Abstract
Modulating retro-reflector (MRR), originally introduced to support laser communication, relieves most of the weight, power, and pointing requirements to the ground station. In this paper, a plug-and-play measurement device independent quantum key distribution (MDI-QKD) scheme with MRR is proposed not only to eliminate detector side channels and allow an untrusted satellite relay between two users, but also to simplify the requirements set-ups in practical flexible moving scenarios. The plug-and-play architecture compensates for the polarization drift during the transmission to provide superior performance in implementing the MDI-QKD on a free-space channel, and the MRR device is adopted to relax the requirements on both communication terminals. A double-pass correlated turbulent channel model is presented to investigate the complex and unstable channel characteristics caused by the atmospheric turbulence. Furthermore, the security of the modified MDI-QKD scheme is analyzed under some classical attacks and the simulation results indicate the feasibility under the situation that the system performance deteriorates with the increase of fading correlation coefficient and the turbulence intensity, which provides a meaningful step towards an MDI-QKD based on the moving platforms to join a dynamic quantum network with untrusted relays.
Highlights
Measurement device independent quantum key distribution (MDI-QKD) [1], which is immune to all attacks against the detection system and allows a QKD network with untrusted relays, has been a promising area to guarantee the information security of communications [2,3,4]
The implementation of MDIQKD requires the indistinguishability of the spectral, polarization and temporal modes of the photons from Alice and Bob, which is much more difficult to manipulate under a free space channel than a fiber-based channel because the free-space optical channels dramatically fluctuate, caused by the atmospheric turbulence [10]
A plug-and-play MDI-QKD scheme with modulating retro-reflectors is proposed to inherit the merit of the structure, where the plug-and-play architecture compensates for the polarization drift during the transmission to provide superior performance in implementing the MDI-QKD on free space channel, and to bring advantages of the Modulating retro-reflector (MRR) device, which is adopted in classical free space communication system to relax the requirements on both communication terminals
Summary
Measurement device independent quantum key distribution (MDI-QKD) [1], which is immune to all attacks against the detection system and allows a QKD network with untrusted relays, has been a promising area to guarantee the information security of communications [2,3,4]. Inspired by the multidirectional links using the modulating retro-reflector (MRR) for high rate free-space optical communication [15], a laboratory-based free-space QKD with the MRR setting was presented in [16], which can ease the pointing requirements and maintain the narrow beam divergence necessary for long-range communication links. A plug-and-play MDI-QKD scheme with modulating retro-reflectors is proposed to inherit the merit of the structure, where the plug-and-play architecture compensates for the polarization drift during the transmission to provide superior performance in implementing the MDI-QKD on free space channel, and to bring advantages of the MRR device, which is adopted in classical free space communication system to relax the requirements on both communication terminals. The article is ended in with a security analysis of the MRR-MDI-QKD
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