Author
Listed:
- Boulat A. Bash
(Quantum Information Processing Group, Raytheon BBN Technologies
College of Information and Computer Sciences, University of Massachusetts)
- Andrei H. Gheorghe
(Quantum Information Processing Group, Raytheon BBN Technologies
Amherst College
Present address: Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA)
- Monika Patel
(Quantum Information Processing Group, Raytheon BBN Technologies
Present address: Lumeras LLC, 207 McPherson St., Santa Cruz, California 95060, USA)
- Jonathan L. Habif
(Quantum Information Processing Group, Raytheon BBN Technologies)
- Dennis Goeckel
(University of Massachusetts)
- Don Towsley
(College of Information and Computer Sciences, University of Massachusetts)
- Saikat Guha
(Quantum Information Processing Group, Raytheon BBN Technologies)
Abstract
Computational encryption, information-theoretic secrecy and quantum cryptography offer progressively stronger security against unauthorized decoding of messages contained in communication transmissions. However, these approaches do not ensure stealth—that the mere presence of message-bearing transmissions be undetectable. We characterize the ultimate limit of how much data can be reliably and covertly communicated over the lossy thermal-noise bosonic channel (which models various practical communication channels). We show that whenever there is some channel noise that cannot in principle be controlled by an otherwise arbitrarily powerful adversary—for example, thermal noise from blackbody radiation—the number of reliably transmissible covert bits is at most proportional to the square root of the number of orthogonal modes (the time-bandwidth product) available in the transmission interval. We demonstrate this in a proof-of-principle experiment. Our result paves the way to realizing communications that are kept covert from an all-powerful quantum adversary.
Suggested Citation
Boulat A. Bash & Andrei H. Gheorghe & Monika Patel & Jonathan L. Habif & Dennis Goeckel & Don Towsley & Saikat Guha, 2015.
"Quantum-secure covert communication on bosonic channels,"
Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 6(1), pages 1-9, December.
Handle:
RePEc:nat:natcom:v:6:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms9626
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms9626
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