The performance of one-way and two-way continuous variable quantum key distribution (CVQKD) protocols can be increased by adding some noise on the reconciliation side. In this paper, we propose to add noise at the reconciliation end to improve the performance of CVQKD with untrusted source. We derive the key rate of this case and analyze the impact of the additive noise. The simulation results show that the optimal additive noise can improve the performance of the system in terms of maximum transmission distance and tolerable excess noise.
The performance of one-way and two-way continuous variable quantum key distribution (CVQKD) protocols can be increased by adding some noise on the reconciliation side. In this paper, we propose to add noise at the reconciliation end to improve the performance of CVQKD with untrusted source. We derive the key rate of this case and analyze the impact of the additive noise. The simulation results show that the optimal additive noise can improve the performance of the system in terms of maximum transmission distance and tolerable excess noise.
We propose an improved two-way continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CV QKD) protocol by adding proper random noise on the receiver's homodyne detection, the security of which is analysed against general collective attacks. The simulation result under the collective entangling cloner attack indicates that despite the correlation between two-way channels decreasing the secret key rate relative to the uncorrelated channels slightly, the performance of the two-way protocol is still far beyond that of the one-way protocols. Importantly, the added noise in detection is beneficial for the secret key rate and the tolerable excess noise of this two-way protocol. With the reasonable reconciliation efficiency of 90%, the two-way CV QKD with added noise allows the distribution of secret keys over 60 km fibre distance.
The two-way continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CVQKD) systems allow higher key rates and improved transmission distances over standard telecommunication networks in comparison to the one-way CVQKD protocols. To exploit the real potential of two-way CVQKD systems a robust reconciliation technique is needed. It is currently unavailable, which makes it impossible to reach the real performance of a two-way CVQKD system. The reconciliation process of correlated Gaussian variables is a complex problem that requires either tomography in the physical layer that is intractable in a practical scenario, or high-cost calculations in the multidimensional spherical space with strict dimensional limitations. To avoid these issues, we propose an efficient logical layer-based reconciliation method for two-way CVQKD to extract binary information from correlated Gaussian variables. We demonstrate that by operating on the raw-data level, the noise of the quantum channel can be corrected in the scalar space and the reconciliation can be extended to arbitrary high dimensions. We prove that the error probability of scalar reconciliation is zero in any practical CVQKD scenario, and provides unconditional security. The results allow to significantly improve the currently available key rates and transmission distances of two-way CVQKD. The proposed scalar reconciliation can also be applied in one-way systems as well, to replace the existing reconciliation schemes.
A suitable photon-subtraction operation can be exploited to improve the maximal transmission of continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CVQKD) in point-to-point quantum communication. Unfortunately, the photon-subtraction operation faces solving the improvement transmission problem of practical quantum networks, where the entangled source is located in the third part, which may be controlled by a malicious eavesdropper, instead of in one of the trusted parts, controlled by Alice or Bob. In this paper, we show that a solution can come from using a non-Gaussian operation, in particular, the photon-subtraction operation, which provides a method to enhance the performance of entanglement-based (EB) CVQKD. Photon subtraction not only can lengthen the maximal transmission distance by increasing the signal-to-noise rate but also can be easily implemented with existing technologies. Security analysis shows that CVQKD with an entangled source in the middle (ESIM) from applying photon subtraction can well increase the secure transmission distance in both direct and reverse reconciliations of the EB-CVQKD scheme, even if the entangled source originates from an untrusted part. Moreover, it can defend against the inner-source attack, which is a specific attack by an untrusted entangled source in the framework of ESIM.
The two-way continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CVQKD) systems allow higher key rates and improved transmission distances over standard telecommunication networks in comparison to the one-way CVQKD protocols. To exploit the real potential of two-way CVQKD systems a robust reconciliation technique is needed. It is currently unavailable, which makes it impossible to reach the real performance of a two-way CVQKD system. The reconciliation process of correlated Gaussian variables is a complex problem that requires either tomography in the physical layer that is intractable in a practical scenario, or high-cost calculations in the multidimensional spherical space with strict dimensional limitations. To avoid these issues, we propose an efficient logical layer-based reconciliation method for two-way CVQKD to extract binary information from correlated Gaussian variables. We demonstrate that by operating on the raw-data level, the noise of the quantum channel can be corrected in the scalar space and the reconciliation can be extended to arbitrary high dimensions. We prove that the error probability of scalar reconciliation is zero in any practical CVQKD scenario, and provides unconditional security. The results allow to significantly improve the currently available key rates and transmission distances of two-way CVQKD. The proposed scalar reconciliation can also be applied in oneway systems as well, to replace the existing reconciliation schemes.
In practical quantum communication networks, the scheme of continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CVQKD) faces a challenge that the entangled source is controlled by a malicious eavesdropper, and although it still can generate a positive key rate and security, its performance needs to be improved, especially in secret key rate and maximum transmission distance. In this paper, we proposed a method based on the four-state discrete modulation and a heralded hybrid linear amplifier to enhance the performance of CVQKD where the entangled source originates from malicious eavesdropper. The four-state CVQKD encodes information by nonorthogonal coherent states in phase space. It has better transmission distance than Gaussian modulation counterpart, especially at low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Moreover, the hybrid linear amplifier concatenates a deterministic linear amplifier (DLA) and a noiseless linear amplifier (NLA), which can improve the probability of amplification success and reduce the noise penalty caused by the measurement. Furthermore, the hybrid linear amplifier can raise the SNR of CVQKD and tune between two types of performance for high-gain mode and high noise-reduction mode, therefore it can extend the maximal transmission distance while the entangled source is untrusted.
It is shown that the non-Gaussian operations can not only be used to prepare the nonclassical states, but also to improve the entanglement degree between Gaussian states. Thus these operations are naturally considered to enhance the performance of continuous variable quantum key distribution (CVQKD), in which the non-Gaussian operations are usually placed on the right-side of the entangled source. Here we propose another scheme for further improving the performance of CVQKD with the entangled-based scheme by operating photon-addition operation on the left-side of the entangled source. It is found that the photon-addition operation on the left-side presents both higher success probability and better secure key rate and transmission distance than the photon subtraction on the right-side, although they share the same maximal tolerable noise. In addition, compared to both photon subtraction and photon addition on the right-side, our scheme shows the best performance and the photon addition on the right-side is the worst.