Security of subcarrier wave quantum key distribution against the collective beam-splitting attack

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the security of subcarrier wave quantum key distribution systems, specifically B92 and BB84 protocols, against collective beam-splitting attacks, demonstrating their potential for long-distance secure communication and simplified implementation.

Contribution

It provides a security analysis of subcarrier wave QKD protocols against a powerful attack and proposes a simplified BB84 variant suitable for practical cryptographic networks.

Findings

Subcarrier wave QKD can securely distribute keys over large distances.

Modified BB84 with single-state discrimination performs comparably to original.

The proposed system simplifies the development of quantum cryptographic networks.

Abstract

We consider a subcarrier wave quantum key distribution (QKD) system, where the quantum en- coding is carried by weak sidebands generated to a coherent optical beam by means of an electrooptic phase modulation. We study the security of two protocols, B92 and BB84, against one of the most powerful attacks on the systems of this class: the collective beam splitting attack. We show that a subcarrier wave QKD system with realistic parameters is capable of distributing a cryptographic key over large distances. We show also that a modification of the BB84 protocol, with discrimina- tion of only one state in each basis, performs not worse than the original BB84 protocol for this class of QKD systems, which brings a significant simplification to the development of cryprographic networks on the basis of considered technique.