Autonomous Sensor Node Powered by CM-Scale Benthic Microbial Fuel Cell and Low-Cost and Off-the-Shelf Components

International audienceMicrobial fuel cells (MFC's) are promising energy harvesters to constantly supply energy to sensors deployed in aquatic environments where solar, thermal and vibration sources are inadequate. In order to show the ready-to-use MFC potential as energy scavengers, this paper presents the association of a durable benthic MFC with a few dollars of commercially-available power management units (PMU's) dedicated to other kinds of harvesters. With 20cm 2 of cheap material electrodes, and experimental conditions similar to real ones, 101µW has been generated at 320mV in steady-state operation. In burst mode, the MFC can generate up to 400µW. The PMU, configured to extract the maximum available energy, provides 47µW at 3V in steady state, which would allow a wide range of environmental sensors to be powered. A sensor node, consuming 100µJ every 4s for measurement and wireless transmission of temperature, has been successfully powered by the association of our MFC and the PMU

Electrical characterization and modeling of benthic microbial fuel cells for energy harvesting

National audienceMicrobial fuel cell (MFC) is a promising energy harvester for supplying sensors in seafloors where solar, thermal and vibration sources are inadequate. Extensive efforts focus improvement of MFC biological and electrochemical capabilities while the electrical perspectives are poorly developed in literature. In order to promote MFC as energy scavenger, this paper explains the methods used to electrically characterize the specific MFC for seafloor conditions and the way to model its steady state operation close to the maximum power point. The method is applied to a compost-fed MCF delivering 5.7µW at 0.14V optimal output voltage. This work is the first step to efficiently apprehend the elaboration of an electrical harvesting interface

Modélisation électrique d'une pile microbienne sédimentaire et extraction de son énergie par un flyback en mode discontinue

National audienceLa récupération d'énergie ambiante est une solution efficace et respectueuse de l'écosystème pour alimenter de manière autonome des noeuds de capteurs, promouvant ainsi leur déploiement dans différents environnements. La pile microbienne benthique (SMFC) est un système récupérant l'énergie de la biomasse sédimentaire à l'aide du métabolisme électro-actif des bactéries présentes naturellement dans le milieu. Un prototype a été conçu en laboratoire et modélisé électriquement. Bien que prometteuse comme source d'énergie long terme pour des capteurs marins, ses niveaux de puissance (autour de 100µW) et de tension (0,6V en circuit ouvert) nous engage à mener une réflexion sur la conception de son interface électronique de récupération. Cette étape est cruciale pour extraire le maximum d'énergie et élever sa tension au minimum requis par le capteur (quelques volts). Afin de contrôler l'impédance d'entrée et le gain en tension indépendamment, cet article présente un convertisseur flyback en mode de conduction discontinue. A l'aide d'un modèle complet du flyback validé expérimentalement, nous avons étudié l'origine de chaque perte afin de parvenir à un compromis nous permettant de concevoir efficacement un flyback, pour des transferts de puissance n'excédant pas la centaine de µW. Nous avons ainsi pu mettre en évidence la prédominance des pertes dues à l'hystérésis du matériau magnétique utilisé pour les inductances couplées ainsi que celles engendrées par la commande du commutateur. En suivant cette méthode, nous avons pu concevoir un prototype optimisé atteignant 71% de rendement pour une source d'énergie délivrant 90µW

Experimental verification of multipartite entanglement in quantum networks

Multipartite entangled states are a fundamental resource for a wide range of quantum information processing tasks. In particular, in quantum networks it is essential for the parties involved to be able to verify if entanglement is present before they carry out a given distributed task. Here we design and experimentally demonstrate a protocol that allows any party in a network to check if a source is distributing a genuinely multipartite entangled state, even in the presence of untrusted parties. The protocol remains secure against dishonest behaviour of the source and other parties, including the use of system imperfections to their advantage. We demonstrate the verification protocol in a three- and four-party setting using polarization-entangled photons, highlighting its potential for realistic photonic quantum communication and networking applications.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

