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IEEE Advanced Information Management, Communicates, Electronic and Automation Control Conference (IMCEC)

Performance Research for Quantum Key Distribution Based on Real Air-Water Channel

Lian Y. Wang, Yuanyuan Zhou, Xuejun Zhou, Hua-bin Xu, Xiao Dong Chen

Published May 1, 2018• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Considering the irregular air-water interface, incident angle, environmental background light and optical attenuation, the system model of quantum key distribution (QKD) based on air-water channel is built. And the influence of wind speed and incident angle on the error rate of system is discussed. Besides, under different attenuation coefficients, the effect of actual incident angle and environmental background light on system performance is studied. The simulations show that when the descending photon passes through the air-water interface, the raise of wind speed leads to an increase in error rate. Similarly, the enlarging of actual incident angle also causes the growth of error rate and shortens the transmission distance of QKD system. Moreover, since the environmental background light can seriously damage the system performance, the QKD experiment should be conducted on cloudy night. With the maximum error rate on cloudy night, the secure transmission distance in clear seawater can reach 252 m, which obviously meets the need of 100 m diving depth for underwater vehicles. In medium seawater and turbid seawater, they are 42 m and 25 m, respectively. Auxiliary means (such as towing buoys) can be used to extend the transmission distance of QKD. Therefore, the QKD system based on air-water channel is feasible, which has certain reference value to expand QKD applications.

