Best Paper Award at IEEE PIMRC 2026

Our paper "Robust Physical-Layer Group Key Generation for User-Centric Cell-Free Networks" by Ghazal Bagheri, Ali Khandan Boroujeni, Stefan Köpsell, and Rafael F. Schaefer received a Best Paper Award at IEEE PIMRC 2026 in Singapore. IEEE PIMRC is an international conference focusing on advances in mobile and wireless communications and networking.

Abstract: Establishing a common secret key among multiple users is particularly challenging in user-centric cell-free networks, where users may be served by different sets of distributed access points. In this work, we propose a robust, dealerless physical-layer group key generation framework that exploits channel reciprocity between users and access points. The proposed receiver-aggregated approach relies on a common set of distributed access points as sources of shared randomness, allowing the users to establish a common secret key without a trusted key dealer. Polar Slepian–Wolf reconciliation and privacy amplification are employed to support reliable and secure key agreement. The framework is further designed to remain robust in the presence of compromised access points, making it suitable for secure group communication in future distributed wireless networks.