Optimal Resource Allocation in Joint Secret Key Generation and Data Transfer Schemes

Miroslav Mitev (1) , Arsenia Chorti (2) , Martin Reed (1)

1 CSEE - School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering [Essex]
2 ETIS - UMR 8051 - Equipes Traitement de l'Information et Systèmes

Due to computational complexity and latency constraints in the nodes of many IoT systems, alternatives are sought for session key generation schemes that rely on public key encryption. In this work we investigate novel cross-layer security protocols in which session keys are generated at the physical layer using standard techniques of secret key generation (SKG) from shared randomness. In this framework, we study the optimal power allocation in block-fading additive white Gaussian noise (BF-AWGN) channels with short-term power constraints when a subset of the subcarriers is used for SKG and the rest for data transmission. Fixing the amount of data that can be transmitted with a single key, allows us to first identify the optimal subset of subcarriers that should be devoted to SKG and the respective power allocation policy which, depending on the available overall power, might not be unique. Subsequently, a further step is taken in our analysis to account for the impact of the proposed power allocation in the long-term.

Domaines: Cryptographie et sécurité [cs.CR]; Traitement du signal et de l'image [eess.SP]

Miroslav Mitev, Arsenia Chorti, Martin Reed. Optimal Resource Allocation in Joint Secret Key Generation and Data Transfer Schemes. IWCMC, Jun 2019, Tanger, Morocco. ⟨10.1109/IWCMC.2019.8766766⟩. ⟨hal-02517465⟩