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Physical Review Letters

Secure Key Distribution Using Correlated Randomness in Lasers Driven by Common Random Light

Kazuyuki Yoshimura, Jun Muramatsu, Peter Davis, Takahisa Harayama, Haruka Okumura, Shinichiro Morikatsu, Hiroki Aida, Atsushi Uchida

Published Feb 14, 2012• 174 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We propose a secure key distribution scheme based on correlated physical randomness in remote optical scramblers driven by common random light. The security of the scheme depends on the practical difficulty of completely observing random optical phenomena. We describe a particular realization using the synchronization of semiconductor lasers injected with common light of randomly varying phase. We experimentally demonstrate the feasibility of the scheme over a distance of 120 km.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.108.070602

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We propose a secure key distribution scheme based on correlated physical randomness in remote optical scramblers driven by common random light. The security of the scheme depends on the practical difficulty of completely observing random optical phenomena. We describe a particular realization using the synchronization of semiconductor lasers injected with common light of randomly varying phase. We experimentally demonstrate the feasibility of the scheme over a distance of 120 km.
We propose and experimentally demonstrate a physical-layer key distribution scheme using commonly-driven laser synchronization with random modulation of drive light. Two parameter-matched semiconductor lasers injected by a common complex drive light are used as entropy sources for legitimate users. Legitimate users generate their own random signal by randomly time-division multiplexing of two random sequences with a certain duration according to individual control codes, and then independently modulate the drive light. Laser synchronization is achieved during time slots when the modulation sequences of two users are identical, and thus provide highly correlated randomness for extracting random numbers as shared keys. Experimental results show that the random modulation of the drive light reduces the correlation between the drive light and laser outputs. In addition, laser synchronization is sensitive to the modulation delay and then the latter can be used as an additional hardware parameter. These mean that security is enhanced. In addition, the proposed method has a short laser synchronization recovery time of lower than 1.1 ns, meaning a high rate of key distribution. The upper limit of final key rate of 2.55 Gb/s with a criterion of bit error rate of 1.68 × 10 −3 is achieved in experiments. Our results provide a promising candidate for protecting the security of optical fiber communication.
It has been proposed that a secure key distribution scheme using correlated random bit sequences can be implemented using common random-signal induced synchronization of semiconductor laser systems. In this scheme it is necessary to use laser systems consisting of multiple cascaded lasers to be secure against a powerful eavesdropper. In this paper, we report the results of an experimental study that demonstrate that the common random-signal induced synchronization is possible in cascaded semiconductor laser systems. We also show that the correlated random bit sequences generated in the synchronized cascaded laser systems can be used to create an information-theoretically secure key between two legitimate users.
We propose and experimentally demonstrate a wireless-channel key distribution scheme based on laser synchronization induced by a common wireless random signal. Two semiconductor lasers are synchronized under injection of the drive signal after electrical-optical conversion and emit irregular outputs that are used to generate shared keys. Our proof-of-concept experiment using a complex drive signal achieved a secure key generation rate of up to 150 Mbit/s with a bit error rate below 3.8 × 10−3. Numerical simulation results show that the proposed scheme has the potential to achieve a distribution distance of several hundred meters. It is believed that common-signal-induced laser synchronization paves the way for high-speed wireless physical-layer key distribution.
We demonstrate physical implementation of information-theoretic secure oblivious transfer based on bounded observability using optical correlated randomness in semiconductor lasers driven by common random light broadcast over optical fibers. We demonstrate that the scheme can achieve one-out-of-two oblivious transfer with effective key generation rate of 110 kb/s. The results show that this scheme is a promising approach to achieve information-theoretic secure oblivious transfer over long distances for future applications of secure computation such as privacy-preserving database mining, auctions and electronic-voting.
We propose and numerically demonstrate a new scheme for key distribution on the physical layer based on the chaos synchronization and physical random bit generation. In this scheme, two chaotic semiconductor lasers are commonly driven by a third semiconductor laser, their output chaotic signals are employed as the physical sources of the random bit generators (RBGs). Under symmetry operation scenario, the two RBGs are well synchronized and the random bits generated by them are used to generate identical secret keys for Alice and Bob by the way of a dynamic post-processing technology. The feasibility and security of the proposed scheme are investigated by testing the parameters mismatch tolerance and the sensitivity to the systematic noise. The numerical results indicate that the dynamic and unpredictable post-processing can provide a great enhancement for the security of the secret key distribution. The security of the proposed scheme mainly determined by the post-processing, not confidential source, which provides a new potential way for implementing high-speed secure secret key distribution.
We demonstrate a method for information theoretic secure key generation based on practical physical limits of continuous data acquisition from a rapidly fluctuating random signal generated by a chaotic semiconductor laser and transmitted over an optical fiber. Users independently and randomly grab sections of the chaotic waveform, separate into tag and key parts, and exchange tag parts to identify the common key parts which can be used to make secure keys. The frequency of trigger pulses in the waveform is used to control the security of the scheme which depends on the small probability of a third party coincidentally acquiring samples acquired by two other users.