US Government as Represented by the Secretary of the Army

University System of Maryland

Paul L Yu

Brian M Sadler

John S Baras

Ricky Blum

Jake Perazzone

A method for wireless communication using a service side-channel signaling and authentication at the physical level. This method comprising the steps of creating at least one transmitting node and one receiving node within a wireless communication channel. Then choosing primary message and a secondary message and generating a valid transmission tag. Then superimposing the valid transmission tag and creating a set of secret codebooks in order to form a side-channel. Then applying key equivocation metric to measure key information leakage to an eavesdropper. Then transmitting said primary message and said secondary message. Then a receiver receiving said primary and said secondary messages detecting fingerprint estimating data combining a key set with the estimated data sending data and key set to a matrix to generate a secret codebook searching for valid tags authenticating and recovering side information.

Wireless communication method for secure side-channel signaling and authentication at the physical layer

The subject authentication scheme encompasses a large family of authentication systems which may be built over existing transmission systems. By superimposing a carefully designed secret modulation on the waveforms, authentication is added to the signal without requiring additional bandwidth. The authentication information (tag signal) is sent concurrently with data (message signal). The authentication is designed to be stealthy to the uninformed user, robust to interference, and secure for identity verification. The tradeoffs between these three goals are identified and analyzed. The use of the authentication for channel estimation is also considered, and improved bit errors are demonstrated for time-varying channels. With a long enough authentication code word an authentication system is achieved with very slight data degradation. Additionally, by treating the authentication tag as a sequence of pilot symbols, the data recovery may be improved by the aware receiver.

Wireless communication method and system for transmission authentication at the physical layer

The replacement of secret keys is a central problem in key management. Typical solutions exchange handshaking messages, involve complex computations, or require the cooperation of trusted third parties. Disclosed herein is a key replacement method that exploits the randomness of Markov models to efficiently provide fresh keys to users. Unlike other methods, the proposed method removes the need for extra communications, intensive computation, or third parties. It is demonstrated that the proposed method has perfect forward secrecy as well as resistance to known-key attacks.

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Silver Spring, MD, United States of America

Paul L Yu