Physical Layer Key Generation between Backscatter Devices over Ambient RF Signals

Ambient backscatter communication (AmBC), which enables energy harvesting and ultra-low-power communication by utilizing ambient radio frequency (RF) signals, has emerged as a cutting-edge technology to realize numerous Internet of Things (IoT) applications. However, the current literature lacks efficient secret key sharing solutions for resource-limited devices in AmBC systems to protect the backscatter communications, especially for private data transmission. Thus, we propose a novel physical layer key generation scheme between backscatter devices (BDs) by exploiting received superposed ambient signals.

Based on the repeated patterns (i.e., cyclic prefix in OFDM symbols) in ambient RF signals, we present a joint transceiver design of BD backscatter waveform and BD receiver to extract the downlink signal and the backscatter signal from the superposed signals. By multiplying the downlink signal and the backscatter signal, we can actually obtain the triangle channel information as a shared random secret source for key generation. Besides, we study the trade-off between the rate of secret key generation and harvested energy by modeling it as a joint optimization problem. Finally, extensive numerical simulations are provided to evaluate the key generation performance, energy harvesting performance, and their trade-offs under various system settings.