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Acta Physica Sinica

Asymmetric channel phase matching quantum key distribution

Jiang-Ping Zhou, Yuanyuan Zhou, Xuejun Zhou

Published Jan 1, 2023• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The phase-matching protocol is a practical and promising protocol that can surpass the linear key generation rate boundary. However, classical phase-matching quantum key distribution requires the channel attenuation between communicating parties to be symmetric. In practice, channels used are often asymmetric, owing to geographical reasons in a quantum key distribution network. To enhance the practicality of phase-matching, this paper proposes an asymmetric phase-matching protocol based on the classical framework and establishes a relevant mathematical simulation model to study the influence of channel asymmetry on its performance. The simulation results show that channel asymmetry significantly affects the count rate, error rate, gain, and quantum bit error rate (QBER), ultimately, system performance. As the channel attenuation difference increases, the system performance decreases and the rate of decrease accelerates. Key generation becomes impossible when the channel attenuation difference exceeds 4 dB. Although the decoy-state scheme cannot change the system's tolerance to channel attenuation difference, when the channel attenuation difference is large, the increasing of the number of decoy states significantly can improve system performance, with a three-decoy-state phase-matching protocol outperforming a two-decoy-state protocol. Considering the limited data length, the system performance is improved as the data length increases, and the tolerance to channel attenuation differences gradually increases. When the data length exceeds 1012, this improvement does not continue any more. The system cannot break through the boundary of linear key generation rate when the channel attenuation difference is 2 dB and the data length is less than 1012. Comparing with symmetric channels, the system performance improvement is very significant under asymmetric channel conditions as the data length increases.

