Secret key generation using reciprocity in Ultra-wideband outdoor wireless channels

Abstract

To investigate schemes of secret key generation from Ultra-wideband (UWB) channel, we study a statistical characterization of UWB outdoor channel for a campus playground scenario based on extensive measurements. Moreover, an efficient secret key generation mechanism exploiting multipath relative delay is developed, and verification of this algorithm is conducted in UWB Line-of-sight (LOS) outdoor channels. For the first time, we compare key-mismatch probability of UWB indoor and outdoor environments. Simulation results demonstrate that the number of multipath proportionally affects key generation rate and key-mismatch probability. In comparison to the conventional method using received signal strength (RSS) as a common random source, our mechanism achieves better performance in terms of common secret bit generation. Simultaneously, security analysis indicates that the proposed scheme can still guarantee security even in the sparse outdoor physical environment free of many reflectors. © 2014 KSII.