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IEEE Communications Magazine

Practical physical-layer encryption: The marriage of optical noise with traditional cryptography

Gregory S. Kanter, Daniel R. Reilly, N. Smith

Published Nov 1, 2009• 71 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We describe an emerging method of encryption suitable for high-speed optical communication networks. This encryption protocol combines traditional electronic cryptographic algorithms with the physical effect of optical noise of quantum origin to create a highly secure method of secret communications. The resulting optical signal is compatible with today's high speed fiber optic infrastructure including optical amplification and add/drop multiplexing. Systems implementing this protocol can be constructed with common commercially available components. We describe experimental results obtained with a 2.5 Gb/s system. The encrypted signal is shown to travel error-free through >500 km of optical fiber. Simulations show that reaches and data rates consistent with modern long haul optical networks are attainable.

DOI
10.1109/mcom.2009.5307469

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AIP conference proceedings•Jan 1, 2004•1 citation
We describe an emerging method of encryption suitable for high-speed optical communication networks. This encryption protocol combines traditional electronic cryptographic algorithms with the physical effect of optical noise of quantum origin to create a highly secure method of secret communications. The resulting optical signal is compatible with today's high speed fiber optic infrastructure including optical amplification and add/drop multiplexing. Systems implementing this protocol can be constructed with common commercially available components. We describe experimental results obtained with a 2.5 Gb/s system. The encrypted signal is shown to travel error-free through >500 km of optical fiber. Simulations show that reaches and data rates consistent with modern long haul optical networks are attainable.
Providing physical layer security at the lowest network layer in fiber-optic communication systems is a technical challenge worldwide. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a pure hardware optical encryption scheme based on temporal spreading and self-feedback phase encryption for high-speed and long-distance physical-layer secure optical communication. A record high bit-rate-distance product of 6400 Gb/s km is successfully achieved by the secure transmission of a 32 Gb/s on-off-keying modulated confidential signal over a 200 km optical fiber link. The demonstrated scheme is fully compatible with conventional optical transmission systems and can be operated in a pluggable manner, which may pave a new path to ultra-high-speed physical-layer secure optical communication in the future.
We report on a new physical layer optical encryption approach based on quantum noise limited optical signals and M-ary optical phase shift keying that operates at high data rates. In contrast to established encryption methods that rely solely on deterministic algorithms, this system utilizes quantum noise to realize a randomized cipher. Keyed M-ary optical phase modulation is used to encrypt quantum-noise limited mesoscopic signals (50k photons/bit) that are compatible with current directions in optical networking: the physically encrypted signals may be optically amplified, routed through optical switches, and can propagate over long distances approaching 1000 km. We describe the approach in detail and report on results of experiments in which these encrypted signals were transmitted over an 850 km network at 622 Mb/s. Bit-error rate measurements were performed under varying network conditions. Our paper concludes with the engineering challenges for extending this approach to 2.5 Gb/s and beyond and how these are being addressed
We will describe keyed communication in quantum noise (KCQ) and how it can be used for either data encryption or key generation. Specifically, we will focus on the AlphaEta protocol for data encryption where the role of quantum noise will be discussed. Additionally, the potential of using classical noise to enhance security via deliberate signal randomization (DSR) will be investigated. We will also investigate the effect of unwanted impairments, such as nonlinearities in a wavelength-division-multiplexed fiber transmission system, and how they affect the ultimate allowable propagation distance. Our simulations and experiments suggest that AlphaEta-protocol based physical-layer encryption is compatible with long-haul optical transmission systems operating at Gb/s data rates.
Protecting the security of optical network is a major worldwide challenge. The conventional schemes for securing communications are based on cryptography at the MAC layer and its higher layers, which are facing a great threat with the development of quantum computers. Optical encryption is a promising way for building security on the physical layer of optical communications. In this work, we propose a novel optical encryption scheme for wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) fiber-optic communication systems, by utilizing the private chaotic phase scrambling. Secure transmission of 50 Gbps signal over 50-km standard single-mode fiber is experimentally and numerically demonstrated. The results show that the WDM signal is efficiently encrypted into a noise-like signal, due to the spectral broadening effect of chaotic phase scrambling. Since the processes of encryption and decryption are totally implemented in the optical domain, the proposed scheme can encrypt the entire network traffic with low latency and high speed. Moreover, the proposed encryption scheme is compatible with the existing WDM optical networks, and only one pair of encryption and decryption devices is sufficient to encrypt all WDM channels, thus the scheme can be easily implemented at low hardware cost.
Keeping in mind the ubiquitous standard optical fiber for long‐distance transmission and the widespread availability of efficient active and passive fiber devices, we have been developing telecom‐band resources for practical quantum communication and cryptography in wave‐division‐multiplexed (WDM) optical networks. In this talk I present our recent results on two fronts: i) telecom‐band in‐fiber entanglement generation, storage, and long‐distance distribution and ii) quantum‐noise protected high‐speed data encryption through an optically‐amplified WDM line. Along the first front, with our in‐fiber entanglement source all four Bell states can be readily produced and we have demonstrated violation of Bell’s inequalities by up to 10 standard deviations of measurement uncertainty. With such a source we have demonstrated storage of entanglement for up to 1/8 of a millisecond. Furthermore, when each photon of the entangled pair is propagated in separate 25km‐long standard fibers, high visibility quantum interference is still observed, demonstrating that this system is capable of long‐distance (> 50 km) entanglement distribution. Along the second front, we have implemented a new quantum cryptographic scheme, based on Yuen’s KCQ protocol, in which the inherent quantum noise of coherent states of light is used to perform the cryptographic service of data encryption. In this scheme a legitimate receiver, with use of a short, shared, secret‐key, executes a simple binary decision rule on every transmitted bit. An eavesdropper, on the other hand, who does not possess the secret‐key, is subjected to an irreducible quantum uncertainty in each measurement, even with the use of ideal detectors. We have implemented this scheme to demonstrate quantum‐noise‐protected data encryption at 650 Mbps through a 200 km, in‐line amplified, WDM line. The line simultaneously carried two 10 Gbps standard data channels, 100 GHz on either side of the encrypted channel, which shows that this scheme is compatible with the widely deployed WDM fiber‐optic infrastructure.