On Quantum Slide Attacks

At Crypto 2016, Kaplan et al. proposed the first quantum exponential acceleration of a classical symmetric cryptanalysis technique: they showed that, in the superposition query model, Simon’s algorithm could be applied to accelerate the slide attack on the alternate-key cipher. This allows to recover an n-bit key with O(n) quantum time and queries. In this paper we propose many other types of quantum slide attacks, inspired by classical techniques including sliding with a twist, complementation slide and mirror slidex. These slide attacks on Feistel networks reach up to two round self-similarity with modular additions inside branch or key-addition operations. With only XOR operations, they reach up to four round self-similarity, with a cost at most quadratic in the block size. Some of these variants combined with whitening keys (FX construction)can also be successfully attacked. Furthermore, we show that some quantum slide attacks can be composed with other quantum attacks to perform efficient key-recoveries even when the round function is a strong function classically. Finally, we analyze the case of quantum slide attacks exploiting cycle-finding, that were thought to enjoy an exponential speed up in a paper by Bar-On et al. in2015, where these attacks were introduced. We show that the speed-up is smaller than expected and less impressive than the above variants, but nevertheless provide improved complexities on the previous known quantum attacks in the superpositionmodel for some self-similar SPN and Feistel constructions

Quantum Algorithms for the k-xor Problem

International audienceThe k-xor (or generalized birthday) problem is a widely studied question with many applications in cryptography. It aims at finding k elements of n bits, drawn at random, such that the xor of all of them is 0. The algorithms proposed by Wagner more than fifteen years ago remain the best known classical algorithms for solving them, when disregarding logarithmic factors. In this paper we study these problems in the quantum setting, when considering that the elements are created by querying a random function (or k random functions) H : {0, 1} n → {0, 1} n. We consider two scenarios: in one we are able to use a limited amount of quantum memory (i.e. a number O(n) of qubits, the same as the one needed by Grover's search algorithm), and in the other we consider that the algorithm can use an exponential amount of qubits. Our newly proposed algorithms are of general interest. In both settings, they provide the best known quantum time complexities. In particular, we are able to considerately improve the 3-xor algorithm: with limited qubits, we reach a complexity considerably better than what is currently possible for quantum collision search. Furthermore, when having access to exponential amounts of quantum memory, we can take this complexity below O(2 n/3), the well-known lower bound of quantum collision search, clearly improving the best known quantum time complexity also in this setting. We illustrate the importance of these results with some cryptographic applications

Quantum key distribution based on orthogonal states allows secure quantum bit commitment

For more than a decade, it was believed that unconditionally secure quantum bit commitment (QBC) is impossible. But basing on a previously proposed quantum key distribution scheme using orthogonal states, here we build a QBC protocol in which the density matrices of the quantum states encoding the commitment do not satisfy a crucial condition on which the no-go proofs of QBC are based. Thus the no-go proofs could be evaded. Our protocol is fault-tolerant and very feasible with currently available technology. It reopens the venue for other "post-cold-war" multi-party cryptographic protocols, e.g., quantum bit string commitment and quantum strong coin tossing with an arbitrarily small bias. This result also has a strong influence on the Clifton-Bub-Halvorson theorem which suggests that quantum theory could be characterized in terms of information-theoretic constraints.Comment: Published version plus an appendix showing how to defeat the counterfactual attack, more references [76,77,90,118-120] cited, and other minor change

Hidden Shift Quantum Cryptanalysis and Implications

International audienceAt Eurocrypt 2017 a tweak to counter Simon's quantum attack was proposed: replace the common bitwise addition, with other operations, as a modular addition. The starting point of our paper is a follow up of these previous results: First, we have developed new algorithms that improve and generalize Kuperberg's algorithm for the hidden shift problem, which is the algorithm that applies instead of Simon when considering modular additions. Thanks to our improved algorithm, we have been able to build a quantum attack in the superposition model on Poly1305, proposed at FSE 2005, largely used and claimed to be quantumly secure. We also answer an open problem by analyzing the effect of the tweak to the FX construction. We have also generalized the algorithm. We propose for the first time a quantum algorithm for solving the problem with parallel modular additions , with a complexity that matches both Simon and Kuperberg in its extremes. We also propose a generic algorithm to solve the hidden shift problem in non-abelian groups. In order to verify the theoretical analysis we performed, and to get concrete estimates of the cost of the algorithms, we have simulated them, and were able to validate our estimated complexities. Finally, we analyze the security of some classical symmetric constructions with concrete parameters, to evaluate the impact and practicality of the proposed tweak, concluding that it does not seem to be efficient