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Towards practical quantum secure direct communication: A quantum-memory-free protocol and code design

Towards practical quantum secure direct communication: A quantum-memory-free protocol and code design
Towards practical quantum secure direct communication: A quantum-memory-free protocol and code design

Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) is capable of direct confidential communications over a quantum channel, which is achieved by dispensing with the key agreement channel of the well-known quantum key distribution (QKD). However, to make QSDC a practical reality, we have to mitigate its reliance on quantum memory, its immediate communication interruption caused by eavesdropping and its low transmission reliability due to the heavy qubit losses. Hence a new QSDC protocol is proposed based on a sophisticated coded single-photon DL04 QSDC protocol to tackle the open challenges. In particular, quantum memory is dispensed with and a high-accuracy secrecy capacity estimate is derived for this protocol by conceiving dynamic joint encryption and error-control (JEEC) coding. We demonstrate that this quantum-memory-free DL04 QSDC (QMF-DL04 QSDC) protocol inches closer to the quantum channel's capacity and significantly improves the original DL04 QSDC's robustness. Moreover, a rate-compatible low-rate JEEC coding scheme is designed for the proposed framework, and the JEEC code advocated is shown to approach the secrecy capacity, despite tolerating an extremely high loss of qubits in the time-varying wiretap channel. Our simulations and experimental results demonstrate that the QMF-DL04 QSDC scheme significantly increases both the secure information rate and the communication distance of the original DL04 protocol.

Quantum communication, joint encryption and error-control (JEEC) coding, quantum secure direct communication (QSDC), quantum-memory-free QSDC (QMF-QSDC) protocol, ultra-low-rate coding
0090-6778
5778-5792
Sun, Zhen
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Song, Liyuan
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Huang, Qin
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Yin, Liuguo
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Long, Gui-Lu
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Lu, Jianhua
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Hanzo, Lajos
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Sun, Zhen
46f8ab9c-f2e3-4fc4-8af6-cf7a9b8c7ab4
Song, Liyuan
d0447a0e-f9b3-4a31-9048-c39021990a4e
Huang, Qin
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Yin, Liuguo
05f646db-3f47-4c5e-b3a7-3d9ae99c460c
Long, Gui-Lu
b9a4e55a-8a02-4629-a66d-640aebe2cc78
Lu, Jianhua
f1a78bd8-87f4-493c-88f0-10eca43029ba
Hanzo, Lajos
66e7266f-3066-4fc0-8391-e000acce71a1

Sun, Zhen, Song, Liyuan, Huang, Qin, Yin, Liuguo, Long, Gui-Lu, Lu, Jianhua and Hanzo, Lajos (2020) Towards practical quantum secure direct communication: A quantum-memory-free protocol and code design. IEEE Transactions on Communications, 68 (9), 5778-5792, [9130765]. (doi:10.1109/TCOMM.2020.3006201).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) is capable of direct confidential communications over a quantum channel, which is achieved by dispensing with the key agreement channel of the well-known quantum key distribution (QKD). However, to make QSDC a practical reality, we have to mitigate its reliance on quantum memory, its immediate communication interruption caused by eavesdropping and its low transmission reliability due to the heavy qubit losses. Hence a new QSDC protocol is proposed based on a sophisticated coded single-photon DL04 QSDC protocol to tackle the open challenges. In particular, quantum memory is dispensed with and a high-accuracy secrecy capacity estimate is derived for this protocol by conceiving dynamic joint encryption and error-control (JEEC) coding. We demonstrate that this quantum-memory-free DL04 QSDC (QMF-DL04 QSDC) protocol inches closer to the quantum channel's capacity and significantly improves the original DL04 QSDC's robustness. Moreover, a rate-compatible low-rate JEEC coding scheme is designed for the proposed framework, and the JEEC code advocated is shown to approach the secrecy capacity, despite tolerating an extremely high loss of qubits in the time-varying wiretap channel. Our simulations and experimental results demonstrate that the QMF-DL04 QSDC scheme significantly increases both the secure information rate and the communication distance of the original DL04 protocol.

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Accepted/In Press date: 18 June 2020
e-pub ahead of print date: 1 July 2020
Published date: September 2020
Additional Information: Funding Information: Manuscript received September 9, 2019; revised March 9, 2020 and June 11, 2020; accepted June 18, 2020. Date of publication July 1, 2020; date of current version September 16, 2020. This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 91538203, 61871257, and 11474181), in part by the NSAF (Grant No. U1530117), in part by the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant Nos. 2017YFA0303700 and 2015CB921001) and in part by the Key R&D Program of Guangdong Province (Grant No. 2018B030325002). L. Hanzo would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council projects EP/N004558/1, EP/P034284/1, EP/P034284/1, EP/P003990/1 (COALESCE), of the Royal Society’s Global Challenges Research Fund Grant as well as of the European Research Council’s Advanced Fellow Grant QuantCom. The associate editor coordinating the review of this article and approving it for publication was J. Cheng. (Corresponding authors: Liuguo Yin; Guilu Long.) Zhen Sun is with the School of Information Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China, and also with the Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology, Beijing 100084, China (e-mail: sunzhen16@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn). Publisher Copyright: © 1972-2012 IEEE.
Keywords: Quantum communication, joint encryption and error-control (JEEC) coding, quantum secure direct communication (QSDC), quantum-memory-free QSDC (QMF-QSDC) protocol, ultra-low-rate coding

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 442163
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/442163
ISSN: 0090-6778
PURE UUID: 74e45e9a-6a1b-4f98-b94a-21cafa357208
ORCID for Lajos Hanzo: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-2636-5214

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Date deposited: 08 Jul 2020 16:30
Last modified: 18 Mar 2024 02:36

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Contributors

Author: Zhen Sun
Author: Liyuan Song
Author: Qin Huang
Author: Liuguo Yin
Author: Gui-Lu Long
Author: Jianhua Lu
Author: Lajos Hanzo ORCID iD

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