Publication - Key Generation @ University of Liverpool

University of Liverpool has been one of the leading institutions worldwide in the area of key generation from wireless channels. We have carried out systematic research to investigate different aspects of this exciting technique, ranging from theoretical modelling, simulation, and experimental validations. This page summarises our key generation publication.

Please find a Poster that summarizes our work.

* denotes corresponding author.

Demonstration

Key Generation Survey

  1. Junqing Zhang, Guyue Li, Alan Marshall, Aiqun Hu, and Lajos Hanzo, “A New Frontier for IoT Security Emerging From Three Decades of Key Generation Relying on Wireless Channels,” IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 138406 - 138446, 2020. IEEE Xplore
  2. Guyue Li, Chen Sun, Junqing Zhang, Eduard Jorswieck, Bin Xiao, Aiqun Hu, “Physical Layer Key Generation in 5G and Beyond Wireless Communications: Challenges and Opportunities,” Entropy, 2019
  3. Junqing Zhang, Sekhar Rajendran, Zhi Sun, Roger Woods, and Lajos Hanzo, “Physical Layer Security for the Internet of Things: Authentication and Key Generation,” IEEE Wireless Communications, 2019

    This tutorial covers radio-frequency fingerprint identification for device authentication and wireless channel-based key generation for secure communication. It also proposes an integrated security framework combining the two techniques.

  4. Junqing Zhang, Trung Q. Duong, Alan Marshall, and Roger Woods, “Key generation from wireless channels: A review,” IEEE Access, vol. 4, pp. 614- 626, Mar. 2016. Open Access. IEEE Xplore

    This comprehensive survey covers the fundamentals, principles, procedures, evaluation metrics, and applications of wireless key generation.

  5. Junqing Zhang, Trung Q. Duong, Roger Woods, and Alan Marshall, “Securing wireless communications of the Internet of Things from the physical layer, An overview,” Entropy, vol. 19, no. 8, 420, 2017. (Invited Paper) Publisher page

    This paper provides a tutorial on wireless key generation and physical-layer encryption.

Key Generation Application

  1. Zijie Ji, Phee Lep Yeoh, Gaojie Chen, Junqing Zhang, Yan Zhang, Zunwen He, Hao Yin, and Yonghui Li, “Physical Layer-Based Secure Communications for Static and Low-Latency Industrial Internet of Things,” IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 9, no. 19, pp. 18392 - 18405, Oct. 2022. IEEE Xplore
  2. Guyue Li, Chen Sun, Eduard Jorswieck, Junqing Zhang, Aiqun Hu, and You Chen, “Sum Secret Key Rate Maximization for TDD Multi-User Massive MIMO Wireless Networks,” IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, vol. 16, pp. 968 - 982, 2020. IEEE Xplore
  3. Guyue Li, Zheying Zhang, Junqing Zhang, and Aiqun Hu, “Encrypting Wireless Communications On the Fly Using OneTime Pad and Key Generation,” IEEE Internet of Things Journal, accepted. IEEE Xplore
  4. Guyue Li, Aiqun Hu, Junqing Zhang, Linning Peng, Chen Sun, and Daming Cao, “High-agreement uncorrelated secret key generation based on principal component analysis preprocessing,” IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol. 66, no. 7, pp. 3022 – 3034, Jul. 2018. IEEE Xplore
  5. Junqing Zhang, Biao He, Trung Q. Duong, and Roger Woods, “On the key generation from correlated wireless channels,” IEEE Communications Letters, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 961 — 964, Apr. 2017. IEEE Xplore

    This simulation study investigates key-generation principles using a practical channel model and derives the secret-key capacity.

  6. Yuan Ding, Junqing Zhang, and Vincent Fusco, “Retrodirective assisted secure wireless key establishment,” IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol. 65, no. 1, pp. 320 – 334, Jan. 2017. Open Access. IEEE Xplore

    This simulation study designs a key-generation scheme in which a retrodirective array acts as a relay node.

Key Generation with Wi-Fi

  1. Junqing Zhang, Ming Ding, David Lopez-Perez, Alan Marshall, and Lajos Hanzo, “Design of an Efficient OFDMA-Based Multi-User Key Generation Protocol,” IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 68, no. 9, pp. 8842 - 8852, Sept. 2019. IEEE Xplore
  2. Junqing Zhang, Roger Woods, Trung Q. Duong, Alan Marshall, Yuan Ding, Yi Huang, and Qian Xu, “Experimental study on key generation for physical layer security in wireless communications,” IEEE Access, vol. 4, pp. 4464 – 4477, Sept. 2016. Open Access. IEEE Xplore

    This comprehensive experimental study examines temporal variation, channel reciprocity, and spatial decorrelation in an anechoic chamber, a reverberation chamber, and indoor office environments.

