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Optics Express

Physical layer security enhancement scheme for OFDM systems based on fractal Sierpinski triangle and DNA encryption

Dongfei Wang, Xingda Wang, ZICHEN LI

Published Aug 3, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This paper proposes a physical layer security enhancement scheme for optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) based on a fractal Sierpiński triangle model and DNA encryption. The scheme encrypts image data at the bit level by integrating fractal Sierpiński triangle arrangement and rotation, chaotic systems, as well as DNA encoding, operations, and decoding. Simulation experiments were conducted on a 16-quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) coherent optical OFDM system with a symbol rate of 30 Gbaud over 80 km of single-mode fiber. The results demonstrate that the proposed encryption scheme enables authorized users to successfully decrypt and recover the transmitted encrypted data without degrading transmission performance, while unauthorized users can only obtain meaningless information with a bit error rate of approximately 0.5. Moreover, by leveraging chaotic systems, the key space of the scheme reaches 2 256 , providing strong resistance against brute-force attacks.

DOI
10.1364/oe.608331

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This paper proposes a physical layer security enhancement scheme for optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) based on a fractal Sierpiński triangle model and DNA encryption. The scheme encrypts image data at the bit level by integrating fractal Sierpiński triangle arrangement and rotation, chaotic systems, as well as DNA encoding, operations, and decoding. Simulation experiments were conducted on a 16-quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) coherent optical OFDM system with a symbol rate of 30 Gbaud over 80 km of single-mode fiber. The results demonstrate that the proposed encryption scheme enables authorized users to successfully decrypt and recover the transmitted encrypted data without degrading transmission performance, while unauthorized users can only obtain meaningless information with a bit error rate of approximately 0.5. Moreover, by leveraging chaotic systems, the key space of the scheme reaches 2 256 , providing strong resistance against brute-force attacks.
In this Letter, we propose a secure orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission scheme based on chaotic encryption and noise-masking key distribution. With the implementation of a three-dimensional digital chaotic system, the security performance is effectively enhanced by scrambling the phase, symbol, and subcarrier frequency of the OFDM signal. The proposed noise-masking key distribution can mask the key information of the chaotic system into noise and transmit it with the chaotic encrypted signal simultaneously. By this mechanism, the legal receiver can realize uninterrupted authentication and decryption even if the key is constantly updated. Transmission of a 62.2-Gb/s quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) and 124.4-Gb/s 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (16QAM) OFDM signal over a 2-km 7-core fiber using the proposed scheme is experimentally demonstrated. The results show that the proposed scheme can realize security enhancement and cost-effective key distribution without significant bit error ratio (BER) performance degradation.
In this paper, a security enhanced physical layer encryption scheme is proposed for coherent optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (CO-OFDM) system. This scheme is based on a concatenated inter-domain joint scrambling (CIJS) method, while adopting the three-dimension logistic sine cascading mapping (3D-LSCM) as a chaos key system to improve the security. Thrice inter-domain cat mappings are implemented, which fully exploits the characteristic domains of OFDM data and greatly increases the possible permutations. An experiment of the encryption scheme is realized successfully in a 16QAM CO-OFDM system at a symbol rate of 40 Gbaud over an 80 km standard single mode fiber. The experiment shows that no bit error rate (BER) and peak to average power ratio (PAPR) penalties are introduced in this scheme. The proposed 3D-LSCM chaos system shows superior properties of high sensitivity to initial values and improved uniform distribution, which guarantees the large entropy and further the system's security. This scheme can effectively prevent against a chosen-text attack which is the most effective attack method due to the extremely small tolerabledeviation and the large key space of 1.12 × 10207.
