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International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks

All-Optical Spectral Shuffling of Signals Traveling through Different Optical Routes

Thiago de Andrade Bragagnolle, Marcelo Pereira Nogueira, Melissa de Oliveira Santos, Afonso Jose Do Prado, Andre Alves Ferreira, Eric A. M. Fagotto, Ivan Aldaya, Marcelo L. F. Abbade

Published Jul 1, 2019• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

A recent proposed physical layer encryption technique uses an all-optical setup based on spatial light modulators to split two or more wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) signals in several spectral slices and to shuffle these slices. As a result, eavesdroppers aimed to recover information from a single target signal need to handle all the signals involved in the shuffling process. In this work, computer simulations are used to analyse the case where the shuffled signals propagate through different optical routes. From a security point of view, this is an interesting possibility because it obliges eavesdroppers to tap different optical fibres/ cables. On the other hand, each shuffled signal experiences different physical impairments and the deleterious consequences of these effects must be carefully investigated. Our results indicate that, in a metropolitan area network environment, penalties caused by attenuation and dispersion differences may be easily compensated with digital signal processing algorithms that are presently deployed.

DOI
10.1109/icton.2019.8840243

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A recent proposed physical layer encryption technique uses an all-optical setup based on spatial light modulators to split two or more wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) signals in several spectral slices and to shuffle these slices. As a result, eavesdroppers aimed to recover information from a single target signal need to handle all the signals involved in the shuffling process. In this work, computer simulations are used to analyse the case where the shuffled signals propagate through different optical routes. From a security point of view, this is an interesting possibility because it obliges eavesdroppers to tap different optical fibres/ cables. On the other hand, each shuffled signal experiences different physical impairments and the deleterious consequences of these effects must be carefully investigated. Our results indicate that, in a metropolitan area network environment, penalties caused by attenuation and dispersion differences may be easily compensated with digital signal processing algorithms that are presently deployed.
All-optical spectral shuffling (AOSS) is a recently proposed physical layer encryption technique. In AOSS, multiple input signals are split in several spectral slices. These slices are then shuffled to form multiple encrypted signals. In fact, it is possible to transmit each shuffled signal by a different optical route. This strategy increases security because if an eavesdropper wants to detect information from a unique signal, he needs to tap at least one fiber per route. In this work, computer simulations are used to encrypt two 112 Gbps 16-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signals and to propagate the shuffled signals by distinct optical routes. Our results reveal that the shuffled signals may be propagated by optical routes as long as 600 km. Besides that, we also investigate the situations i) where the signals travel by routes with different lengths and ii) where each route imposes different physical impairments to the encrypted signals.
In this work, we propose a comprehensive technique to enhance the security of superchannels (SCs). The spectral samples of the signals within a superchannel are shuffled and further encrypted in amplitude and phase, according to cryptographic keys. The strategy may be applied to SC signals with different modulation formats and bit rates. Moreover, the concept of SC is generalized, allowing for channels to be propagated through different optical routes. As a result, eavesdroppers need to tap multiple optical fibers to recover the content of a single signal. This simultaneously increases security and enhances the cost of spying. We investigate scenarios where dual polarization (DP) quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) and 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) signals are encrypted and propagated through transparent optical networks. Results reveal that no meaningful propagation penalty is introduced by signal encryption. From a security perspective, the technique is considerably more robust against brute force attacks than the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), which is widely deployed in data encryption. A strategy to provide the properties of diffusion and confusion to the proposed encryption technique is discussed.
A novel digital signal processing (DSP)-based scheme for physical layer security in coherent optical communication systems is proposed and numerically investigated. The optical layer signal encryption is accomplished by two dispersive elements and one phase modulator (PM) driven by a DSP-generated encryption key, whilst signal decryption uses similar components but with inverted dispersion values and security keys. A critical aspect of the DSP-based physical layer security is that the security keys, driving the PMs to hide/recover the data signals, must be highly unpredictable and noise-like, thus orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals are employed as they possess these characteristics, they can also be easily generated and cover a suitably wide range of unique keys. Numerical simulations are conducted to determine optimum system parameters for achieving a high level of security, the key parameters requiring optimization are the dispersion of the dispersive elements and the bandwidth of the security keys. Using these determined optimum parameters, in-depth investigations are undertaken of encryption/decryption induced transmission performance penalties, sensitives to various parameter offsets and operation over various transmission distances. To observe any data signal dependencies, various performance metrics are investigated for different combinations of modulation formats (DQPSK and 16QAM) and baud rates (40 Gbaud and 100 Gbaud) for the transmitted data signals. The proposed DSP-based physical layer security scheme is shown to have the potential to achieve, in a low-cost and highly effective manner, a high level of physical layer security with acceptable performance penalties for existing coherent optical communication systems.
Non-intrusive tapping and other threats have underscored the necessity for enhanced security mechanisms in transparent optical networks (TONs). In this work, we explore the application of both intra- and inter-signal cryptography techniques to secure TON signals. The intra-signal approach utilizes spectral phase encoding, while the inter-signal technique relies on shuffling the samples among different signals, including the X - and Y polarisation components of each signal. Computer simulation results suggest that encrypted 448 Gb/s448 \mathrm{~Gb} / \mathrm{s}448 Gb/s dual polarisation (DP) 16-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signals may be properly recovered after ∼700 km\sim 700 \mathrm{~km}∼700 km of standard single-mode fiber propagation.
Protecting the security of optical network is a major worldwide challenge. The conventional schemes for securing communications are based on cryptography at the MAC layer and its higher layers, which are facing a great threat with the development of quantum computers. Optical encryption is a promising way for building security on the physical layer of optical communications. In this work, we propose a novel optical encryption scheme for wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) fiber-optic communication systems, by utilizing the private chaotic phase scrambling. Secure transmission of 50 Gbps signal over 50-km standard single-mode fiber is experimentally and numerically demonstrated. The results show that the WDM signal is efficiently encrypted into a noise-like signal, due to the spectral broadening effect of chaotic phase scrambling. Since the processes of encryption and decryption are totally implemented in the optical domain, the proposed scheme can encrypt the entire network traffic with low latency and high speed. Moreover, the proposed encryption scheme is compatible with the existing WDM optical networks, and only one pair of encryption and decryption devices is sufficient to encrypt all WDM channels, thus the scheme can be easily implemented at low hardware cost.
Optical multicore and multimode fibers (MCF/MMF) are promised to pace with the capacity crunch of back-bone networks by their spatial domain using space division multiplexing (SDM) [1]. Although multiple channels propagate within the same media in parallel, material inhomogenities and bendings induce inter- and intra-core crosstalk (XT), the compensation of which is crucial for long-haul SDM-fiber deployment [2]. In addition, the inherent XT provides random scattering to be exploited for physical layer security (PLS), either as physical un-clonable function (PUF) [3] or secret key generation (SKG) for end-to-end security [4], [5]. For both, SDM and PLS, the main challenge is to recover the spatial amplitude and phase contributions of each channel at the receiver-side in real-time, e.g. by digital signal processing (DSP). With increased number of SDM channels the computational effort in DSP-based channel diagonalization arises.