A survey on secret key generation mechanisms on the physical layer in wireless networks

Traditional security mechanisms are mainly based on the distribution of shared secret keys. Yet, this task is non trivial in large wireless networks, due to mobility and scalability issues. Recently, it has been found that some properties of the physical layer of wireless communications can be leveraged for the purpose of secret key generation. In particular, the wireless channel has been investigated as a common source of secrecy to generate a shared secret key. We explore the most recent approaches in this area. RSSI-based key generation is firstly investigated. After that, we present some of the most recent approaches of key generation based on the channel impulse response. Moreover, we discuss some other physical layer methods. Thus, this paper provides a survey on the latest key generation mechanisms on the physical layer of wireless communications. Copyright c © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.