Secure communications using nonlinear silicon photonic keys

Brian C. Grubel, Bryan T. Bosworth, Michael R. Kossey, A. Brinton Cooper, Mark A. Foster, Amy C. Foster
2018 Optics Express  
We present a secure communication system constructed using pairs of nonlinear photonic physical unclonable functions (PUFs) that harness physical chaos in integrated silicon micro-cavities. Compared to a large, electronically stored one-time pad, our method provisions large amounts of information within the intrinsically complex nanostructure of the micro-cavities. By probing a micro-cavity with a rapid sequence of spectrally-encoded ultrafast optical pulses and measuring the lightwave
more » ... , we experimentally demonstrate the ability to extract 2.4 Gb of key material from a single micro-cavity device. Subsequently, in a secure communications experiment with pairs of devices, we achieve bit error rates below 10^-5 at code rates of up to 0.1. The PUFs' responses are never transmitted over the channel or stored in digital memory, thus enhancing security of the system. Additionally, the micro-cavity PUFs are extremely small, inexpensive, robust, and fully compatible with telecommunications infrastructure, components, and electronic fabrication. This approach can serve one-time pad or public key exchange applications where high security is required
doi:10.1364/oe.26.004710 pmid:29475318 fatcat:wgws5y5mxne7xpoylgk34qrsom