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SBFoton International Optics and Photonics Conference (SBFoton IOPC)

All-optical Spectral Shuffling Applied to 16-QAM Signals

Melissa de Oliveira Santos, Welerson Santos Souza, Thiago de Andrade Bragagnolle, Leonardo Diogo Bueno Bobadilla Ivan Aldaya, Afonso Jose Do Prado, Andre Alves Ferreira, Marcelo L. F. Abbade, Luiz Henrique Bonani

Published Oct 1, 2019• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1109/sbfoton-iopc.2019.8910255

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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.
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.
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.
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.
In this work, we propose a strategy for encrypting dual polarisation optical signals. The scheme is based on shuffling the spectral samples of baseband signals that further modulate the orthogonal polarisations of an optical carrier. Additionally, the samples phases are also encoded. We investigate the performance of the encryption scheme in a scenario where data centres are connected by a cascade of standard fibre optical links. Simulation results indicate that the encrypted versions of 448 Gb/s 16 – quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signals may be properly propagated by distances of up to 420 km.
In this paper, we propose a novel physical layer security optical transmission scheme utilizing randomized quantization noise. The proposed approach encrypts low-order plaintext signals into ultra-high-order ciphertext using principles similar to quantum noise stream cipher (QNSC). While, the ultra-dense quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) ciphertext waveforms are masked by intrinsic quantization noise. The combination of digital delta-sigma quantization and analog chaotic random scrambling not only produces randomized quantization noise, but also naturally supports one-time processing of masking ciphertext and generating keystream. Whereby, the in-band quantization noise (IBN) conceals nearby ciphertext levels bolstering security, and the out-of-band quantization noise (OOBN) is digitized to generate keystream using the Toeplitz hashing extractor. Experimental results show that 256-QAM plaintext signals were securely transmitted over standard single-mode fiber: 163-Gbps signals over 400 km, and 79.7-Gbps signals over 1800 km. To evaluate system performance, theoretical models for signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), bit error rate (BER), and number of masked signals (NMS) are derived as functions of the oversampling ratio (OSR). Our findings reveal a trade-off between transmission performance and security performance. Our results confirm that this scrambling effectively eliminates the correlation between the masking noise components. Toeplitz hashing extractor can effectively reduce the complexity of keystream generation and obtain a source-independent random keystream.
A Quantum Stream Cipher (QSC) using Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) is presented to greatly increase the secure degree compared with ASK or PSK/QSC. We propose encoding multi-bit data in one symbol with a multi-bit basis state, resulting in QAM/QSC, which employs amplitude and phase encryption of the light beam simultaneously. A 16 QAM/QSC experiment at 10 Gbit/s was successfully carried out over 160 km using a digital coherent optical transmission technique, where 16 QAM data were encrypted in a constellation with 32 × 32~4096 × 4096 symbols. We show experimentally that the Number of Masked Signals (NMS) in the quantum noise Γ(QAM) for QAM/QSC becomes a square multiple larger than Γ(ASK) for ASK/QSC. Γ(QAM) exceeds 10,000. This result indicates that the QSC technique is more robust against eavesdroppers than ASK or PSK/QSC.