Preserving privacy during secure transactions with ambient power devices

A wireless device comprising:

• an ambient power (AMP) collection circuit configured to harvest environmental energy;
• a wireless communication circuit;
• and
• a processing device coupled to the AMP collection circuit and the wireless communication circuit, the processing device to:
• determining one or more first authentication and key management (AKM) parameters;
• causing the wireless communication circuit to broadcast, to a plurality of powered wireless devices, an initialization request frame comprising one or more frame-exchange parameters, the one or more first AKM parameters, and encrypted content with which a powered wireless device of the plurality of powered wireless devices is to establish an encrypted wireless communication session with the wireless device, wherein the content that was encrypted includes an identifier of the wireless device that is also known to the powered wireless device;
• and
• employing, within the initialization request frame, a first random address as a source media access control (MAC) address and one of a broadcast address or a group address as a destination MAC address.

A method comprising:

• receiving, by an ambient power (AMP) device that harvests environmental energy, an identification (ID) request frame broadcast by a powered wireless device, wherein a source MAC address of the ID request frame is a first random address, and wherein the ID request frame includes a first plurality of cleartext fields and a first hash value generated from a combination of a content of the first plurality of cleartext fields and an identifier of the AMP device;
• generating, by the AMP device, a second hash value from a combination of the content and the identifier of the AMP device, which is retrieved from memory of the AMP device;
• determining whether the first hash value matches the second hash value;
• in response to determining that the first hash value does not match the second hash value, terminating a procedure of establishing an encrypted wireless communication session with the powered wireless device;
• and
• in response to determining that the first hash value matches the second hash value, generating an ID response frame comprising one or more first authentication and key (AKM) parameters with which to establish an encrypted wireless communication session with the powered wireless device.