MIMO FSO Systems in Hybrid Quantum Noise Environments: SKR Analysis with One- and Two-way CV-QKD Protocols

Abstract

This paper studies a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) free-space optical (FSO) communication system employing continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CV-QKD), with the goal to support secret key transmission between two legitimate users, Alice and Bob. All involved wireless channels are subjected to atmospheric turbulence leading to beam spreading, pointing error, and turbulence-induced fading, which along with the presence of hybrid quantum noise negatively impact secret key exchange. Furthermore, the legitimate MIMO FSO system faces the threat of compromise from an eavesdropper, Eve, employing a collective Gaussian attack to intercept the secret key exchange. Novel one- and two-way protocols for enhancing the security of the transmitted keys are proposed. To this end, the transmissivity of the FSO channels is mathematically formulated and bounds on the mutual information between the transmitted and received coherent states are obtained, which are then used for deriving novel expressions for the secret key rates (SKRs) for both one- and two-way protocols. The presented numerical results corroborate the proposed analytical secrecy framework, quantifying the SKR gains obtained by employing MIMO and the two-way protocol for FSO CV-QKD systems.