2 June 2023 Secrecy analysis of a free-space laser communication system with a coherent main channel
Manuel Prasanna Kalaimani, Harishankar Ramachandran
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Abstract

Physical layer security of a free-space optical (FSO) communication link is investigated for certain eavesdropping scenarios in which the eavesdropper exploits the divergence of the transmitted laser beam, which is subject to atmospheric turbulence, to compromise the security of the transmission link. A solution for physical layer security in which the legitimate receiver is positioned to receive only the coherent component of the transmitted laser beam is proposed. The irradiance fluctuations are modeled with separate distributions for the coherent and non-coherent components of the transmitted beam, corresponding to the main channel and the eavesdropper’s channel, respectively. Complete secrecy analysis of this setup is presented, and closed form expressions of the probability of strictly positive secrecy capacity, average secrecy capacity, and secrecy outage probability are derived. The analytical results are verified by Monte-Carlo simulations. Secrecy performance for worst-case scenarios corresponding to an adversary with powerful resources to capture all of the leaked information is explored. Results are analyzed for different turbulence regimes, and it was found that secure communication is possible even in the region of strong turbulence.

© 2023 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)
Manuel Prasanna Kalaimani and Harishankar Ramachandran "Secrecy analysis of a free-space laser communication system with a coherent main channel," Optical Engineering 62(6), 068101 (2 June 2023). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.62.6.068101
Received: 24 November 2022; Accepted: 16 May 2023; Published: 2 June 2023
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KEYWORDS
Turbulence

Signal to noise ratio

Receivers

Free space optics

Free space optical communications

Information security

Physical coherence

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