The impact of multiple antennas in physical layer encryption key establishment

Abstract

While secret encryption keys are commonly-used for securing wireless transmissions, establishment of such keys has traditionally been accomplished using computational techniques at the higher layers of the wireless communication protocol stack. However, the multipath electromagnetic propagation typical of many environments can also be an excellent source of random variables useful for encryption key generation. Furthermore, antennas play an important role in how the transmitter and receiver excite or sense the channel and therefore become a critical component in the performance of techniques that exploit the multipath channel for key establishment. This paper focuses on how using multiple antennas can dramatically improve the performance of such key establishment methods.