New customizable digital data container for optical cryptosystems

Abstract

Quick response (QR) codes have recently become a popular data container for optical encryption systems. Their effectiveness is based on the error-correction codes, that allow them to decode data even when the media itself is significantly damaged. However, QR codes were developed for specific applications and have a significant number of elements that are superfluous for optical encryption. In this paper we present a new customizable digital data container (CDDC), designed to replace QR codes in optical encryption. CDDC is based on the error-correction codes too, but has a wide range of configurable parameters and can be specialized for a particular optical setup. The results of noise robustness analysis, numerical and optical experiments on application of the new container in a spatially incoherent optical encryption system demonstrate the supremacy of CDDC in comparison to QR codes in terms of error correction capabilities and data density.