A Simple Secret Key Generation by Using a Combination of Pre-Processing Method with a Multilevel Quantization

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Electrical Engineering
• Information Security

Background:

• Internet of Things (IoT) devices face security challenges due to limited computational and energy resources.
• Physical Layer Security (PHYSEC) offers a promising solution for securing device communication.
• Existing secret key generation (SKG) schemes often require high computational and communication costs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a simplified SKG scheme for PHYSEC that reduces computational and communication overhead.
• To eliminate the information reconciliation stage in SKG by enhancing channel reciprocity.

Main Methods:

• Investigated PHYSEC leveraging channel reciprocity for SKG.
• Proposed a modified Kalman (MK) pre-processing method.
• Combined MK with multilevel quantization (CMQ) for enhanced reciprocity.

Main Results:

• The proposed combined multilevel quantization (CMQ) approach significantly increases channel reciprocity.
• Achieved identical secret key generation between legitimate users.
• Eliminated the need for the information reconciliation stage.

Conclusions:

• The developed SKG scheme offers a computationally efficient and simplified solution for IoT security.
• Enhanced channel reciprocity through CMQ is key to enabling direct secret key agreement.
• This PHYSEC approach addresses the security needs of resource-constrained IoT devices.