Information-theoretically secret key generation for fading wireless channels

—The multipath-rich wireless environment associated with typical wireless usage scenarios is characterized by a fading channel response that is time-varying, location-sensitive, and uniquely shared by a given transmitter–receiver pair. The complexity associated with a richly scattering environment implies that the short-term fading process is inherently hard to predict and best modeled stochastically, with rapid decorrelation properties in space, time, and frequency. In this paper, we demonstrate how the channel state between a wireless transmitter and receiver can be used as the basis for building practical secret key generation protocols between two entities. We begin by presenting a scheme based on level crossings of the fading process, which is well-suited for the Rayleigh and Rician fading models associated with a richly scattering environment. Our level crossing algorithm is simple, and incorporates a self-authenticating mechanism to prevent adversarial manipulation of messag...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: TIFS
• Authors: Chunxuan Ye, Suhas Mathur, Alex Reznik, Yogendra Shah, Wade Trappe, Narayan B. Mandayam
• Keywords: Channel State, Scattering Environment, Secret Key Generation, TIFS 2010