Simulation and Implementation of Decoy State Quantum Key Distribution over 60km Telecom Fiber

Abstract

Decoy state quantum key distribution (QKD) has been proposed as a novel approach to improve dramatically both the security and the performance of practical QKD set-ups. Recently, many theoretical efforts have been made on this topic and have theoretically predicted the high performance of decoy method. However, the gap between theory and experiment remains open. In this paper, we report the first experiments on decoy state QKD, thus bridging the gap. Two protocols of decoy state QKD are implemented: one-decoy protocol over 15km of standard telecom fiber, and weak+vacuum protocol over 60km of standard telecom fiber. We implemented the decoy state method on a modified commercial QKD system. The modification we made is simply adding commercial acousto-optic modulator (AOM) on the QKD system. The AOM is used to modulate the intensity of each signal individually, thus implementing the decoy state method. As an important part of implementation, numerical simulation of our set-up is also performed. The simulation shows that standard security proofs give a zero key generation rate at the distance we perform decoy state QKD (both 15km and 60km). Therefore decoy state QKD is necessary for long distance secure communication. Our implementation shows explicitly the power and feasibility of decoy method, and brings it to our real-life.

5 pages, 4 figures. Submitted to IEEE ISIT 2006

References in corpus (1)

• Quantum key distribution over 122 km of standard telecom fiber

Cited by in corpus (16)

• Advances in Quantum Cryptography
• Secure quantum key distribution with realistic devices
• Quantum key distribution with entangled photon sources
• A balanced homodyne detector for high-rate Gaussian-modulated coherent-state quantum key distribution
• Decoy-state quantum key distribution with biased basis choice
• Proof-of-principle experimental realization of a qubit-like qudit-based quantum key distribution scheme
• Experimental Passive Decoy-State Quantum Key Distribution
• Experimental Two Way Quantum Key Distribution with Decoy State
• Performance of two decoy-state quantum cryptography protocols in earth-satellite links
• Unconditional security at a low cost
• Weak+Vacuum and One Decoy State with Two Way Quantum Key Distribution Protocol
• Afterpulsing Effect on the Baseline System Error Rate and on the Decoy-State Quantum Key Distribution Protocols
• Optimizing Decoy State Enabled Quantum Key Distribution Systems to Maximize Quantum Throughput and Detect Photon Number Splitting Attacks with High Confidence
• Security of high speed quantum key distribution with finite detector dead time
• $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$-Symmetric Quantum State Discrimination for Attack on BB84 Quantum Key Distribution
• Security of Plug-and-Play QKD Arrangements with Finite Resources