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IET Quantum Communication

Performance of Cascade and LDPC Codes for Information Reconciliation on Industrial Quantum Key Distribution Systems

Ronny Müller, Claudia De Lazzari, Fernando Chirici, Ilaria Vagniluca, Leif Katsuo Oxenløwe, Søren O. Forchhammer, Alessandro Zavatta, Davide Bacco

Published Jan 1, 2025• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

ABSTRACT Information reconciliation is a critical component of quantum key distribution, ensuring that mismatches between Alice's and Bob's keys are corrected. In this study, we analyse, simulate, optimise and compare the performance of two prevalent algorithms used for information reconciliation: Cascade and LDPC codes in combination with the blind protocol. We focus on their applicability in practical and industrial settings, operating in realistic and application‐close conditions. The results are further validated through evaluation on a live industrial QKD system.

DOI
10.1049/qtc2.70003

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ABSTRACT Information reconciliation is a critical component of quantum key distribution, ensuring that mismatches between Alice's and Bob's keys are corrected. In this study, we analyse, simulate, optimise and compare the performance of two prevalent algorithms used for information reconciliation: Cascade and LDPC codes in combination with the blind protocol. We focus on their applicability in practical and industrial settings, operating in realistic and application‐close conditions. The results are further validated through evaluation on a live industrial QKD system.
Information Reconciliation is a critical component of Quantum Key Distribution, ensuring that mismatches between Alice's and Bob's keys are corrected. In this study, we analyze, simulate, optimize, and compare the performance of two prevalent algorithms used for Information Reconciliation: Cascade and LDPC codes in combination with the Blind protocol. We focus on their applicability in practical and industrial settings, operating in realistic and application-close conditions. The results are further validated through evaluation on a live industrial QKD system.
We develop a new approach for asymmetric LDPC-based information reconciliation in order to adapt to the current channel state and achieve better performance and scalability in practical resource-constrained QKD systems. The new scheme combines the advantages of LDPC codes, a priori error rate estimation, rate-adaptive and blind information reconciliation techniques. We compare the performance of several asymmetric and symmetric error correction schemes using a real industrial QKD setup. The proposed asymmetric algorithm achieves significantly higher throughput, providing a secret key rate that is close to the symmetric one in a wide range of error rates. Thus, our approach is found to be particularly efficient for applications with high key rates, limited classical channel capacity and asymmetric computational resource allocation.
Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is a revolutionary security technology that exploits the laws of quantum mechanics to achieve information-theoretic secure key exchange. QKD enables two parties to “grow” a shared secret key without placing any limits on an adversary’s computational power. Error reconciliation protocols have been developed that preserve security while allowing a sender and receiver to reconcile the errors in their respective keys. The most famous of these is the Cascade protocol, which is effective but suffers from a high communication complexity and low throughput. The Winnow protocol reduces the communication complexity over Cascade, but has the disadvantage of introducing errors. Finally, Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes have been shown to reconcile errors at rates higher than those of Cascade and Winnow, but with greater computational complexity. In this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of LDPC codes by comparing the runtime, throughput and communication complexity empirically with the Cascade and Winnow algorithms. The effects of inaccurate error estimation, non-uniform error distribution and varying key length on all three protocols are evaluated for identical input key strings. Analyses are performed on the results in order to characterize the strengths and weaknesses of each protocol.
It is widely accepted in the quantum cryptography community that interactive information reconciliation protocols, such as cascade, are inefficient due to the communication overhead. Instead, non-interactive information reconciliation protocols based on i.e. LDPC codes or, more recently, polar codes have been proposed. In this work, we argue that interactive protocols should be taken into consideration in modern quantum key distribution systems. In particular, we demonstrate how to improve the performance of cascade by proper implementation and use. Our implementation of cascade reaches a throughput above 80 Mbps under realistic conditions. This is more than twice the throughput previously demonstrated in any information reconciliation protocol.
It is widely accepted in the quantum cryptography community that interactive information reconciliation protocols, such as cascade, are ineffcient due to the communication overhead. Instead, non-interactive information reconciliation protocols based on i.e. LDPC codes or, more recently, polar codes have been proposed. In this work, we argue that interactive protocols should be taken into consideration in modern quantum key distribution systems. In particular, we demonstrate how to improve the performance of cascade by proper implementation and use. Our implementation of cascade reaches a throughput above 80 Mbps under realistic conditions. This is more than four times the throughput previously demonstrated in any information reconciliation protocol.