Secure rate-adaptive reconciliation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a secure, rate-adaptive reconciliation protocol for secret key agreement that leverages error correcting codes, maintaining security while adapting to channel variations.

Contribution

It presents a novel protocol that adapts to channel changes in secret key reconciliation using error correcting codes, enhancing efficiency and security.

Findings

Protocol adapts to channel variations

Maintains security despite additional information transmission

Achieves efficient reconciliation based on code quality

Abstract

We consider in this paper the problem of information reconciliation in the context of secret key agreement between two legitimate parties, Alice and Bob. Beginning the discussion with the secret key agreement model introduced by Ahlswede and Csisz\'ar, the channel-type model with wiretapper, we study a protocol based on error correcting codes. The protocol can be adapted to changes in the communication channel extending the original source. The efficiency of the reconciliation is only limited by the quality of the code and, while transmitting more information than needed to reconcile Alice's and Bob's sequences, it does not reveal any more information on the original source than an ad-hoc code would have revealed.