DOI
10.7498/aps.72.20230652

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The phase-matching protocol is a practical and promising protocol that can surpass the linear key generation rate boundary. However, classical phase-matching quantum key distribution requires the channel attenuation between communicating parties to be symmetric. In practice, channels used are often asymmetric, owing to geographical reasons in a quantum key distribution network. To enhance the practicality of phase-matching, this paper proposes an asymmetric phase-matching protocol based on the classical framework and establishes a relevant mathematical simulation model to study the influence of channel asymmetry on its performance. The simulation results show that channel asymmetry significantly affects the count rate, error rate, gain, and quantum bit error rate (QBER), ultimately, system performance. As the channel attenuation difference increases, the system performance decreases and the rate of decrease accelerates. Key generation becomes impossible when the channel attenuation difference exceeds 4 dB. Although the decoy-state scheme cannot change the system's tolerance to channel attenuation difference, when the channel attenuation difference is large, the increasing of the number of decoy states significantly can improve system performance, with a three-decoy-state phase-matching protocol outperforming a two-decoy-state protocol. Considering the limited data length, the system performance is improved as the data length increases, and the tolerance to channel attenuation differences gradually increases. When the data length exceeds 1012, this improvement does not continue any more. The system cannot break through the boundary of linear key generation rate when the channel attenuation difference is 2 dB and the data length is less than 1012. Comparing with symmetric channels, the system performance improvement is very significant under asymmetric channel conditions as the data length increases.
Aiming at the problem that the performance of existing sky-underwater quantum key distribution schemes is difficult to meet the relevant requirements in the environment of naval battle field, a sky-underwater quantum key distribution scheme based on phase matching protocol is proposed. In view of the channel asymmetry in the sky-underwater quantum key distribution scheme, an asymmetric phase matching protocol model is proposed to improve the classical phase matching protocol. The feasibility of sky-underwater quantum key distribution based on phase matching protocol under asymmetric channel conditions is studied by using correlation optimization method. The simulation results show that: Under dry and clean atmospheric conditions, in Jerlov I, II and III water bodies, the limit depth of underwater platforms is 1100m, 180m and 110m, respectively, based on the ability to generate keys. This performance basically meets the requirements of the current underwater platforms for concealability. At the same time, the distance between the air platform and the surface platform can exceed 100km, which has certain practicality. It has certain guiding significance for quantum network deployment.
In this paper, a passive decoy state phase matching quantum key distribution scheme is proposed based on the heralded pair coherent state light source to make the protocol more practical and safe. Without changing the intensity of the light source, we can derive four different data sets by dividing the raw key data into four groups according to the combined results of detectors in source end. The scheme can make use of the different data sets to estimate the parameters and extract the secret key. The key generation rate formula is derived after the parameter estimation. The performance of the proposed scheme is analyzed with and without taking statistical fluctuation into consideration. The simulation results show that compared with the existing active decoy-state method, the proposed passive method has slightly lower key rate when the transmission distance is short, and has obviously higher key rate when the transmission distance exceeds 406[Formula: see text]km. The maximum safety transmission distance of the proposed scheme is 452[Formula: see text]km which is relatively further. According to the influence of statistical fluctuation, the performance of the proposed scheme declines as the length of the data falls. Even though the data size is [Formula: see text], the max safety transmission distance is also more than 400[Formula: see text]km.
Quantum key distribution provides a promising solution for sharing secure keys between two distant parties with unconditional security. Nevertheless, quantum key distribution is still severely threatened by the imperfections of devices. In particular, the classical pulse correlation threatens security when sending decoy states. To address this problem and simplify experimental requirements, we propose a phase-matching quantum key distribution protocol without intensity modulation. Instead of using decoy states, we propose an alternative method to estimate the theoretical upper bound on the phase error rate contributed by even-photon-number components. Simulation results show that the transmission distance of our protocol could reach 305 km in telecommunication fiber. Furthermore, we perform a proof-of-principle experiment to demonstrate the feasibility of our protocol, and the key rate reaches 22.5 bit/s under a 45-dB channel loss. Addressing the security loophole of pulse intensity correlation and replacing continuous random phase with a six- or eight-slice random phase, our protocol provides a promising solution for constructing quantum networks.
The twin-field quantum key distribution (TF-QKD) protocol has been studied widely to overcome the linear bound, and several variations of the TF-QKD protocol have been proposed to improve security and practicality. One variation called the phase-matching QKD (PM-QKD) protocol develops an optical-mode-based security; simultaneously, it has a quadratic improvement of key rate without either basis choice or phase locking. So far, the main research work of the PM-QKD protocol has focused on symmetric channels. However, it is quite common that the two channels have asymmetric transmittances in real life. In this paper, we discuss the effects of asymmetric channels on the PM-QKD protocol; to reach a much better performance and achieve a higher key rate, the intensity must be optimized to compensate for channel asymmetry. We also study the practical issues of finite-key effects and intensity fluctuations, which have significant effects on the key rate of PM-QKD.
Measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution is immune from all the detection attacks, thus when it is combined with the decoy state method, the final key is unconditional secure. In this paper, the performance of three-intensity decoy state measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution at an asymmetric channel transmittance efficiency is considered and compared with each other at the symmetric choice scenario. Simulation result shows that the key rate at the symmetric scenario can tolerate 62 dB channel loss, otherwise when the distance ratio changes, the tolerated channel loss will decrease to 37 dB and 19 dB. A method to choose the optimal intensity is proposed for asymmetric channel transmittance regardless of distance ratio, which can be easily adapted to practical experimental settings.
Phase-matching quantum key distribution is a promising scheme for remote quantum key distribution, breaking through the traditional linear key-rate bound. In practical applications, finite data size can cause significant system performance to deteriorate when data size is below 1010. In this work, an improved statistical fluctuation analysis method is applied for the first time to two decoy-states phase-matching quantum key distribution, offering a new insight and potential solutions for improving the key generation rate and the maximum transmission distance while maintaining security. Moreover, we also compare the influence of the proposed improved statistical fluctuation analysis method on system performance with those of the Gaussian approximation and Chernoff–Hoeffding boundary methods on system performance. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme significantly improves the key generation rate and maximum transmission distance in comparison with the Chernoff–Hoeffding approach, and approach the results obtained when the Gaussian approximation is employed. At the same time, the proposed scheme retains the same security level as the Chernoff–Hoeffding method, and is even more secure than the Gaussian approximation.