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Microwave and Optical Technology Letters

Homodyne detection of weak coherent optical pulse: Applications to quantum cryptography

Qing Xu, Manuel Sabban, Philippe B. Gallion

Published May 13, 2009• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract We propose a quantum key distribution system using balanced homodyne detection, in which strong reference pulses are time‐multiplexed with weak signal pulses by means of fiber interferometer. We use a dual‐threshold decision scheme for postdetection to improve the system performance in terms of BER, with a trade‐off in effective key generation rate. We conduct experimental measurements at 64 km SMF fiber at 1550 nm wavelength, and we prove that the system security can also be enhanced with properly selected threshold parameters. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 51: 1934–1939, 2009; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.24471

DOI
10.1002/mop.24471

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Abstract We propose a quantum key distribution system using balanced homodyne detection, in which strong reference pulses are time‐multiplexed with weak signal pulses by means of fiber interferometer. We use a dual‐threshold decision scheme for postdetection to improve the system performance in terms of BER, with a trade‐off in effective key generation rate. We conduct experimental measurements at 64 km SMF fiber at 1550 nm wavelength, and we prove that the system security can also be enhanced with properly selected threshold parameters. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 51: 1934–1939, 2009; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.24471
We present a flexible quantum key distribution (QKD) system implementation using quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) encoding. Two detection techniques are implemented and compared: a photon counting detection scheme using single photon avalanche diodes (SPAD) and a dual-threshold balanced homodyne detection (BHD) using standard PIN diodes in which the weak signal is time-multiplexed with a strong reference. The interferometer instability and the system phase fluctuations are compensated by an optoelectronic feedback loop that allows an automatic continuous operation. We compare the QKD system performance for both schemes in terms of BER and key generation efficiency. Finally, we analyze the BHD QKD system security under the potential individual intercept-resend attack and the intermediate-base attack.
We report an experimental quantum key distribution that utilizes pulsed homodyne detection, instead of photon counting, to detect weak pulses of coherent light. Although our scheme inherently has a finite error rate, homodyne detection allows high-efficiency detection and quantum state measurement of the transmitted light using only conventional devices at room temperature. Our prototype system works at $1.55\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{m}$ wavelength and the quantum channel is a 1-km standard optical fiber. The probability distribution of the measured electric-field amplitude has a Gaussian shape. The effect of experimental imperfections such as optical loss and detector noise can be parametrized by the variance and the mean value of the Gaussian distribution.
This paper presents the principles and experimental results of an optical fiber QKD system operating at 1550 nm, and using the BB84 protocol with QPSK signals. Our experimental setup consists of a time-multiplexed super-homodyne configuration using P.I.N detectors in a differential scheme as an alternative to avalanche photon counting. Transmission over 11km of optical fiber has been done using this detection scheme and major relevant characteristics such as noise, quantum efficiency and bit error rate (BER) are reported.