Protecting confidential high speed optical signal transmission at the lowest physical layer is a critical challenge for modern fiber-optic communication systems. In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate a novel synchronous privacy enhanced chaotic temporal phase en/decryption scheme for high-speed physical layer secure optical communication. A remote chaos synchronization architecture relying on common source signal driving and private response hardware modules comprising of dispersive components and slave lasers is employed to generate synchronized private chaotic en/decryption signals, and simultaneously suppress residual driving-response correlation for enhancing the security. A proof-of-principle demonstration by secure transmission of a 28 Gb/s on-off-keying modulated confidential signal over 100 km single mode fiber link based on the private chaotic temporal phase en/decryption scheme is successfully achieved. The demonstrated hardware optical en/decryption approach may provide a promising way towards future ultra-high speed physical layer secure optical communication systems.

Achieving photonic layer security at the lowest network layer to supplement the upper layer digital cryptography in fiber-optic networks is a constant pursuit but a critical challenge. In this Letter, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a high-speed photonic-layer secure optical communication system based on a novel, to the best of our knowledge, common noise driven synchronous private temporal phase en/decryption scheme, which is capable of supporting high-order modulation formats and enhancing security. A record high bit rate of 56 Gb/s 4-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM4) confidential signal is successfully encrypted and decrypted by remotely synchronized private noise-like en/decryption signals after secret transmission over 20 km of optical fiber with a bit-error-rate (BER) lower than the hard-decision forward error correction (HD-FEC) limit. The demonstrated scheme may provide a promising way for future ultrahigh-speed photonic-layer secure optical communication.

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