Evaluation of Physical Layer Secret Key Generation for IoT Devices

Abstract

As aspects of our daily lives become more interconnected with the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT), it is imperative that our devices are reliable and secure from threats. Vulnerabilities of Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA/WPA2) have been exposed in the past, motivating the use of multiple security techniques, even with the release of WPA3. Physical layer security leverages existing components of communication systems to enable methods of protecting devices that are well-suited for IoT applications. In this work, we provide a low-complexity technique for generating secret keys at the Physical layer to enable improved IoT security. We leverage the existing carrier frequency offset (CFO) and channel estimation components of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) receivers for an efficient approach. The key generation algorithm we propose focuses on the unique CFO and channel experienced between a pair of desired nodes, and to the best of our understanding, the combination of the features has not been examined previously for the purpose of secret key generation. Our techniques are appropriate for IoT devices, as they do not require extensive processing capabilities and are based on second order statistics. We obtain experimental results using USRP N210 software defined radios and analyze the performance of our methods in post-processing. Our techniques improve the capability of desired nodes to establish matching secret keys, while hindering the threat of an eavesdropper, and are useful for protecting future IoT devices.