Title: Security demonstration for the quantum noise-based physical layer using variable keys

Authors: Shuai Shi; Ning Xiao

Addresses: 34th Institute, China Electronics Technology Group Corporation, No. 98, Liuhe Road, Guilin, Guangxi, 541004, China ' Department of Information Engineering, Nanning College of Technology, No. 317, Yanshan Street, Guilin, Guangxi, 541006, China

Abstract: With the continued advancement of science and technology, a large amount of important information is carried by optical fibre networks. Therefore, it is imperative to use secure transmission strategies to protect important information. The Y-00 cipher that employs multi-order modulation to prevent eavesdropping on ciphertext is a practical candidate for providing data protection at the physical layer. The Y-00 cipher combines the mathematical encryption of multilevel signalling and quantum noise to provide high security to fibre communications. This paper proposes a quantum noise-based physical layer secure transmission scheme, combining the Y-00 cipher with time-domain spectral phase encoding (TDSPE). The operation methods of the Y-00 cipher in the data encryption and TDSPE in the key distribution are introduced. Then, the system performance is investigated by transmission experiments. The noise-masking phenomenon is demonstrated and quantified. The probability of the eavesdropper guessing cipher text correctly is evaluated. Last, the proposed secure transmission is achieved at 1 Gbps over a 100.2 km optical fibre link, with an intensity level of 1,024 and a noise masking number of 71. The experimental results prove the effective feasibility and high security.

Keywords: quantum noise-based; variable keys; physical layer; optical fibre link; Y-00 cipher; TDSPE.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSNET.2023.128497

International Journal of Sensor Networks, 2023 Vol.41 No.1, pp.60 - 66

Received: 30 Jun 2022
Accepted: 30 Jun 2022
Published online: 24 Jan 2023 *