DOI
10.1109/imcec.2018.8469288

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Considering the irregular air-water interface, incident angle, environmental background light and optical attenuation, the system model of quantum key distribution (QKD) based on air-water channel is built. And the influence of wind speed and incident angle on the error rate of system is discussed. Besides, under different attenuation coefficients, the effect of actual incident angle and environmental background light on system performance is studied. The simulations show that when the descending photon passes through the air-water interface, the raise of wind speed leads to an increase in error rate. Similarly, the enlarging of actual incident angle also causes the growth of error rate and shortens the transmission distance of QKD system. Moreover, since the environmental background light can seriously damage the system performance, the QKD experiment should be conducted on cloudy night. With the maximum error rate on cloudy night, the secure transmission distance in clear seawater can reach 252 m, which obviously meets the need of 100 m diving depth for underwater vehicles. In medium seawater and turbid seawater, they are 42 m and 25 m, respectively. Auxiliary means (such as towing buoys) can be used to extend the transmission distance of QKD. Therefore, the QKD system based on air-water channel is feasible, which has certain reference value to expand QKD applications.
The effect of the irregular air-water interface on the performance of the down-link quantum key distribution from the air to the sea is studied. Based on the analysis of the relationship between the incident angle and the quantum bit error rate, the air-water interface model with wind speed is adopted, the influence of the wind speed on the incident angle of the photon is discussed, the relationship between the expected value of quantum bit error rate and the wind speed is deduced. Numerical simulation shows that the quantum bit error rate of the irregular air-water interface is related to the incident angle and the wind speed. If the incident angle is improved, the quantum bit error rate will increase, limiting the incident angle shall not exceed 40°. And the actual incident angle will improve with the wind speed increasing. We find that when the original incident angle is 10° and the wind speed is less than 10m/s, the maximum actual incident angle do not exceed 40°, which is advantageous to the quantum key distribution.
Considering the ocean water’s optical attenuation and the roughness of the sea surface, we analyze the security of continuous-variable (CV) quantum key distribution (QKD) based air-to-water channel. The effects of the absorption and scattering on the transmittance of underwater quantum channel and the maximum secure transmission distance are studied. Considering the roughness of the sea surface, we simulate the performance bounds of CV QKD with different wind speeds using the Monte Carlo method. The results show that even if the secret key rate gradually reduces as the wind speed increases, the maximum transmission distance will not be affected obviously. Compared to the works regarding short-distance underwater optical communication, our research represents a significant step towards establishing secure communication between air platform and submarine vehicle .
Cross-media and confidentiality are key features of next-generation optical communications. Quantum communication is regarded as a promising new form of secure communication. However, the cross-media transmission of quantum pulses tends to suffer from severe attenuation, which inevitably degrades the security of the whole system. In this paper, we consider the configuration of the continuous-variable quantum key distribution through an air–water cross-media channel that involves the lower-atmospheric channel, the underwater channel, and the air–water interface. We consider the effect of air bubbles in seawater, and the effect of the dynamic air–water interface as well. In particular, dynamic characteristics of light extinction and fluctuations caused by seawater and bubbles have been demonstrated with Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. Based on this MC-based model, we demonstrate the communication viability, and simulation results show that in clear seawater conditions with a wind speed of 5 m/s and a zenith angle of 15°, the receiver is able to achieve an effective secret key rate (10 −4 bits/pulse) even at 9.71 m depth. Smaller zenith angles and lower wind speeds contribute to an increase in the interface secret key rate.
Underwater quantum key distribution (QKD) has potential applications in absolutely secure underwater communication. However, the performance of underwater QKD is limited by the optical elements, background light, and dark counts of the detector. In this paper, we propose a modified formula for the quantum bit error rate (QBER), which takes into account the effect of detector efficiency on the QBER caused by the background light. Then we calculate the QBER of the polarization encoding BB84 protocol in Jerlov-type seawater by analyzing the effect of the background light and optical components in a more realistic situation. Finally, we further analyze the final key rate and the maximum secure communication distance in three propagation modes, i.e., upward, downward, and horizontal modes. We find that secure QKD can be performed in the clearest Jerlov-type seawater at a distance of hundreds of meters, even in the worst downward propagation mode. Specifically, by optimizing the system parameters, it is possible to securely transmit information with a rate of 67 kbits/s at a distance of 100 m in the seawater channel with an attenuation coefficient of 0.03/m at night. For practical underwater QKD, the performance can also be improved by using decoy states. Our results are useful for long-distance underwater quantum communication.
In recent years, the feasibility of quantum key distribution (QKD) in a water channel has been verified by theory and experiment. Here, we present an experimental investigation of QKD and decoy-state QKD based on the BB84 protocol. The experiment was carried out in a 10 m water tank. The attenuation coefficient of tap water is 0.08/m, which is close to Jerlov Type II seawater. We measured the probability-of-detection matrix of polarization states, and the average fidelity of the four polarization states is up to 98.39%. For the 10 m underwater QKD experiment, 20 MHz optical pulses are generated by modulating the laser diode (LD) and attenuated to an average of 0.1 photons per pulse. The security key rate can reach 563.41 kbits/s and the quantum bit error rate (QBER) is 0.36%. Two decoy states (one of which is the vacuum state) was used in the 10 m underwater decoy-state QKD experiment, and the average QBER of signal state is 0.95%, the security key rate reaches 711.29 kbits/s. According to the parameters of the decoy-state experiment, the maximum secure transmission distance of the underwater decoy-state QKD is predicted to be 19.2 m, while it can be increased to 237.1 m in Jerlov Type I seawater with a lower dark count single photon detector (SPD).
Focusing on the application scenario where the underwater mobile platforms wirelessly access the cabled underwater information networks to achieve communication, an underwater access scheme for measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution is proposed to ensure communication security. Based on the analysis of the optical characteristics of the seawater channel, an underwater access model of measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution is constructed, simulated and analyzed to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the scheme. The simulation results show that the maximum secure access distance of the scheme (under extreme conditions) can be extended from 147 meters to 230 meters or even 451 meters as the seawater type changes from turbid seawater to moderately turbid seawater to clear seawater. The vacuum + weak decoy state scheme can obtain performance that is very close to this limit. After considering the effect of finite data-set size, the performance of the scheme is reduced, but it can still meet the application requirements of underwater mobile platform access within a certain range. In practical applications, measures such as deploying wired communication buoys at network nodes can be used to further expand the effective access range.