FLoRa: Sequential fuzzy extractor based physical layer key generation for LPWAN

Abstract

The security of Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) mainly relies on encryption for ensuring packet integrity and confidentiality. Unfortunately, the latest LPWAN specifications refrain from specifying how to distribute keys for encryption. In this paper, we tackle this problem via physical layer security, which exploits the channel characteristics to generate secret keys at the physical layer. In order to generate consistent keys from noisy feature sources and to achieve high reconciliation success rate, we propose FLoRa, a physical layer key generation system for LPWAN based on sequential fuzzy extractor. An adaptive multi-bit quantization algorithm is first proposed to generate the initial key, which accelerates the bit generation rate at the start-up procedure. We then design a novel fuzzy extractor by sequentially slicing the initial key, which improves the reconciliation success rate, as well as reduces the key reconciliation time. We implement FLoRa in a LoRaWAN based network prototype and evaluate it by conducting extensive indoor and outdoor experiments. Experimental results reveal that FLoRa is capable of generating consistent secret keys with high key generation performance in both static and dynamic network environments.