Patent ID: 8213616

Claim:
A method for opportunistic secure communication on a main channel between a sender device and a receiver device when an eavesdropper device is listening on an eavesdropper channel, the method comprising: transmitting, in a first time period in which signal quality on the main channel is better than signal quality on the eavesdropper channel, symbols that are randomly selected from a set of symbols; transmitting, in a second time period in which signal quality on the main channel is not better than signal quality on the eavesdropper channel, coding information associated with the randomly selected symbols; reconciling the randomly selected symbols using the coding information; determining when signal quality on the main channel is better than signal quality on the eavesdropper channel; responsive to the determination, transmitting the symbols that are randomly selected from a set of symbols; determining when signal quality on the main channel is not better than signal quality on the eavesdropper channel; and responsive to the determination, transmitting the coding information associated with the randomly selected symbols.