Development of high-secure satellite communication schemes based on physical-layer cryptography

2022 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 21K14163
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Basic Section 21020:Communication and network engineering-related
• Research Institution: National Institute of Information and Communications Technology
• Principal Investigator: Hiroyuki Endo 国立研究開発法人情報通信研究機構, 量子ICT協創センター, 研究マネージャー (50809704)
• Project Period (FY): 2021-04-01 – 2023-03-31
• Keywords: 物理レイヤ暗号 / 量子鍵配送 / 衛星光通信

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Since the channel is highly directional and line-of-sight, it is reasonable to assume that an eavesdropper is hard to fully access a free-space optical link between Alice and Bob without being found. Physical-layer cryptography employs this assumption and hence could achieve much more improved key generation performance. Although, this scheme is expected to construct a global-scale secure network using satellites, there is a lot of issues to be addressed for the implementation of the scheme in the satellite communications. So, we worked on the development of a new key-generation scheme secure against general eavesdropping, the formalization of a practical performance evaluation method with the finite transmission pulses, the performance verification using the data obtained from the long-range quantum signal transmission experiment between the buildings, and the feasibility study of GEO-ground key-generation based on the instruments which is being developed.

Free Research Field

衛星通信

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本課題から得られた知見から、高速・遠距離かつどのような計算機でも不当に解読できない鍵共有技術の安全性の向上や、実用的な評価が可能となり、さらには静止軌道－地上間での鍵共有の可能性も見出された。これらの成果により、国産技術によるグローバルスケールの安心安全なネットワークの構築がより現実的なものとなった。