Reconfigurable intelligent surface-assisted key generation for millimeter wave communications

Physical layer key generation (PLKG) exploits the distributed entropy source of wireless channels to generate secret keys for legitimate users. When the millimeter wave (mmWave) channel is blocked, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) have emerged as a prospective approach to constructing reflected channels and improving the secret key rate (SKR). This paper investigates the key generation scheme for the RIS-aided mmWave system. We study the beam domain channel model and exploit the sparsity of mmWave bands to reduce the pilot overhead. We propose a channel probing method to acquire the reciprocal angular information and channel gains. To analyze the SKR, we investigate the channel covariance matrix of beam domain channels. We find that the channel gains of beams are uncorrelated which increases the randomness of secret keys. Considering an eavesdropper, we derive the analytical expressions of SKR when the eavesdropping channel has overlapping clusters with the legitimate channel. Simulations validate that the proposed PLKG scheme outperforms existing schemes.