A Detailed Analysis of KMB09 QKD Protocol (original) (raw)

Employing the fundamental laws of quantum physics, Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) achieves the unconditionally secure distribution of cryptographic keys. Its security arises from the fact that an eavesdropper unavoidably introduces the so-called quantum bit errors. If these errors exceed system errors, his presence can be detected and the key transmission can be aborted. Otherwise, an eavesdropper could disguise his presence as system errors after replacing some of the equipments of the communicating parties. This condition for the security of QKD protocols limits the possible communication distance in practical implementations. In this paper, we propose to significantly increase the communication distance of QKD by using protocols with not only one but two different types of eavesdropping errors, such that eavesdropping and system errors do not affect the communication in different ways. This makes it possible to detect eavesdropping, even when the system errors exceed the eavesdropping errors. In order to illustrate this, we analyse the KMB09 protocol [Khan et al., New J Phys. 11 2009 063043] with only two-dimensional photon states and calculate the Quantum Bit Error Rate (QBER), the Index Transmission Error-Rate (ITER) and the efficiencies with and without eavesdropping of this protocol.

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