Shared Secret Key Generation via Carrier Frequency Offsets

This work presents a novel method to generate secret keys shared between a legitimate node pair (Alice and Bob) to safeguard the communication between them from an unauthorized node (Eve). To this end, we exploit the {\it reciprocal carrier frequency offset} (CFO) between the legitimate node pair to...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2019-02
Main Authors: Aman, Waqas, Aneeqa Ijaz, M Mahboob Ur Rahman, Dushanta Nalin K Jayakody, Pervaiz, Haris
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Binary phase shift keying
Carrier frequencies
Computer memory
Computer simulation
Frequency stability
Nodes
Offsets
Public Key Infrastructure
Signal to noise ratio
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Summary:This work presents a novel method to generate secret keys shared between a legitimate node pair (Alice and Bob) to safeguard the communication between them from an unauthorized node (Eve). To this end, we exploit the {\it reciprocal carrier frequency offset} (CFO) between the legitimate node pair to extract common randomness out of it to generate shared secret keys. The proposed key generation algorithm involves standard steps: the legitimate nodes exchange binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) signals to perform blind CFO estimation on the received signals, and do equi-probable quantization of the noisy CFO estimates followed by information reconciliation--to distil a shared secret key. Furthermore, guided by the Allan deviation curve, we distinguish between the two frequency-stability regimes---when the randomly time-varying CFO process i) has memory, ii) is memoryless; thereafter, we compute the key generation rate for both regimes. Simulation results show that the key disagreement rate decreases exponentially with increase in the signal to noise ratio of the link between Alice and Bob. Additionally, the decipher probability of Eve decreases as soon as either of the two links observed by the Eve becomes more degraded compared to the link between Alice and Bob.
ISSN:2331-8422