Key generation based on acceleration data of shaking processes

Abstract

Hard restrictions in computing power and energy consumption favour symmetric key methods to encrypt the communication in wireless body area networks which in term impose questions on effective and user-friendly unobtrusive ways for key distribution. In this paper, we present a novel approach to establish a secure connection between two devices by shaking them together. Instead of distributing or exchanging a key, the devices independently generate a key from the measured acceleration data by appropriate signal processing methods. Exhaustive practical experiments based on acceleration data gathered from real hardware prototypes have shown that in about 80% of the cases, a common key can be successfully generated. The average entropy of these generated keys exceed 13bits. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.