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Physical Review A

Differential-phase-shift quantum key distribution with phase modulation to combat sequential attacks

Hiroki Kawahara, Toru Oka, Kyo Inoue

Published Nov 10, 2011• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Phase-modulated differential-phase-shift (DPS) quantum key distribution (QKD) is presented for combating sequential attacks that most severely restrict the DPS-QKD system distance. Slow phase modulation imposed onto the DPS signal obstructs the optimum unambiguous state discrimination measurement conducted in the sequential attack and improves the QKD distance as a result. The condition with which the phase modulation does not degrade the DPS-QKD system performance is also described.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.84.052311

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Phase-modulated differential-phase-shift (DPS) quantum key distribution (QKD) is presented for combating sequential attacks that most severely restrict the DPS-QKD system distance. Slow phase modulation imposed onto the DPS signal obstructs the optimum unambiguous state discrimination measurement conducted in the sequential attack and improves the QKD distance as a result. The condition with which the phase modulation does not degrade the DPS-QKD system performance is also described.
In this paper, we investigate limitations imposed by sequential attacks on the performance of a differential-phase-shift (DPS) quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol with weak coherent pulses. Specifically, we analyze a sequential attack based on optimal unambiguous discrimination of the relative phases between consecutive signal states emitted by the source. We show that this attack can provide tighter upper bounds for the security of a DPS QKD scheme than those derived from sequential attacks where the eavesdropper aims to identify the state of each signal emitted by the source unambiguously.
This paper presents a quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol named differential-quadrature-phase-shift (DQPS) QKD. A transmitter sends a coherent pulse train in which each pulse is phase modulated by ${0,\ensuremath{\pi}}$ ${\ensuremath{\pi}/2,3\ensuremath{\pi}/2}$, and a receiver measures it with either one of two asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometers having phase biases of 0 and $\ensuremath{\pi}/2$, respectively. This scheme is devised such that the idea of the conventional Bennett-Brassard 1984 protocol (BB84) is introduced to differential-phase-shift (DPS) QKD. Simulations show that the proposed scheme is robust against a sequential attack that is crucial eavesdropping to DPS-QKD.
In quantum key distribution (QKD), eavesdropping is generally detected based on bit errors resulting from eavesdropper attacks. This study proposes a QKD scheme for detecting eavesdropping based on the photon-detection rate instead of the bit error rate. The differential-phase-shift (DPS) QKD protocol, which transmits lasting weak coherent pulses, is modified such that decoy pulses with a large mean photon number are randomly inserted into a signal pulse sequence. With this modification, eavesdropping can be detected by monitoring the photon-detection rates at the time slots around the decoy pulses. The key-creation performance of the modified DPS-QKD system is evaluated, and the results indicate that the QKD distance is increased with the modification.