Physical layer encryption of OFDM-PON based on quantum noise stream cipher with polar code

• Published in: China communications Vol. 21; no. 3; pp. 174 - 188
• Main Authors: Yinbo, Xu, Mingyi, Gao, Huaqing, Zhu, Bowen, Chen, Lian, Xiang, Gangxiang, Shen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: China Institute of Communications 01.03.2024
• Subjects: Chaotic communication; Encryption; Optical fibers; Physical layer; physical layer encryption; polar code; Polar codes; Quadrature amplitude modulation; quantum noise stream cipher; Security
• ISSN: 1673-5447
• DOI: 10.23919/JCC.fa.2022-0279.202403

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing passive optical network (OFDM-PON) has superior anti-dispersion property to operate in the C-band of fiber for increased optical power budget. However, the downlink broadcast exposes the physical layer vulnerable to the threat of illegal eavesdropping. Quantum noise stream cipher (QNSC) is a classic physical layer encryption method and well compatible with the OFDM-PON. Meanwhile, it is indispensable to exploit forward error correction (FEC) to control errors in data transmission. However, when QNSC and FEC are jointly coded, the redundant information becomes heavier and thus the code rate of the transmitted signal will be largely reduced. In this work, we propose a physical layer encryption scheme based on polar-code-assisted QNSC. In order to improve the code rate and security of the transmitted signal, we exploit chaotic sequences to yield the redundant bits and utilize the redundant information of the polar code to generate the higher-order encrypted signal in the QNSC scheme with the operation of the interleaver. We experimentally demonstrate the encrypted 16/64-QAM, 16/256-QAM, 16/1024-QAM, 16/4096-QAM QNSC signals transmitted over 30-km standard single mode fiber. For the transmitted 16/4096-QAM QNSC signal, compared with the conventional QNSC method, the proposed method increases the code rate from 0.1 to 0.32 with enhanced security.