Analysis of FSO Communication Using Principles of Quantum Mechanics

Project Title

Analysis of FSO Communication Using Principles of Quantum Mechanics

Project Area of Specialization Information & Communication TechnologyProject Summary

Begun in the early 1970s by the work of Stephen Wiesner and Gilles Brassard, who introduced the concept of quantum conjugate coding, has now stretched to the level where today's agile communication systems constitute a substantial challenge for data security and safety. Much research has been performed to have secure communication among legitimate parties in which QKD (Quantum Key Distribution) is prominent. Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), also called Quantum Cryptography, shares secret cryptographic keys between two communicating parties with unconditional security. In a practical QKD setup, two stations send and receive encoded quantum particles and some classical information. The most rudimentary and well-known QKD protocol is BB84, developed by Bennet and Brassard in 1984. The goal will be to study the BB84 protocol through simulation and develop a practical device for secure communication with deep error rate analysis in a 2-dimensional system. Through this system, a photonic signal will be generated by the use of a collimated laser beam to securely generate a key that will be used to communicate between the stations. We will  also be studying another QKD protocol, KMB09, named after its co-founders, Muhammad Mubashir Khan, Michael Murphy and Almut Beige and its year of invention, 2009.

Project Objectives

To generate an undisclosed mutual key between two parties to encrypt and decrypt communications which can be ascertained by advanced optical and electronic hardware components and software based mathematical model and simulation.

Project Implementation Method

1. Literature survey
2. Optical component modeling
3. Software based model or simulation model
4. System simulation
5. Analysis of proposed model

Benefits of the Project

Application of secure optical communication is of great interest to the military (direct, underwater world, industry, scientific community, and government organizations. Its ability to communicate over many kilometers pushing the research in this field with the aim to further improve this technology. It has high level of bandwidth and security qualities using modulated collimated light to transmit data through low probability of detection (LPD) and low probability of interception (LPI) which makes it attractive for secure communication. Also, we will have a prototype design for secure free space optical communication (FSO) using quantum mechanics for new researchers and data retrieval by computer aided testing or simulation models using GUI and python.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

For practical implementation, optical electronic components from laser for generating short pulse waves for polarization of photons to open-source microcontrollers like Arduino or raspberry pi are used for tracking and prototyping a system for cryptography. For modelling and simulation-based software, various libraries and packages of Python programming are going to be implemented for polarization of photons in terms of qubits by using conjugate basis and Quantum Bit Error Rate (QBER) and Index Transmission Error Rate (ITER) are calculated to detect the presence of intruder. 

Final Deliverable of the Project Hardware SystemCore Industry ITOther Industries Education Core Technology OthersOther TechnologiesSustainable Development Goals Quality Education, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, Sustainable Cities and CommunitiesRequired Resources

Item Name	Type	No. of Units	Per Unit Cost (in Rs)	Total (in Rs)
			Total in (Rs)	78200
A4 Polarizers	Equipment	4	1000	4000
Attenuator	Equipment	2	10000	20000
Beam Splitter	Equipment	2	20000	40000
Detector	Equipment	4	1300	5200
Raspberry pi	Miscellaneous	3	3000	9000