Physical layer security--enhanced optical communication based on chaos masking and chaotic hardware encryption

The security and confidentiality of information are crucial in contemporary communication systems. In this work, we propose a physical layer security-enhanced optical communication scheme based on dual-level protection with chaos masking (CMS) and chaotic hardware encryption. The integration of CMS and chaotic hardware encryption contributes to enhancing the security of the system. Different uncorrelated chaos generated from a single Fabry-Perot (FP) laser are employed to independently mask and encrypt the confidential signals for multiple channels in a wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) system. Thanks to the CMS and temporal intensity scrambling, the signals are encrypted into a noise-like signal to against direct demasking or decryption attacks. Compared to individual CMS or encrypting the signals using stand-alone dispersion components, numerical results demonstrate that the proposed scheme significantly enhances communication security. The decrypted bit error rate (BER) for 10 Gb/s data in each channel at the legitimate receiver is lower than the hard decision forward error correction threshold (HD-FEC) of 3.8 × 10^-3 for a proof-of-principle demonstration. This approach enables multi-path parallel and independent security-enhanced chaotic optical communication, offering a promising solution for high-capacity secure optical communication.