A Combination of Bluetooth Physical Layer Key Generation and Physically Unclonable Functions for Lightweight Security in IoT Edge Nodes

The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) and embedded systems across various domains has heightened the need for secure, lightweight cryptographic mechanisms tailored to resource-constrained devices. Traditional encryption protocols are often too computationally intensive for these applications, prompting exploration into alternative security methods. This study presents a novel lightweight cryptographic Physical Layer Key Generation (PLKG) approach that leverages Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) channel entropy to generate secure session keys. To enhance system security further, Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are integrated, providing device-specific authentication and protection against cloning attacks. To our knowledge, this is the first system that combines wireless channel randomness and PUFs as hybrid entropy sources. Experimental results demonstrate that this BLE-based key derivation method, combined with PUF technology, yields a unique, lightweight security solution suitable for automotive and IoT applications. The proposed BLE-based key generation method successfully passes the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Statistical Test Suite.