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International Conference on Optical Network Design and Modeling (ONDM)

Photonic Layer Security Transmission of 100 Gbit/sec Over 200 km of Populated Legacy WDM Network

Ido Attia, Gil Alín, Hamutal Shalom, Ohad Balasiano, Anna Chiadò Piat, Roberto Mercinelli, Emilio Riccardi, Maurizio Valvo, Eyal Wohlgemuth, A. Pagano, Dan Sadot

Published May 6, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Photonic layer security is demonstrated over 200 km of a loaded dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) network. The secure channel achieves 100 Gbps throughput with photonic-encrypted coherent transmission and continuously updating photonic keys. The signal is effectively concealed under optical noise, harvest-proof, and lacks offline decryption capabilities, ensuring post-quantum resilience. Additionally, successful coexistence with seven conventional coherent channels, both in-band and out-of-band, is demonstrated in a real-world scenario.

DOI
10.23919/ondm65745.2025.11029372

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Photonic layer security is demonstrated over 200 km of a loaded dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) network. The secure channel achieves 100 Gbps throughput with photonic-encrypted coherent transmission and continuously updating photonic keys. The signal is effectively concealed under optical noise, harvest-proof, and lacks offline decryption capabilities, ensuring post-quantum resilience. Additionally, successful coexistence with seven conventional coherent channels, both in-band and out-of-band, is demonstrated in a real-world scenario.
The capability to form a photonic shield by using a unique all-optical transmission scheme incorporating multi-THz coherent spreading, spectral phase encoding (SPE), and negative optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) completely prevents offline deciphering of captured data-in-transit. This photonic shield scheme provides an ultimate solution to the “harvest-now, decrypt later” threat by eliminating unauthorised recording. Thus, no raw data is available for any post-processing, including by quantum computers. Both the full line rate payload and the asymmetric key exchange, are transmitted through the secured channel. This work presents an industry-level demonstration, including real-time client data transmission and seamlessly continuously changing spectral phase encoding (SPE) photonic keys. A 100 Gbps DP-QPSK signal and a 200 Gbps DP-16QAM link are established over 80 km of standard single mode fiber (SSMF).
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.
As data rates outpace the capabilities of electronic encryption schemes, photonic layer security may fill the gap in providing a communication security solution at high data rates. In this article we review and highlight the advantages of our proposed optical code-division multiplexed (OCDM)-based photonic layer security (PLS) system based on high-resolution control of the optical phase of tightly spaced phase locked laser lines. Such a PLS system is scaleable to 100 Gb/s and provides a protocol independent security solution. We review the use of high-resolution control of the optical phase of mode-locked laser frequency combs as an enabling technology for a new class of OCDM systems. A network based on such systems is compatible with and can have comparable spectral efficiency to existing DWDM networks. Through inverse multiplexing of 10 Gb/s tributaries, we have already demonstrated optical transmission of a 40 Gb/s aggregate OCDM signal over 400 km. Such a PLS solution is achieved through shared phase scrambling of the individual OCDM codes assigned to each of the tributaries using an integrated micro-ring resonator-based phase coder/scrambler. The confidentiality of OCDM-based PLS is robust against exhaustive, known plain text, and archival/forensic attacks, and can complement digital encryption operating at higher layers. Moreover, the integrity of the PLS solution is ensured through the inherent coupling to confidentiality, since knowledge of the key is needed in order to easily alter the transmitted data stream without introducing observable errors. This system can leverage advances in optical integration to support new applications where electronic encryption is impractical because of space, weight, power, availability, and cost requirements. Such applications range from timely security support for the emerging 100 GbE standards to all-optical multilevel security offered through the compatibility of PLS with transparent DWDM networks.
A stealthy and encrypted transmission is demonstrated in a dense-WDM network. The residual gap between two neighboring commercial channels is utilized for the transmission of the secured channel, hidden below the amplifier noise at negative -10 dB/0.1nm OSNR. The stealthy and encrypted channel is generated by a digital replication of the baseband signal together with a digital spectral phase mask. This technique provides encryption and steganography as it exclusively allows the eligible user to obtain a considerable processing-gain, and to recover extremely low OSNR signals. In this work the secured channel is explored under stringent network conditions. A stealth transmission was tested between two high OSNR public channels, separated 50 GHz apart: Unshaped 25 Gbps NRZ channel and digitally shaped coherent PM-QPSK 112 Gbps channel. Although it is significantly overlapped by adjacent channels and covered by the ASE noise, we demonstrate error-free detection of the secured channel, without significant effect on the commercial channels.
We describe in detail our recent demonstration of a 10 Tbit/s secure physical layer transmission that we achieved by using digital coherent QAM quantum noise stream cipher (QNSC) and injection-locked WDM techniques. We used an FPGA-based transmitter and receiver to demonstrate a 165 channel polarization-multiplexed WDM 5 Gbaud 128 QAM/QNSC (70 Gbit/s) on-line transmission over 160 km with a spectral efficiency of 6 bit/s/Hz. In the present system, the original 128 QAM data were encrypted in a 1024 × 1024 QAM format using basis information. The encrypted signal was then masked by a large ASE noise, which reduced the detection “success” probability for an eavesdropper to 0.13% for each symbol. Furthermore, the multiplicity of the original QAM data and the seed keys used to generate the basis information were arbitrarily changed with time, which makes the decryption much more difficult.