Secure self-calibrating quantum random bit generator

Random bit generators (RBGs) are key components of a variety of information processing applications ranging from simulations to cryptography. In particular, cryptographic systems require "strong" RBGs that produce high-entropy bit sequences, but traditional software pseudo-RBGs have very low entropy content and therefore are relatively weak for cryptography. Hardware RBGs yield entropy from chaotic or quantum physical systems and therefore are expected to exhibit high entropy, but in current implementations their exact entropy content is unknown. Here we report a quantum random bit generator (QRBG) that harvests entropy by measuring single-photon and entangled two-photon polarization states. We introduce and implement a quantum tomographic method to measure a lower bound on the "min-entropy" of the system, and we employ this value to distill a truly random bit sequence. This approach is secure: even if an attacker takes control of the source of optical states, a secure random sequence can be distilled.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Luby Transform Coding Aided Bit-Interleaved Coded Modulation for the Wireless Internet

Bit-Interleaved Coded Modulation using Iterative Decoding (BICM-ID) is amalgamated with Luby Transform (LT) coding. The resultant joint design of the physical and data link layer substantially improves the attainable Bit Error Rate (BER) performance. A Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) combined with a novel Log-Likelihood Ratio (LLR) based packet reliability estimation method is proposed for the sake of detecting and disposing of erroneous packets. Subsequently, bit-by-bit LT decoding is proposed, which facilitates a further BER improvement at a lower number of BICM-ID iterations. Finally, we revisit the pseudo random generator function used for designing the LT generator matrix