High throughput error correction in information reconciliation for semiconductor superlattice secure key...

Area of Science:

• Quantum Information Science
• Cryptography
• Materials Science

Background:

• Semiconductor superlattice secure key distribution (SSL-SKD) offers unconditional security over public channels.
• Error correction is crucial for reconciling analog system differences in SSL-SKD but presents a performance bottleneck due to high computational complexity.
• The efficiency of error correction directly limits the secure key throughput of SSL-SKD systems.

Purpose of the Study:

• To optimize frequently-used error correction codes (BCH, LDPC, Polar) for practical SSL-SKD applications.
• To enhance the performance and throughput of the information reconciliation procedure in SSL-SKD.
• To improve the overall secure key generation rate and efficiency of SSL-SKD.

Main Methods:

• Implemented multi-threading for parallel processing of multi-codeword decoding (BCH, Polar) and value updates (LDPC).
• Constructed lookup tables for finite field computations, including logarithmic and antilogarithmic tables, to reduce redundant calculations.
• Optimized BCH, LDPC, and Polar codes individually to improve their efficiency within the SSL-SKD framework.

Main Results:

• Proposed optimization methods significantly enhance the efficiency of SSL-SKD.
• Optimized error correction codes achieve throughputs in the Mbps range.
• A minimum secure key rate of 99% was maintained with the implemented optimizations.

Conclusions:

• The developed optimization techniques effectively address the performance bottleneck in SSL-SKD's information reconciliation.
• Optimized BCH, LDPC, and Polar codes enable practical and high-throughput secure key distribution.
• The study demonstrates a viable path towards high-speed, unconditionally secure key generation using SSL-SKD.