Channel Whispering: a Protocol for Physical Layer Group Key Generation. Application to IR-UWB through Deconvolution

Abstract

As wireless ad hoc and mobile networks are emerging and the transferred data become more sensitive, information security measures should make use of all the available contextual resources to secure information flows. The physical layer security framework provides models, algorithms, and proofs of concept for generating pairwise symmetric keys over single links between two nodes within communication range. In this study, we focus on cooperative group key generation over multiple Impulse Radio -Ultra Wideband (IR-UWB) channels according to the source model. The main idea, proposed in previous work, consists in generating receiver-specific signals, also called s-signals, so that only the intended receiver has access to the non-observable channels corresponding to its non-adjacent links. Herein, we complete the analysis of the proposed protocol and investigate several signal processing algorithms to generate the s-signal expressed as a solution to a deconvolution problem in the case of IR-UWB. Our findings indicate that it is compulsory to add a parameterizable constraint to the searched s-signal and that the Expectation-Maximization algorithm can provide a stable self-parameterizable solution. Compared to physical layer key distribution methods, the proposed key generation protocol requires less traffic overhead for small cooperative groups while being robust at medium and high signal-to-noise ratios.