A New Information Reconciliation Protocol for Key Agreement

Simon Blake-Wilson⋆⋆, Don B. Johnson, Alfred Menezes

David Elkouss, Jesús Martínez-Mateo, Daniel Lancho Lancho +1 more

Information Reconciliation is a mechanism that allows to weed out the discrepancies between two correlated variables. It is an essential component in every key agreement protocol where the key has to be transmitted through a noisy channel. The typical case is in the satellite scenario described by Maurer in the early 90's. Recently the need has arisen in relation with Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) protocols, where it is very important not to reveal unnecessary information in order to maximize the shared key length. In this paper we present an information reconciliation protocol based on a rate compatible construction of Low Density Parity Check codes. Our protocol improves the efficiency of the reconciliation for the whole range of error rates in the discrete variable QKD context. Its adaptability together with its low interactivity makes it specially well suited for QKD reconciliation.

Takay Shimizu, Hisato Iwai, Hideichi Sasaoka

We consider information reconciliation in secret key agreement from a fading channel where two legitimate parties utilize channel estimates of their fading channel as correlated random variables to generate a secret key. The information reconciliation is a process of correcting the discrepancies between the legitimate parties' keys by public discussion in the presence of eavesdropper, where the amount of the information revealed in the public discussion is needed to be as little as possible. In this paper, we propose information reconciliation protocols using the reliability values of channel estimates in order to correct errors effectively. The proposed information reconciliation protocols are modified versions of a protocol used in quantum key distribution called sliced error correction using Cascade. Simulation results show that the proposed protocols can correct errors with less the number of disclosed bits and less the number of communications than the conventional sliced error correction using Cascade.

Colin Boyd, Anish Mathuria

Martinez-mateoJesus, PacherChristoph, PeevMomtchil +2 more

Cascade is an information reconciliation protocol proposed in the context of secret key agreement in quantum cryptography. This protocol allows removing discrepancies in two partially correlated se...

Colin Boyd, Anish Mathuria, Douglas Stebila