Abstract
High-speed physical key distribution is diligently pursued for secure communication. In this paper, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a scheme of high-speed key distribution using mode-shift keying chaos synchronization between two multi-longitudinal-mode Fabry–Perot lasers commonly driven by a super-luminescent diode. Legitimate users dynamically select one of the longitudinal modes according to private control codes to achieve mode-shift keying chaos synchronization. The two remote chaotic light waveforms are quantized to generate two raw random bit streams, and then those bits corresponding to chaos synchronization are sifted as shared keys by comparing the control codes. In this method, the transition time, i.e., the chaos synchronization recovery time is determined by the rising time of the control codes rather than the laser transition response time, so the key distribution rate is improved greatly. Our experiment achieved a 0.75-Gbit/s key distribution rate with a bit error rate of 3.8 × 10−3 over 160-km fiber transmission with dispersion compensation. The entropy rate of the laser chaos is evaluated as 16 Gbit/s, which determines the ultimate final key rate together with the key generation ratio. It is therefore believed that the method pays a way for Gbit/s physical key distribution.
Highlights
Optical fiber communication has become the most important way for high-speed data transmission in modern communication networks, and high-speed secure key distribution is urgently required to protect the transmitted data from eavesdropping
The reported classical physical key distribution methods are mainly based on physical unclonable function[2], fiber laser[3,4,5], fiber channel noise[6,7,8], and electrical or optical chaos[9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17]
The physical randomness of optical scattering supports a great number of random bits, the storage depth of public dictionary results in a finite length of the key sequence, which may lead to reuse of keys and risk of plaintext attack
Summary
Optical fiber communication has become the most important way for high-speed data transmission in modern communication networks, and high-speed secure key distribution is urgently required to protect the transmitted data from eavesdropping. The reported classical physical key distribution methods are mainly based on physical unclonable function[2], fiber laser[3,4,5], fiber channel noise[6,7,8], and electrical or optical chaos[9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17]. In the physical unclonable function method, two users extract random bits as private keys from the optical speckle pattern of each volumetric scattering material and form a public key dictionary[2]. The physical randomness of optical scattering supports a great number of random bits, the storage depth of public dictionary results in a finite length of the key sequence, which may lead to reuse of keys and risk of plaintext attack.
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