Protecting Secret Key Generation Systems Against Jamming: Energy Harvesting and Channel Hopping Approaches

Jamming attacks represent a critical vulnerability for wireless secret key generation (SKG) systems. In this paper, two counter-jamming approaches are investigated for SKG systems: first, the employment of energy harvesting (EH) at the legitimate nodes to turn part of the jamming power into useful communication power, and, second, the use of channel hopping or power spreading in block fading channels to reduce the impact of jamming. In both cases, the adversarial interaction between the pair of legitimate nodes and the jammer is formulated as a two-player zero-sum game and the Nash and Stackelberg equilibria are characterized analytically and in closed form. In particular, in the case of EH receivers, the existence of a critical transmission power for the legitimate nodes allows the full characterization of the game's equilibria and also enables the complete neutralization of the jammer. In the case of channel hopping versus power spreading techniques, it is shown that the jammer's optimal strategy is always power spreading while the legitimate nodes should only use power spreading in the high signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) regime. In the low SIR regime, when avoiding the jammer's interference becomes critical, channel hopping is optimal for the legitimate nodes. Numerical results demonstrate the efficiency of both counter-jamming measures.