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An FPGA-Based 4 Mbps Secret Key Distillation Engine for Quantum Key Distribution Systems

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Abstract

Quantum key distribution (QKD) enables provably secure communication between two parties over an optical fiber that arguably withstands any form of attack. Besides the need for a suitable physical signalling scheme and the corresponding devices, QKD also requires a secret key distillation protocol. This protocol and the involved signal processing handle the reliable key agreement process over the fragile quantum channel, as well as the necessary post-processing of key bits to avoid leakage of secret key information to an eavesdropper. In this paper we present in detail an implementation of a key distillation engine for a QKD system based on the coherent one-way (COW) protocol. The processing of key bits by the key distillation engine includes agreement on quantum bit detections (sifting), information reconciliation with forward error correction coding, parameter estimation, and privacy amplification over an authenticated channel. We detail the system architecture combining all these processing steps, and discuss the design trade-offs for each individual system module. We also assess the performance and efficiency of our key distillation implementation in terms of throughput, error correction capabilities, and resource utilization. On a single-FPGA (Xilinx Virtex-6 LX240T) platform, the system supports distilled key rates of up to 4 Mbps.

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Notes

  1. Note that only a small fraction of the pulses can be detected, strongly depending on the optical fiber length between Alice and Bob. However, these missed detections do not result in bit errors, since these bits are omitted by Alice during the sifting process.

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Acknowledgments

The authors greatfully acknowledge Julien-Kenji Izui, Xavier-Christian Paillard, Gregory Trolliet, Fabien Vannel from HEPIA Geneva and Olivier Guinnard from the University of Geneva for their contributions to some key system components that are beyond the scope of this paper. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Swiss Nano-Tera program for the QCRYPT project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Telecommunications Circuits Laboratory, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Jeremy Constantin, Nicholas Preyss & Andreas Burg

  2. GAP-Optique, Université de Genève, 1211, Genève, Switzerland

    Raphael Houlmann & Hugo Zbinden

  3. Battelle, Columbus, OH, 43201, USA

    Nino Walenta

  4. University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland, 1401, Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland

    Pascal Junod

Authors
  1. Jeremy Constantin
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  2. Raphael Houlmann
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  3. Nicholas Preyss
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  4. Nino Walenta
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  5. Hugo Zbinden
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  6. Pascal Junod
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  7. Andreas Burg
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Correspondence to Jeremy Constantin.

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Constantin, J., Houlmann, R., Preyss, N. et al. An FPGA-Based 4 Mbps Secret Key Distillation Engine for Quantum Key Distribution Systems. J Sign Process Syst 86, 1–15 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11265-015-1086-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11265-015-1086-1

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