In May 2014, a new quantum key distribution protocol named “Round Robin Differential-Phase-Shift Quantum Key
Distribution (RR DPS QKD)” was proposed. It has a special feature that the key consumption via privacy amplification is
a small constant because RR DPS QKD guarantees its security by information causality, not by information-disturbance
trade-off. Therefore, the authors claimed that RR DPS QKD systems does not need to monitor the disturbance by an
attacker in the quantum channel. However, this study shows that a modified Faked-State Attack (or so-called bright
illumination attack) can hack a RR DPS QKD system almost perfectly if it is implemented with realistic detectors even
information-causality guarantees the security of RR DPS QKD protocol. Therefore, this study also proposes a possible
Measurement-Device-Independent RR DPS QKD system to avoid the modified Faked-State Attack.
Recently, a new type of protocol named Round-robin differential-phase-shift quantum key distribution (RRDPS QKD) was proposed, where the security can be guaranteed without monitoring conventional signal disturbances. The active decoy state method can be used in this protocol to overcome the imperfections of the source. But, it may lead to side channel attacks and break the security of QKD systems. In this paper, we apply the passive decoy state method to the RRDPS QKD protocol. Not only can the more environment disturbance be tolerated, but in addition it can overcome side channel attacks on the sources. Importantly, we derive a new key generation rate formula for our RRDPS protocol using passive decoy states and enhance the key generation rate. We also compare the performance of our RRDPS QKD to that using the active decoy state method and the original RRDPS QKD without any decoy states. From numerical simulations, the performance improvement of the RRDPS QKD by our new method can be seen.
Quantum key distribution (QKD) allows the establishment of common cryptographic keys among distant parties. Many of the QKD protocols that were introduced in the past, involve the challenge of monitoring the signal disturbance over the communication line, in order to evaluate the information leakage to a potential eavesdropper. Recently, a QKD protocol that circumvents the need for monitoring signal disturbance, has been proposed and demonstrated in initial experiments. Here, we propose an improved version of this so-called round-robin differential phase-shifting (RRDPS) protocol, in which both time and phase degrees of freedom are utilized to enlarge the Hilbert-space dimensionality, without increasing experimental complexity or relaxing security assumptions. We derive the security proofs of the round-robin differential phase-time-shifting (RRDPTS) protocol in the collective attack scenario, and benchmark it against RRDPS for different experimental parameters. Furthermore, a proof-of-concept experiment of the RRDPTS protocol, using weak coherent pulses and decoy state method, is demonstrated over 80 km of fiber link. Our results show that the RRDPTS protocol can achieve higher secret key rate in comparison with the RRDPS, in the condition of high quantum bit error rate.
Recently, a new type of quantum key distribution, called the round-robin differential-phase-shift (RRDPS) protocol [T. Sasaki et al., Nature (London) 509, 475 (2014)], was proposed, where the security can be guaranteed without monitoring any statistics. In this Rapid Communication, we investigate source imperfections and side-channel attacks on the source of this protocol. We show that only three assumptions are needed for the security, and no detailed characterizations of the source or the side-channel attacks are needed. This high robustness is another striking advantage of the RRDPS protocol over other protocols.
Recently, a round-robin differential phase-shift (RRDPS) protocol was proposed [ Nature 509 , 475 (2014)], in which the amount of leakage is bounded without monitoring the signal disturbance. Introducing states of the phase-encoded Bennett–Brassard 1984 protocol (PE-BB84) to the RRDPS, this paper presents another quantum key distribution protocol called round-robin differential quadrature phase-shift (RRDQPS) quantum key distribution. Regarding a train of many pulses as a single packet, the sender modulates the phase of each pulse by one of {0, π/2, π, 3π/2}, then the receiver measures each packet with a Mach–Zehnder interferometer having a phase basis of 0 or π/2. The RRDQPS protocol can be implemented with essential similar hardware to the PE-BB84, so it has great compatibility with the current quantum system. Here we analyze the security of the RRDQPS protocol against the intercept-resend attack and the beam-splitting attack. Results show that the proposed protocol inherits the advantages arising from the simplicity of the RRDPS protocol and is more robust against these attacks than the original protocol.
The differential-phase-shift (DPS) quantum-key-distribution (QKD) protocol was proposed aiming at simple implementation, but it can tolerate only a small disturbance in a quantum channel. The round-robin DPS (RRDPS) protocol could be a good solution for this problem, which in fact can tolerate even up to
50 of a bit error rate. Unfortunately, however, such a high tolerance can be achieved only when we compromise the simplicity, i.e., Bob's measurement must involve a large number of random delays (
∣R∣ denotes its number), and in a practical regime of
∣R∣ being small, the tolerance is low. In this paper, we propose a DPS protocol to achieve a higher tolerance than the one in the original DPS protocol, in which the measurement setup is less demanding than the one of the RRDPS protocol for the high tolerance regime. We call our protocol the small-number-random DPS (SNRDPS) protocol, and in this protocol, we add only a small amount of randomness to the original DPS protocol, i.e., $2\ensuremath{\le}|\mathcal{R}|\ensuremath{\le}10$. In fact, we found that the performance of the SNRDPS protocol is significantly enhanced over the original DPS protocol only by employing a few additional delays such as
∣R∣=2. Also, we found that the key generation rate of the SNRDPS protocol outperforms the RRDPS protocol without monitoring the bit error rate when it is less than
5 and $|\mathcal{R}|\ensuremath{\le}10$. Our protocol is an intermediate protocol between the original DPS protocol and the RRDPS protocol, and it increases the variety of the DPS-type protocols with quantified security.
We propose a new scheme of quantum key distribution (QKD) called the round-robin differential-phase-shift (RRDPS) protocol, which is based on a principle entirely different from the conventional QKD protocols based on the information-disturbance trade off. In the RRDPS protocol, the amount of privacy amplification is essentially constant and there is no need to change it according to the observed amount of disturbance. This means that it is hard for an eavesdropper to guess the bit value regardless of the amount of disturbance she has caused. The new scheme has a better tolerance on bit errors and is free from the cost of monitoring eavesdropping attempts. In contrast to the conventional QKD schemes, the amount of privacy amplification is the same even if the quality of the transmission channel becomes poorer and the bit error rate increases. This leads to a higher bit error threshold, typically over 30% and with no theoretical bound less than 50%. The fact that the protocol does not require precise estimation of the amount of signal disturbance is advantageous when the finite-key effect is taken into account; the RRDPS protocol can produce a key even when the total number of transmitted bits is small.