TY - GEN
T1 - Covert communications-based information reconciliation for quantum key distribution protocols
AU - Gariano, John
AU - Djordjevic, Ivan B.
N1 - Funding Information:
This paper has been supported in part by ONR MURI program (N00014-13-1-0627).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 IEEE.
PY - 2019/7
Y1 - 2019/7
N2 - The rate at which a secure key can be generated in a quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol is limited by the channel loss and the quantum bit-error rate (QBER). Increases to the QBER can stem from detector noise, channel noise, or the presence of an eavesdropper, Eve. Eve is capable of obtaining information of the unsecure key by performing an attack on the quantum channel or by listening to all discussion performed via a noiseless public channel. Conventionally a QKD protocol will perform the information reconciliation over the authenticated public channel, revealing the parity bits used to correct for any quantum bit errors. In this invited paper, the possibility of limiting the information revealed to Eve during the information reconciliation is considered. Using a covert communication channel for the transmission of the parity bits, secure key rates are possible at much higher QBERs. This is demonstrated through the simulation of a polarization based QKD system implementing the BB84 protocol, showing significant improvement of the SKRs over the conventional QKD protocols.
AB - The rate at which a secure key can be generated in a quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol is limited by the channel loss and the quantum bit-error rate (QBER). Increases to the QBER can stem from detector noise, channel noise, or the presence of an eavesdropper, Eve. Eve is capable of obtaining information of the unsecure key by performing an attack on the quantum channel or by listening to all discussion performed via a noiseless public channel. Conventionally a QKD protocol will perform the information reconciliation over the authenticated public channel, revealing the parity bits used to correct for any quantum bit errors. In this invited paper, the possibility of limiting the information revealed to Eve during the information reconciliation is considered. Using a covert communication channel for the transmission of the parity bits, secure key rates are possible at much higher QBERs. This is demonstrated through the simulation of a polarization based QKD system implementing the BB84 protocol, showing significant improvement of the SKRs over the conventional QKD protocols.
KW - Covert communication
KW - Polarization entanglement
KW - QKD
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85073049205&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1109/ICTON.2019.8839991
DO - 10.1109/ICTON.2019.8839991
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85073049205
T3 - International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks
BT - 21st International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks, ICTON 2019
PB - IEEE Computer Society
T2 - 21st International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks, ICTON 2019
Y2 - 9 July 2019 through 13 July 2019
ER -