Abstract—The paper proposes an optical physical layer encryption scheme based on the combination of similar rotation of the state of polarization (SRSOP) and a six-dimensional (6-D) hyperchaotic system. By introducing similar polarization state rotation to disturb vector data at the transmitting end, the security of optical transmission systems can be effectively enhanced In addition, the data perturbation of polarization state rotation, combined with the 6D hyperchaotic system with unpredictability and sensitivity, can extend the key space of the encryption scheme to 10180, making it resistant to brute force attacks. The encryption process of this scheme is as follows: Firstly, the chaotic sequences generated by the 6D hyperchaotic system were used to encrypt various parameters in the polarization encryption matrix, and then these parameters were used to generate the corresponding polarization encryption matrix. Finally, the encryption matrix was used to perturb the data to be sent. The scheme was successfully tested on a polarization division multiplexing (PDM)-QPSK system at a rate of 112 Gbps. The results indicate that authorized users can correctly decrypt the encrypted information, while unauthorized users can only obtain useful information with a bit error rate (BER) of approximately 0.5, verifying the effectiveness and security of the encryption scheme.
We propose a chaotic spatial symbol transforming encryption method for enhancing the physical layer security in fiber-optic systems based on space-division multiplexed (SDM) transmission. The designed 3-D chaotic sequences are used to scramble the real and imaginary part of quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) symbols, permute the symbol-to-space mapping, and control iteration times between the two processes. The encrypted transmission of 200 Gb/s per mode polarization-division-multiplexed 16QAM signals has been simulated over 1000-km two-mode fiber. The results show that the eavesdropper cannot recover the original information with a part of the security keys or a part of the transmitted signals when the iteration times are beyond 5. We found the error spreading phenomenon can be combined with the mode-dependent loss (MDL) to realize the system security enhancement. When eavesdroppers coupled signals out from SDM waveguide by bending-induced fiber tapping, they need reduce the bend radius to receive more spatial leak modes. The bending-induced fiber tapping inherently causes MDL. Although the error spreading phenomenon leads to bit-error-rate increasing by 1.3 dB than conventional 16QAM transmission, it will be a promising solution to overcome the weakness that the huge amount of data can be compromised by taping out the portion of the signal in single-mode transmission.
A novel digital signal processing (DSP)-based scheme for physical layer security in coherent optical communication systems is proposed and numerically investigated. The optical layer signal encryption is accomplished by two dispersive elements and one phase modulator (PM) driven by a DSP-generated encryption key, whilst signal decryption uses similar components but with inverted dispersion values and security keys. A critical aspect of the DSP-based physical layer security is that the security keys, driving the PMs to hide/recover the data signals, must be highly unpredictable and noise-like, thus orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals are employed as they possess these characteristics, they can also be easily generated and cover a suitably wide range of unique keys. Numerical simulations are conducted to determine optimum system parameters for achieving a high level of security, the key parameters requiring optimization are the dispersion of the dispersive elements and the bandwidth of the security keys. Using these determined optimum parameters, in-depth investigations are undertaken of encryption/decryption induced transmission performance penalties, sensitives to various parameter offsets and operation over various transmission distances. To observe any data signal dependencies, various performance metrics are investigated for different combinations of modulation formats (DQPSK and 16QAM) and baud rates (40 Gbaud and 100 Gbaud) for the transmitted data signals. The proposed DSP-based physical layer security scheme is shown to have the potential to achieve, in a low-cost and highly effective manner, a high level of physical layer security with acceptable performance penalties for existing coherent optical communication systems.
In this paper, a security enhanced physical layer encryption scheme is proposed for coherent optical polarization division multiplexing (PDM) systems. The concept of a digital optical polarization scrambler (DOPS) is introduced to apply high speed rotation of state of polarization (RSOP) to the transmitted signal, which enables encryption based on polarization perturbations and offers superior flexibility in polarization management. By utilizing different combinations of digital polarization device matrices and adjusting their key parameters, four encryption modes are designed. The proposed encryption scheme is successfully implemented in a PDM-QPSK system at the data rate of 32 Gbps. Experimental results demonstrate that authorized users can successfully decrypt the received signal, while the eavesdroppers cannot derive useful information with a bit error rate (BER) at approximately 0.5. To enhance system security, a 5-D chaotic system is introduced with superior properties of high sensitivity to initial values and improved uniform distribution, which guarantees the large entropy and further the system’s security. This scheme can effectively prevent against brute attacks with the expanded key space of 10 60 .