Free-space optical (FSO) links in satellite networks, unmanned aerial vehicle swarms, and dense indoor deployments face increasing interception threats owing to beam divergence and platform motion compromising narrow-beam security. Integrating ranging with phase-based encryption, this work proposes and experimentally demonstrates a high-speed secure FSO communication system over a 0.5 m to 0.6 m flexible link. System features include a tunable decodable distance range and enhanced eavesdropping resistance, employing 16-ary Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (16QAM) and 64QAM and achieving a maximum transmission rate of 20 Gbps.
Free-space optical (FSO) links in satellite networks, unmanned aerial vehicle swarms, and dense indoor deployments face increasing interception threats owing to beam divergence and platform motion compromising narrow-beam security. Integrating ranging with phase-based encryption, this work proposes and experimentally demonstrates a high-speed secure FSO communication system over a 0.5 m to 0.6 m flexible link. System features include a tunable decodable distance range and enhanced eavesdropping resistance, employing 16-ary Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (16QAM) and 64QAM and achieving a maximum transmission rate of 20 Gbps.
Free Space Optical (FSO) communication has potential terrestrial and non-terrestrial applications. It allows large bandwidth for higher data transfer capacity. Due to its high directivity, it has a potential security advantage over traditional radio frequency (RF) communications. However, eavesdropping attacks are still possible in long non-terrestrial transmission FSO links, where the geometry of the link allows foreign flying objects such as Unmanned Aerial vehicles (UAVs) and drones to interrupt the links. This exposes non-terrestrial FSO links to adversary security attacks. Hence, data security techniques implementation is required to achieve immune FSO communication links. Unlike the commonly proposed physical layer security techniques, this paper presents a lab-based demonstration of a secured FSO communication link based on data cryptography using the GNU Radio platform and software-defined radio (SDR) hardware. The utilized encryption algorithm (Xsalsa20) in this paper requires high-time complexity to be broken by power-limited flying objects that interrupt the FSO beam. The results show that implementing cryptographic encryption techniques into FSO systems provided resilience against eavesdropping attacks and preserved data security. The experiment results show that, at a distance of 250 mm and laser output power of 10 mW, the system achieves a packet delivery rate of 92% and transmission rate of 10 Mbit/s. This is because the SDR used in this experiment requires a minimum received electrical amplitude of 27.5 mV to process the received signal. Long distance and higher data rates can be achieved using less sensitive SDR hardware.
High-altitude platform (HAP) stations are pivotal in non-terrestrial networks, enhancing communication capabilities and extending cost-effective network access to rural or remote areas. HAP-assisted free-space optical (FSO) communications provide a promising solution for improving data rates. To safeguard against eavesdropping, especially during emergencies, we propose a physical-layer security mechanism to enhance the control signaling resilience in disaster response and network failure detection. We investigate the secrecy performance of an integrated HAP-based FSO and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled radio frequency (RF) downlink system using the decode-and-forward relaying protocol. While optical links inherently provide better security, our focus is on the eavesdropping threats to the RF link. We derive novel and exact analytical and asymptotic closed-form expressions for the secrecy outage probability (SOP) and the probability of strictly positive secrecy capacity (PSPSC). Our results reveal the significant impact of atmospheric turbulence, RF fading, pointing errors, and optical detection technologies on the overall secrecy performance, providing valuable insights for designing secure mixed FSO and RF downlink communication systems.
