Device Pairing with Multi-modal Gestures: from Theory to Practice

Abstract

Short-range wireless communication is becoming more prevalent as mobile devices are vastly integrated into our daily lives. An extremely important option to protect these communication links is given by secure pairing, namely the process of authenticating two previously unassociated devices to establish a secure communication channel. Nevertheless, designing a pairing mechanism that ensures both security against malicious attacks and a smooth user experience is challenging. Besides, developing a single pairing scheme that addresses all pairing scenarios is unfeasible due to the huge variation between the communicating devices.

The goal of this thesis is to study the practicality of pairing a smartwatch and a device equipped with a touch screen (i.e., a smartphone) using multi-modal gestures. These gestures entail drawing on the touch screen while wearing a smartwatch. This process is supported by data collected from several sensors on the smartwatch.

Consequently, a pairing protocol is implemented on both classes of devices, a sensor fusion system is designed and different drawing patterns are studied. Moreover, several experiments are performed to verify the accuracy of the proposed solution in detecting a correlation between the drawings and the wrist movement.

The results show that drawing 3x3 unlock patterns on the touch screen supported by the fusion of accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer data on the smartwatch is a practical solution for pairing using multi-modal gestures while ensuring both security and user-friendliness.