Networked Control Systems Secured by Quantum Key Distribution

TL;DR

This paper explores how quantum key distribution (QKD) can significantly enhance the security and performance of networked control systems (NCS) by enabling unbreakable encryption and reducing delays, demonstrated through a servo system example.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach of integrating QKD into NCS, providing a security framework and an efficient communication protocol that leverages quantum-generated keys.

Findings

QKD enables unbreakable one-time pad encryption for NCS.

Security and control performance are improved by reducing encryption complexity.

The proposed Kalman-filter based protocol enhances key utilization efficiency.

Abstract

Cyber-security has become vital for modern networked control systems (NCS). In this paper, we propose that the emerging technology of quantum key distribution (QKD) can be applied to enhance the privacy and security of NCS up to an unbreakable level. QKD can continuously distribute random secret keys with much higher privacy between communication parties, and thus enable the one-time pad encryption that cannot be truly applied in classical networks. We show that the resulting overall security of NCS can be essentially improved, and present a composable definition of security based on the analysis of the key generation and management processes. Moreover, because the security is mainly determined by quantum keys rather than the complexity of encryption algorithms, the control performance can be improved as well by reducing the time delay using simpler algorithms. These advantages are demonstrated by the example of a remotely controlled servo system, showing that the introduction of QKD to NCS can simultaneously improve the security and performance by using the simplest encryption algorithm XOR. Furthermore, we propose a novel Kalman-filter embedded communication protocol that can more efficiently use the raw keys generated by QKD.