8,993 research outputs found
Blind Reconciliation
Information reconciliation is a crucial procedure in the classical
post-processing of quantum key distribution (QKD). Poor reconciliation
efficiency, revealing more information than strictly needed, may compromise the
maximum attainable distance, while poor performance of the algorithm limits the
practical throughput in a QKD device. Historically, reconciliation has been
mainly done using close to minimal information disclosure but heavily
interactive procedures, like Cascade, or using less efficient but also less
interactive -just one message is exchanged- procedures, like the ones based in
low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. The price to pay in the LDPC case is
that good efficiency is only attained for very long codes and in a very narrow
range centered around the quantum bit error rate (QBER) that the code was
designed to reconcile, thus forcing to have several codes if a broad range of
QBER needs to be catered for. Real world implementations of these methods are
thus very demanding, either on computational or communication resources or
both, to the extent that the last generation of GHz clocked QKD systems are
finding a bottleneck in the classical part. In order to produce compact, high
performance and reliable QKD systems it would be highly desirable to remove
these problems. Here we analyse the use of short-length LDPC codes in the
information reconciliation context using a low interactivity, blind, protocol
that avoids an a priori error rate estimation. We demonstrate that 2x10^3 bits
length LDPC codes are suitable for blind reconciliation. Such codes are of high
interest in practice, since they can be used for hardware implementations with
very high throughput.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figure
Fundamental Finite Key Limits for One-Way Information Reconciliation in Quantum Key Distribution
The security of quantum key distribution protocols is guaranteed by the laws
of quantum mechanics. However, a precise analysis of the security properties
requires tools from both classical cryptography and information theory. Here,
we employ recent results in non-asymptotic classical information theory to show
that one-way information reconciliation imposes fundamental limitations on the
amount of secret key that can be extracted in the finite key regime. In
particular, we find that an often used approximation for the information
leakage during information reconciliation is not generally valid. We propose an
improved approximation that takes into account finite key effects and
numerically test it against codes for two probability distributions, that we
call binary-binary and binary-Gaussian, that typically appear in quantum key
distribution protocols
Demystifying the Information Reconciliation Protocol Cascade
Cascade is an information reconciliation protocol proposed in the context of
secret key agreement in quantum cryptography. This protocol allows removing
discrepancies in two partially correlated sequences that belong to distant
parties, connected through a public noiseless channel. It is highly
interactive, thus requiring a large number of channel communications between
the parties to proceed and, although its efficiency is not optimal, it has
become the de-facto standard for practical implementations of information
reconciliation in quantum key distribution. The aim of this work is to analyze
the performance of Cascade, to discuss its strengths, weaknesses and
optimization possibilities, comparing with some of the modified versions that
have been proposed in the literature. When looking at all design trade-offs, a
new view emerges that allows to put forward a number of guidelines and propose
near optimal parameters for the practical implementation of Cascade improving
performance significantly in comparison with all previous proposals.Comment: 30 pages, 13 figures, 3 table
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