Free Space Measurement Device Independent Quantum Key Distribution with Modulating Retro-Reflectors under Correlated Turbulent Channel

Abstract

Modulating retro-reflector (MRR), originally introduced to support laser communication, relieves most of the weight, power, and pointing requirements to the ground station. In this paper, a plug-and-play measurement device independent quantum key distribution (MDI-QKD) scheme with MRR is proposed not only to eliminate detector side channels and allow an untrusted satellite relay between two users, but also to simplify the requirements set-ups in practical flexible moving scenarios. The plug-and-play architecture compensates for the polarization drift during the transmission to provide superior performance in implementing the MDI-QKD on a free-space channel, and the MRR device is adopted to relax the requirements on both communication terminals. A double-pass correlated turbulent channel model is presented to investigate the complex and unstable channel characteristics caused by the atmospheric turbulence. Furthermore, the security of the modified MDI-QKD scheme is analyzed under some classical attacks and the simulation results indicate the feasibility under the situation that the system performance deteriorates with the increase of fading correlation coefficient and the turbulence intensity, which provides a meaningful step towards an MDI-QKD based on the moving platforms to join a dynamic quantum network with untrusted relays.

Free-Space QKD with Modulating Retroreflectors Based on the B92 Protocol

“…Vallone demonstrated an imperfect experiment for satellite-to-ground MRR-QKD between low earth orbit (LEO) satellites and the Matera Laser Ranging Observatory (MLRO) [ 18 ]. Many studies have been conducted recently [ 16 , 19 , 20 ]. In 2017, Rabinovich designed a practical MRR-QKD system and achieved a quantum bit error rate (QBER) of approximately with a modulation rate of 1 MHz in the laboratory [ 16 ].…”