  3. Junqing Zhang, Roger Woods, Trung Q. Duong, Alan Marshall, and Yuan Ding, “Experimental study on channel reciprocity in wireless key generation,” in Proc. 17th IEEE International Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications Special Session on Physical Layer Security for 5G, Edinburgh, UK, Jul. 2016 (Invited Paper). IEEE Xplore

    This experimental study investigates channel reciprocity using two WARP boards connected through a power splitter, enabling the effects of noise and non-simultaneous sampling to be analysed.

  4. Junqing Zhang, Alan Marshall, Roger Woods, and Trung Q. Duong, “Efficient key generation by exploiting randomness from channel responses of individual OFDM subcarriers,” IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol. 64, no. 6, pp. 2578 – 2588, Jun. 2016. Open Access. IEEE Xplore

    This simulation study applies key generation to OFDM systems and models temporal correlation, frequency correlation, and the reciprocity of subcarrier responses.

Key Generation with LoRa

  1. Lu Yang, Yansong Gao, Junqing Zhang, Seyit Camtepe, and Dhammika Jayalath, “A channel perceiving attack and the countermeasure on long-range IoT physical layer key generation,” Computer Communications, vol. 191, pp. 108-118, Jul. 2022 Publisher page
  2. Henri Ruotsalainen, Junqing Zhang, and Stepan Grebeniuk, “Experimental Investigation on Wireless Key Generation for Low Power Wide Area Networks,” IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 1745 - 1755, Mar. 2020. IEEE Xplore

    This paper studies wireless key generation for LoRa and LoRaWAN systems.

  3. Junqing Zhang, Alan Marshall, and Lajos Hanzo, “Channel-envelope differencing eliminates secret key correlation: LoRa-based key generation in low power wide area networks,” IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 67, no. 12, pp. 12462-12466, Dec., 2018. IEEE Xplore

    This experimental study investigates key generation for long-range communication using LoRa as a case study.

Key Generation with FDD

  1. Xinwei Zhang, Guyue Li, Junqing Zhang*, Linning Peng, Aiqun Hu and Xianbin Wang, “Enabling Deep Learning-based Physical-layer Secret Key Generation for FDD-OFDM Systems in Multi-Environments”, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 2024. arXiv link
  2. Xinwei Zhang, Guyue Li, Junqing Zhang, Aiqun Hu, Zongyue Zou and Bin Xiao, “Deep Learning-based Physical-Layer Secret Key Generation for FDD Systems,” IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 9, no. 8, pp. 6081 - 6094, Apr. 2022. IEEE Xplore
  3. Lining Peng, Guyue Li, Junqing Zhang, Roger Woods, Ming Liu, and Aiqun Hu, “An investigation of using loop-back mechanism for channel reciprocity enhancement in secret key generation,” IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 507 – 519, Mar. 2019. IEEE Xplore
  4. Guyue Li, Aiqun Hu, Chen Sun and Junqing Zhang, “Constructing reciprocal channel coefficients for secret key generation in FDD systems,” IEEE Communications Letters, vol. 22, no. 12, pp. 2487 – 2490, Dec., 2018. IEEE Xplore

    Because direct channel reciprocity does not hold in FDD systems, this simulation study constructs correlated parameters suitable for key generation.

Key Generation with RIS

  1. Chen Chen, Junqing Zhang*, Tianyu Lu, Magnus Sandell, and Liquan Chen, “Secret Key Generation for IRS-Assisted Multi-Antenna Systems: A Machine Learning-Based Approach”, IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, vol. 19, pp. 1086 - 1098, 2024. IEEE link, arXiv link
  2. Tianyu Lu, Liquan Chen, Junqing Zhang, Chen Chen, and Aiqun Hu, “Joint Precoding and Phase Shift Design in Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces-Assisted Secret Key Generation”, IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, vol. 18, pp. 3251-3266, Jun. 2023. IEEE, arXiv link
  3. Tianyu Lu, Liquan Chen, Junqing Zhang, Kailin Cao, and Aiqun Hu, “Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface Assisted Secret Key Generation in Quasi-Static Environments,” IEEE Communications Letters, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 244 - 248, Feb. 2022. IEEE Xplore.