All-Optical Encryption Using Multi-Channel Spectral Shuffling

• Published in: IEEE photonics technology letters Vol. 31; no. 1; pp. 98 - 101
• Main Authors: Abbade, Marcelo Luis Francisco, Bueno Bobadilla, Leonardo Diogo, Orquiza de Carvalho, Daniel, Alves Ferreira, Andre, Bonani, Luiz Henrique, Aldaya, Ivan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01-01-2019; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Bit error rate; Channels; Eavesdropping; Encryption; Network security; Optical communication; Optical receivers; optical signal processing; physical layer encryption; Quadrature phase shift keying; Wave division multiplexing; Wavelength division multiplexing
• ISSN: 1041-1135; 1941-0174
• DOI: 10.1109/LPT.2018.2884477

We propose a novel all-optical encryption technique that shuffles spectral slices of multiple wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) channels. In particular, we investigate the application of this technique to two WDM 56-Gb/s quadrature phase-shift keying signals. Simulation results reveal that the encrypted signals could be propagated through transparent optical networks with diameters larger than 500 km and properly decrypted at the receiver. The technique enhances security because it forces eavesdroppers to discover the shuffled slices and to monitor multiple channels to recover data from just one of them.