FPGA Implementation of the BB84 Protocol

The development of a quantum key distribution (QKD) system on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) platform is the subject of this paper. A quantum cryptographic protocol is designed based on the properties of quantum information and the characteristics of FPGAs. The proposed protocol performs key extraction, reconciliation, error correction, and privacy amplification tasks to generate a perfectly secret final key. We modeled the presence of the spy in our system with a strategy to reveal some of the exchanged information without being noticed. Using an FPGA card with a 100 MHz clock frequency, we have demonstrated the evolution of the error rate as well as the amounts of mutual information (between the two interlocutors and that of the spy) passing from one step to another in the key generation process.

• Jaouadi Ikram
• Machhout Mohsen

• QKD
• BB84
• protocol
• cryptography
• FPGA
• key
• security
• communication.

[1] Auguste Kerckhoffs. Modern Cryptography. Journal militaries sciences, IX: pages 5–38 et 161–191, January – February 1883. Available on http: // www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~fapp2/kerckhoffs/index.html.
[2] C. E Shannon " A Mathematical Theory of Communication " Bell System Technical journal, Vol.27 N°4 1999.pp 379-423,623-656
[3] Charles H. Bennett and Gilles Brassard. Quantum cryptography: public-key distribution and coin tossing. In Proceedings of the IEEE International conference on Computers, Systems and Signal Processing, pages 175–179. IEEE, 1984.
[4] M. Wegman. New hash functions and their use in authentication and set equality. Journal of Computer and System Sciences, vol. 22, no. 3, pages 265–279, Juin 1981. (Cité en pages 45 et 57.).
[5] A. Muller, T. Herzog, B. Huttner, W. Tittel, H. Zbinden, N. Gisin, “Plug and play systems for quantum cryptography”, Appl. Phys. Lett., pp. 793, 17 Février 1997.
[6] W. K. Wootters, W. H. Zurek: Nature99, 802 (1982) A single quantum cannot be cloned.
[7] https://reference.digilentinc.com/reference/programmable-logic/nexys-4-ddr/reference-manual.
[8] Andreas Klein, Linear Feedback Shift Registers, 20 avril2013, p. 17-58.
[9] M. Koutsoupia, E. Kalligeros and X. Kavousianos, LFSR-based test-data compression with self-stoppable seeds, Design, Automation & Test in Europe Conference & Exhibition, 20-24 April 2009, p. 1482-1487.
[10] W. Liang et Jing Long, « A cryptographic algorithm based on Linear Feedback ShiftRegister », Computer Application and System Modeling (ICCASM), 2010 International Conference on,‎ 22-24 Octobre 2010.
[11] J. A. Reeds and J. A. Sloane, Shift Register Synthesis (Modulo m), SIAM Journal on Computing, August 1985, p. 505-513.