.97 to 0.98 bit, which is very close to the highest entropy of binary key.

The work has been carried out by Dr. Chitra Javali and Dr. Girish Revadigar as a part of Post-doctoral Research at UNSW Sydney, Australia.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    If we do not assume Relay as a trusted node, active attacks such as man-in-the-middle (MITM) and Byzantine attack are possible. Security against active adversaries is a separate research problem which we do not address in this work.

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Acknowledgment

This work is partially supported by Australian Research Council Discovery grant DP150100564.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R), A*STAR, Singapore, Singapore

    Chitra Javali

  2. Huawei International Pte. Ltd., Singapore, Singapore

    Girish Revadigar

  3. Data61, CSIRO, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Ming Ding

  4. The School of Electrical & Information Engineering, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Zihuai Lin

  5. School of Computer Science and Engineering, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Sanjay Jha

Authors
  1. Chitra Javali
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  2. Girish Revadigar
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  3. Ming Ding
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  4. Zihuai Lin
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  5. Sanjay Jha
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zihuai Lin .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering, Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW, Australia

    Khoa N. Le

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Javali, C., Revadigar, G., Ding, M., Lin, Z., Jha, S. (2021). Cooperative Physical Layer Secret Key Generation by Virtual Link Estimation. In: Le, K.N. (eds) Physical Layer Security. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55366-1_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55366-1_5

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