Biblio

In recent years, secret key generation based on physical layer security has gradually attracted high attentions. The wireless channel reciprocity and eavesdropping attack are critical problems in secret key generation studies. In this paper, we carry out a simulation and experimental study of channel reciprocity in terms of measuring channel state information (CSI) in both time division duplexing (TDD) and frequency division duplexing (FDD) modes. In simulation study, a close eavesdropping wiretap channel model is introduced to evaluate the security of the CSI by using Pearson correlation coefficient. In experimental study, an indoor wireless CSI measurement system is built with N210 and X310 universal software radio peripheral (USRP) platforms. In TDD mode, theoretical analysis and most of experimental results show that the closer eavesdropping distance, the higher CSI correlation coefficient between eavesdropping channel and legitimate channel. However, in actual environment, when eavesdropping distance is too close (less than 1/4 wavelength), this CSI correlation seriously dropped. In FDD mode, both theoretical analysis and experimental results show that the wireless channel still owns some reciprocity. When frequency interval increases, the FDD channel reciprocity in actual environment is better than that in theoretical analysis.

Transmission techniques based on channel coding with feedback are proposed in this paper to enhance the security of wireless communications systems at the physical layer. Reliable and secure transmission over an additive noise Gaussian wiretap channel is investigated using Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) and Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) channel codes. A hybrid automatic repeat-request (HARQ) protocol is used to allow for the retransmission of coded packets requested by the intended receiver (Bob). It is assumed that an eavesdropper (Eve) has access to all forward and feedback transmitted packets. To limit the information leakage to Eve, retransmitted packets are subdivided into smaller granular subpackets. Retransmissions are stopped as soon as the decoding process at the legitimate (Bob) receiver converges. For the hard decision decoded BCH codes, a framework to compute the frame error probability with granular HARQ is proposed. For LDPC codes, the HARQ retransmission requests are based on received symbols likelihood computations: the legitimate recipient request for the retransmission of the set of bits that are more likely to help for successful LDPC decoding. The performances of the proposed techniques are assessed for nul and negative security gap (SG) values, that is when the eavesdropper's channel benefits from equal or better channel conditions than the legitimate channel.