Bipartite Graph Matching Based Secret Key Generation

The physical layer secret key generation exploiting wireless channel reciprocity has attracted considerable attention in the past two decades. On-going research have demonstrated its viability in various radio frequency (RF) systems. Most of existing work rely on quantization technique to convert channel measurements into digital binaries that are suitable for secret key generation. However, non-simultaneous packet exchanges in time division duplex systems and noise effects in practice usually create random channel measurements between two users, leading to inconsistent quantization results and mismatched secret bits. While significant efforts were spent in recent research to mitigate such non-reciprocity, no efficient method has been found yet. Unlike existing quantization-based approaches, we take a different viewpoint and perform the secret key agreement by solving a bipartite graph matching problem. Specifically, an efficient dual-permutation secret key generation method, DP-SKG, is developed to match the randomly permuted channel measurements between a pair of users by minimizing their discrepancy holistically. DP-SKG allows two users to generate the same secret key based on the permutation order of channel measurements despite the non-reciprocity over wireless channels. Extensive experimental results show that DP-SKG could achieve error-free key agreement on received signal strength (RSS) with a low cost under various scenarios.

Automated summary

The generation of physical layer secret key using wireless channel reciprocity has been proven feasible in various RF systems, but existing quantization techniques often lead to inconsistent results and mismatched secret bits. A new approach of solving a bipartite graph matching problem for secret key agreement shows promise in mitigating these issues.