Secret Key Exchange Using Private Random Precoding in MIMO FDD and TDD Systems

Along with the ongoing evolution of multiple antenna communication systems, new physical layer security techniques are continuing to achieve higher levels of secrecy. Most physical layer approaches, however, concern time division duplex (TDD) channels which rely on using the channel reciprocity feature as a shared randomness and tend to be associated with a large computational burden. In this paper, we propose a new physical layer method which utilizes private random precoding for exchanging the secret key bits in multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems. The principle of this method is to exploit the precoding matrix index in a manner that produces low correlation at the adversary. A robust key exchange between the transmitter and the receiver is established by uniquely relating the secret key bits to the channel precoding matrix using a private version of the universal codebooks. What is more is that the proposed method is applicable in both frequency division duplex (FDD) and TDD channels. The results demonstrate that the proposed method can offer superior performance in terms of the key agreement, secrecy level, and computational load.