Aerospace Knowledge and Technology Journal

Aerospace Knowledge and Technology Journal

Physical layer key generation for UAV communication and measuring its resilience against passive and active attacks

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors
Mohammadreza Keshavarzi 1
Bahman Madadi 2
Ali Rahmanpour 3
Ali Kuhestani 4
1 IRAN Telecommunication Research Center
2 Imam Hussain University
3 Iran University of Science and Technology
4 Qom University of Technology
Abstract
The wireless communication of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has attracted a lot of interest in military and civilian applications for reasons such as the possibility of high mobility, low cost, deployment based on needs, and the efficiency of direct air-to-ground channels. However, these advantages make UAV wireless systems vulnerable to both passive and active attacks. In recent years, with the increase in the computing power of computers and as a result of the increase in security threats, a new and efficient security solution called physical layer security has received much attention. In this field, one of the most important methods is the key generation from wireless channel characteristics. In this paper, by focusing on the key generation from the channel phase, two methods of generating the key from the channel phase are introduced: 1) the first method, using the phase difference of a sinusoidal signal with two frequencies and 2) the second method, choosing the random initial phase for a sinusoidal signal with one frequency. The simulation results show that key generation based on the second method performs better than the first method from the perspective of active attacks (man-in-the-middle attack and jammer attack). Furthermore, we study the second method from the point of view of key disclosure resion. We will see that by implementing the idea of channel probing on multiple frequencies, the percentage of key disclosure region will decrease. The results obtained provide useful engineering insights for the design and optimization of a secure link for UAV communications.
Keywords
UAV security
physical layer security
secret key generation
channel phase
Subjects
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