Random Shifting Intelligent Reflecting Surface for OTP Encrypted Data Transmission

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new secure wireless data transmission method using an intelligent reflecting surface with random phase shifts to generate secret keys for one-time pad encryption, enhancing security and performance.

Contribution

It presents a novel IRS-based scheme for OTP key generation with optimal time allocation and derives a theoretical key rate expression without eavesdropper CSI.

Findings

Significant improvement in encrypted data transmission performance.

Effective secret key generation using IRS with random phase shifts.

Robustness across various wireless channel conditions.

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel encrypted data transmission scheme using an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) to generate secret keys in wireless communication networks. We show that perfectly secure one-time pad (OTP) communications can be established by using a simple random phase shifting of the IRS elements. To maximize the secure transmission rate, we design an optimal time slot allocation algorithm for the IRS secret key generation and the encrypted data transmission phases. Moreover, a theoretical expression of the key generation rate is derived based on Poisson point process (PPP) for the practical scenario when eavesdroppers' channel state information (CSI) is unavailable. Simulation results show that employing our IRS-based scheme can significantly improve the encrypted data transmission performance for a wide-range of wireless channel gains and system parameters.