SECURE DATA TRANSMISSION VIA SPATIALLY MULTIPLEXED OPTICAL SIGNALS

• US 20140186033A1
• Filed: 12/28/2012
• Published: 07/03/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 12/28/2012
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Alcatel-Lucent SA (Nokia Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Alcatel-Lucent USA, Inc. (Nokia Corporation)
• Inventors: Winzer, Peter J., Guan, Kyle C., Soljanin, Emina
• Application Number:
  US13/730,270
• Publication Number:
  US 20140186033A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 398/39
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 10/07953 Monitoring or measuring OSNR, BER or Q
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 10/2581 Multimode transmission
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 10/50 Transmitters
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 10/60 Receivers
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 10/85 Protection from unauthorised access, e.g. eavesdrop protection
• CPC Class Codes: H04J 14/04 Mode multiplex systems
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/1475 Passive attacks, e.g. eavesdropping or listening without modification of the traffic monitored

Abstract

Various embodiments provide secure optical transmission of data. Noise may be added to optical signals transmitted by spatial paths of a multimode optical fiber. The noise may be added electrically prior to modulation, or optically after modulation. In some embodiments a transmitter and a receiver cooperate to maintain a noise level sufficient to place a tapped signal in a noise regime that provides a predetermined level of data security.

Claims

1. A system, comprising:

a spatially multiplexing optical fiber;

a mode-selective multiplexer configured to condition each of a plurality of optical signals for transmission via a corresponding spatial mode of the optical fiber; and

a noise source configured to add a noise signal to one or more of the optical signals.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising a modulator configured to modulate each of the optical signals with transmission data, wherein the noise is added to an optical source of the modulator.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the noise source adds electrical noise to the one or more optical signals after the one or more optical signals is modulated with transmission data.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the noise source adds electrical noise to a digital data stream before a corresponding optical signal is modulated with the digital data stream.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the electrical noise comprises a bit stream produced by a pseudo-random cipher algorithm.

6. A system, comprising:

an optical transmitter;

an optical receiver; and

a optical fiber capable of supporting a spatially multiplexed optical signal, the optical fiber being configured to convey a transmission of data from the transmitter to the receiver,

wherein the transmitter is configured to set a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) or a transmission capacity to achieve a predetermined secrecy capacity of the transmission.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the secrecy capacity is determined from a difference between a data capacity of a legitimate data channel transmitted via the optical fiber, and an estimated data capacity of an optical signal tapped from the optical fiber.

8. The system of claim 6, wherein the receiver is configured to provide a measure of optical channel signal parameters to the transmitter.

9. The system of claim 6, wherein the transmitter is configured to estimate a measure of optical channel signal parameters as received by the receiver.

10. A system, comprising:

an optical transmitter;

an optical receiver;

a optical fiber capable of supporting a spatially multiplexed optical signal, the optical fiber being configured to convey data via a transmitted optical signal from the transmitter to the receiver,

wherein the transmitter is configured to set a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the transmitted signal to place an eavesdropper in one of a plurality of predetermined security regions of the transmitted data.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein the plurality of security regions includes an exponentially secure region.

12. The system of claim 10, wherein the receiver is configured to estimate the channel quality of an optical signal tapped from the multimode optical fiber.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the receiver is configured to estimate the mode-dependent loss of the tapped optical signal.

14. A system, comprising:

a optical fiber capable of supporting a spatially multiplexed optical signal;

a transmitter including a mode scrambler configured to receive a plurality of optical data channels having an original order at a corresponding plurality of inputs and to reorder the received optical data channels among a corresponding plurality of outputs for transmission over the optical fiber; and

a receiver including a mode descrambler configured to receive the reordered data channels from the optical fiber and recover the original order.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the mode scrambler and mode descrambler share a pseudo-random scrambling schedule.

16. The system of claim 14, wherein data transmission includes a start-up phase during which the transmitter transmits the plurality of optical data channels without reordering.

17. The system of claim 14, wherein the optical fiber is a multi-core optical fiber.

18. The system of claim 14, wherein the spatially multiplexing optical fiber is a multi-mode optical fiber.

19. The system of claim 14, wherein the receiver performs MIMO processing of the received optical data channels.