Authors:
Alexey D. Smolyakov
;
Amir I. Sulimov
;
Arkadiy V. Karpov
and
Aidar V. Galiev
Affiliation:
Kazan Federal University, Russian Federation
Keyword(s):
Encryption Key Distribution, Shared Randomness, Multipath Radio Propagation, Mobile Communications, Carrier Phase, Wireless Synchronization, Entropy.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Applied Cryptography
;
Cryptographic Techniques and Key Management
;
Data Engineering
;
Databases and Data Security
;
Information and Systems Security
;
Network Security
;
Security and Privacy in Mobile Systems
;
Wireless Network Security
Abstract:
The Wireless Key Distribution is one of the most promising and fast growing areas in modern applied
cryptography. This area covers various techniques of secure secret key distribution between two legitimate
users who share a common radio channel with unpredictable signal fading in a multipath environment. In
essence, the pair of legitimate nodes uses their multipath radio channel as a source of common randomness
to establish a shared encryption key. There are a number of studies have been presented in recent
publications devoted to experimental implementation of the Wireless Key Distribution using random
variations in the received power of fading signal. Despite a number of valuable benefits, there is a much
fewer experimental verifications of phase method with all of them are limited to a key distribution within
some indoor environments only. Apparently, this is due to the technical difficulties of precise
synchronization of legitimate users’ equipment to provide coherent carrier ph
ase measurements in a
microwave radio frequency range. In this regard, our experiments can be considered as the first
experimental verification of secure Wireless Key Distribution by observing random variations in the carrier
phase of multipath signal at moving a mobile user within a real outdoor environment. To perform this, we
used wireless Internet transmission of concurrent service data to maintain a required level of
synchronization of one stationary and one mobile legal nodes. Despite the humble key generation rates we
have achieved in practice, our results show possibility of secure wireless key distribution between the base
station and mobile subscriber in a cellular communications scenario.
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