Virtual channel of multidimensional reconciliation in a continuous-variable quantum key distribution

Abstract

The well-known multidimensional reconciliation is a significant stage of a continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CVQKD) system, which uses $d$-dimensional rotations to build a virtual channel between authenticated parties, Alice and Bob. Generally, a block low-density parity-check code with a belief-propagation (BP) iterative decoding algorithm, which is optimized for an additive white Gaussian noise channel, is always used in multidimensional reconciliation for the CVQKD system. In this paper, we study the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the virtual channel of multidimensional reconciliation in CVQKD and prove that the noise of the virtual channel follows the Student's $t$-distribution. Therefore, we propose a $t$-BP decoding algorithm, which can be better applied to multidimensional reconciliation. Simulation results show that the frame error rate (FER) with the proposed $t$-BP decoding algorithm is superior to that with the conventional BP decoding algorithm applied to multidimensional reconciliation. Subsequently, the FER improvement results in significant influence on reconciliation efficiency and secret key rate of the CVQKD system.