In practical continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CVQKD) systems, due to environmental disturbance or some intrinsic imperfections of devices, inevitably the local oscillator (LO) employed in a coherent detection always fluctuates arbitrarily over time, which compromises the security and performance of practical CVQKD systems. In this paper, we investigate the performance of practical CVQKD systems with LO fluctuating randomly. By revising the measurement result of balanced homodyne detection and embedding fluctuation parameters into security analysis, we find that in addition to the average LO intensity, the fluctuation variance also severely affects the secret key rate. No secret key can be obtained if fluctuation variance is relatively large. This indicates that in a practical CVQKD, LO intensity should be well monitored and stabilized. Our research can be directly applied to improve the robustness of a practical CVQKD system as well as be used to optimize CVQKD protocols.
In practical continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CVQKD) systems, due to environmental disturbance or some intrinsic imperfections of devices, inevitably the local oscillator (LO) employed in a coherent detection always fluctuates arbitrarily over time, which compromises the security and performance of practical CVQKD systems. In this paper, we investigate the performance of practical CVQKD systems with LO fluctuating randomly. By revising the measurement result of balanced homodyne detection and embedding fluctuation parameters into security analysis, we find that in addition to the average LO intensity, the fluctuation variance also severely affects the secret key rate. No secret key can be obtained if fluctuation variance is relatively large. This indicates that in a practical CVQKD, LO intensity should be well monitored and stabilized. Our research can be directly applied to improve the robustness of a practical CVQKD system as well as be used to optimize CVQKD protocols.
In a practical continuous-variable quantum-key distribution (CVQKD), the fluctuations of the local oscillator (LO) not only make the normalization of Bob's measurement outcomes difficult, but also can change the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of an imperfect balanced homodyne detector (BHD), which may lead the security of a practical system of CVQKD to be compromised severely. In this paper, we propose that the LO intensity can be manipulated by the legitimate parties, i.e., being tuned and stabilized to a required constant value, to eliminate the impact of LO fluctuations and defeat Eve's potential attack on the LO. Moreover, we show that the secret key rate can be increased over a noisy channel, especially the channels of metropolitan QKD networks, by tuning the intensity of LO and thus the SNR of a practical BHD to an optimal value, and we find that, counterintuitively, the requirement on BHD (i.e., high detection efficiency and low electronic noise) can also be reduced in this case. To realize this manipulation, we give a schematic setup which, thus, can be used to enhance the security of a practical CVQKD system.
When developing a practical continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CVQKD), the detector is necessary at the receiver’s side. We investigate the practical security of the CVQKD system with an unbalanced heterodyne detector. The results show that unbalanced heterodyne detector introduces extra excess noise into the system and decreases the lower bound of the secret key rate without awareness of the legitimate communicators, which leaves loopholes for Eve to attack the system. In addition, we find that the secret key rate decreases more severely with the increase in the degree of imbalance and the excess noise induced by the imbalance is proportional to the intensity of the local oscillator (LO) under the same degree of imbalance. Finally, a countermeasure is proposed to resist these kinds of effects.
Abstract Ideal randomness is one of most important conditions for the implementation of continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CVQKD). However, imperfect randomness may exist in a practical CVQKD system due to imperfections in Gaussian modulation or in random-number generators. Here we propose a weak randomness attack model in practical CVQKD systems to investigate the practical performance of the systems with imperfect randomness, where the prepared coherent states based on nonrandom state modulation are assumed to be known by Eve. Then, we perform parameter estimation and calculate the secret key rate of the system based on the proposed attack model. The simulation results demonstrate that a small imperfect randomness can dramatically reduce the secret key rate of the system, which may seriously limit the practical performance of the system. Therefore, true random numbers and perfect Gaussian modulation are key for practical CVQKD systems.
How to guarantee the practical security of continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CVQKD) system has been an important issue in the quantum cryptography applications. In contrast to the previous practical security strategies, which focus on the intercept-resend attack or the Gaussian attack, we investigate the practical security strategy based on a general attack, i.e., an arbitrated individual attack or collective attack on the system by Eve in this paper. The low bound of intensity disturbance of the local oscillator signal for eavesdropper successfully concealing herself is obtained, considering all noises can be used by Eve in the practical environment. Furthermore, we obtain an optimal monitoring condition for the practical CVQKD system so that legitimate communicators can monitor the general attack in real-time. As examples, practical security of two special systems, i.e., the Gaussian modulated coherent state CVQKD system and the middle-based CVQKD system, are investigated under the intercept-resend attacks.
In a practical continuous-variable quantum-key-distribution (CVQKD) system, a strong local oscillator (LO) signal in a quantum channel may be manipulated by eavesdropper Eve to steal information about secret keys through general attacks (e.g., entangling cloner attack or intercept-resend attack) without being detected, which is an effective quantum hacking strategy, i.e., LO attacks. To guarantee the practical security of the system, a general monitoring scheme has been previously demonstrated to resist this quantum hacking attack, where the channel transmittance was regarded as a fixed value related to transmission distance. However, practical communication environments are complex, which may result in the time-varying transmittance. This deviation may affect the effectiveness of this monitoring scheme. In this paper, we investigate the monitoring of CVQKD systems running in complex communication environments. We first model the LO attacks on practical CVQKD systems in complex environments, where the channel transmittance is assumed to obey a fixed distribution. Then, the low bound of intensity disturbance of the LO signal for Eve successfully concealing herself is obtained based on this model, where we consider all noise that can be used by Eve in complex communication environments. Simultaneously, we obtain an optimal monitoring condition to resist the LO attacks. Our numerical analysis confirms that the proposed monitoring scheme can effectively resist the LO attacks on practical CVQKD systems in complex environments. Subsequently, the feasibility of this way is again demonstrated by using a quantitative example. It is important that this monitoring scheme can also be extended to resist other quantum hacking attacks.
In a practical continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CVQKD) system, the optical attenuator can adjust the Gaussian-modulated coherent states and the local oscillator signal to an optimal value for guaranteeing the security of the system and optimizing the performance of the system. However, the performance of the optical attenuator may deteriorate due to the intentional and unintentional damage of the device. In this paper, we investigate the practical security of a CVQKD system with reduced optical attenuation. We find that the secret key rate of the system may be overestimated based on the investigation of parameter estimation under the effects of reduced optical attenuation. This opens a security loophole for Eve to successfully perform an intercept-resend attack in a practical CVQKD system. To close this loophole, we add an optical fuse at Alice's output port and design a scheme to monitor the level of optical attenuation in real time, which can make the secret key rate of the system evaluated precisely. The analysis shows that these countermeasures can effectively resist this potential attack.