arXiv · 2503.14105
Quantum Pulse Gate Attack on IM/DD Optical Key Distribution Exploiting Symbol Shape Distortion
Abstract
Intensity modulation/direct detection (IM/DD) optical key distribution (OKD) is a method to generate a secret key whose security against passive eavesdropping is guaranteed by the shot noise inherent to the photodetection process. Here the effects of intensity-dependent symbol shape distortion on the IM/DD OKD security are investigated assuming that the eavesdropper can implement temporal mode demultiplexing using e.g the quantum pulse gating technique. The quantitative analysis includes key generation based on either hard- or soft-decoding of the detected signal as well as the impact of excess detection noise. A simple rule-of-thumb relation between the severity of the symbol shape distortion and the signal strength required to ensure key security is presented.
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M. Jarzyna, M. Jachura, K. Banaszek. 2025-03-18. Quantum Pulse Gate Attack on IM/DD Optical Key Distribution Exploiting Symbol Shape Distortion. https://doi.org/10.1109/lcomm.2023.3273305
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