Intelligent Reflecting Surface-Assisted Secret Key Generation With Discrete Phase Shifts in Static Environment

Abstract

Physical layer secret key generation is a promising candidate to achieve one-time-pad encryption approach for the wireless communication system. However, in a static environment, the secret key rate is low due to the lack of channel time-variation. To solve this problem, this letter proposes a novel secret key generation scheme assisted by an intelligent reflecting surface with discrete phase shifts. In the scheme, legitimate nodes construct the dynamic time-varying channel by rapidly and randomly switching the phase of IRS elements. Then, channel coefficients are used to generate the secret key. Based on the IRS channel model, we derive the probability distribution of the channel coefficient and the expressions of the secret key rate. Furthermore, we optimize the secret key rate by adjusting the switching time of the IRS phase. Monte Carlo simulation and numerical results show that our proposed scheme can update the secret key in a static environment.