Joint secure communication and sensing in 6G networks

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the practical implementation of physical layer secret key generation in 6G joint communication and sensing systems, demonstrating its potential as a lightweight security solution adaptable to various scenarios.

Contribution

It provides a full implementation and analysis of SKG protocols in real-life 6G scenarios, highlighting the importance of context-specific parameter tuning.

Findings

SKG can be a viable security solution for 6G systems

Implementation details influence SKG rate performance

Parameter selection must be context-dependent

Abstract

Joint communication and sensing is expected to be one of the features introduced by the sixth-generation (6G) wireless systems. This will enable a huge variety of new applications, hence, it is important to find suitable approaches to secure the exchanged information. Conventional security mechanisms may not be able to meet the stringent delay, power, and complexity requirements which opens the challenge of finding new lightweight security solutions. A promising approach coming from the physical layer is the secret key generation (SKG) from channel fading. While SKG has been investigated for several decades, practical implementations of its full protocol are still scarce. The aim of this chapter is to evaluate the SKG rates in real-life setups under a set of different scenarios. We consider a typical radar waveform and present a full implementation of the SKG protocol. Each step is evaluated to demonstrate that generating keys from the physical layer can be a viable solution for future networks. However, we show that there is not a single solution that can be generalized for all cases, instead, parameters should be chosen according to the context.