High-order modulation format optical signals are widely deployed in modern optical networks but remain insufficiently protected at the physical layer, leading to significant security vulnerabilities. This work proposes an all-optical secure transmission scheme for 16QAM signals based on phase coding and dispersive stretching. The scheme employs symmetric cascaded in-phase and quadrature Mach–Zehnder modulators (IQMZMs) to realize phase encoding and decoding, providing a simple structure with good suitability for photonic integration. The universality of constant-envelope key signals within the proposed architecture is investigated, providing references for key-format and device selection in practical applications and important guidance for future research on all-optical digital encryption. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of all-optical digital encryption and decryption of 16QAM signals using high-order modulated key signals. Compared with existing schemes of the same category, the key space increases by a factor of2n, wherendenotes the number of symbols. Furthermore, the key signal undergoes dynamic temporal broadening through dispersive processing, enabling steganographic transmission. Simulation results at a bit rate of 100 Gb/s demonstrate significant security enhancement with high stability and reliability. Overall, the proposed scheme provides an effective approach to enhancing physical-layer security in high-order modulation optical transmission systems.
Optical communications have been widely deployed all over the world. In state-of-the-art optical communication systems, security and high capacity are the most important factors to be considered. As the rapid development of quantum computing, traditional computational complexity based encryption faces unprecedented challenges. To guarantee the unconditional security, quantum key distribution (QKD) has been proposed and now is attracting increasing attentions. Classical optical communications have been exponentially growing for decades. The telecommunications industry is always in favor of high-speed, long-haul, and cost-efficient optical transports. Lots of advanced techniques have been applied to meet the requirements, e.g., multi-dimensional multiplexing, advanced modulation formats, coherent detection, forward error correction (FEC) coding, constellation shaping, and adaptive coding. In this dissertation, I will investigate continuous-variable QKD (CV-QKD) protocols to enable unconditional security and study the reliable classical advanced optical transmission systems. In a dynamic fiber-optic transmission system, the system performance can be improved by the proposed self-adaptive coding approach. We also experimentally and numerically compare the mutual information (MI) performances of regular/probabilistically shaped/geometrically shaped (PS/GS)-8/16/32 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) formats. Therefore, the industry can select the best shaping scheme accordingly in a specific situation. Furthermore, we propose a novel hybrid PS/GS scheme, which can minimize non-Gray mapping penalty as well as be tolerant to the implementation penalty. In addition, free-space optical (FSO) communication systems are also studied here. We emulate the outdoor atmospheric turbulence by indoor turbulence emulator, which is based on split-step beam propagation method (SSBPM). Turbulence mitigation methods, including adaptive optics (AO), channel coding, spatial offset, and Huffman coding, are proposed and experimentally demonstrated to enable high-speed FSO communications. At the end, we propose novel four-state and eight-state CV-QKD systems, where the phase noise can be effectively mitigated, and power fluctuation caused by turbulence can be accurately monitored. Thereafter, beyond 1 Gb/s CV- QKD systems can be realized by controlling phase noise, leveraging reconciliation efficiency, monitoring power fluctuation, and multiplexing quantum channels.
Due to the recent rapid growth of computing technologies, today's encrypted information based on classical computational complexities will soon no longer remain secure. Quantum cryptography, or quantum key distribution (QKD), relying on the physical laws of quantum mechanics, stands out as a more powerful cryptographic solution that enables the secret key to be shared securely over publicly unsecured communication channels in the presence of eavesdroppers. QKD can be possibly implemented over both optical fiber and free-space optical (FSO) links. Compared to optical fiber, FSO has the immediate advantage of flexibility and cost-effectiveness in terms of infrastructure deployment. More interestingly, recent advancements in satellite communications using FSO links promise the future of a global QKD network for highly secure applications. This paper reviews the development of QKD over FSO for both terrestrial and satellite channels, which highlights the most up-to-date QKD protocols. Owing to how the information is encoded, different QKD protocols are classified into technology-focused categories, where their properties are reviewed and compared. The feasibility of current QKD protocols is then investigated with respect to its specific application scenarios for terrestrial and satellite FSO links, equipped with results from both theoretical and experimental studies. Based on the latest free-space QKD achievements, novel perspectives for future developments and challenges to enhance the secrecy performance and reduce implementation cost are then summarized and comprehensively discussed. The potential combination of QKD and physical layer cryptography for the newly emerging wireless mobile communications networks involved with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) is also introduced.