Performance Evaluation and Security Analysis of UAV-Based FSO/CV-QKD System Employing DP-QPSK/CD

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) based on free-space optical (FSO) systems combine the benefits of both the high data rate of the FSO and the mobility of UAV. However, cumulative effects of laser beam divergence and turbulence-induced fading on the received irradiance in the FSO link might allow an external eavesdropper located near the authorized receiver to break the transmission under certain conditions. Quantum key distribution (QKD) is a technique of secure communication that employs quantum mechanics-based cryptography principles. A combination of a continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CV-QKD) and Gaussian modulation of quantum coherent states (GMCS) enables a relatively secure communication system against collective attacks over FSO transmission links. However, the performance is restricted and degraded due to the influence of atmospheric turbulence and excess noise. This paper aims to evaluate the performance of a secured UAV-based FSO system utilizing prepare and measure CV-QKD protocol based on GMCS under collective attack in terms of quantum bit error rate (QBER), outage probability, and secret key rate (SKR) considering the impairments of the FSO channel, link budget, deviations in the position and attitude angles of the UAV, channel fluctuating transmittance, and excess noise. The system parameters, including transmit power, receiver's field-of-view, and beam divergence angle, are optimized to satisfy the system's design criteria of threshold-QBER = 10 −3 and threshold outage probability = 10 −2 . The proposed system tolerates boresight displacement up to 7 cm with the optimized values. The Closed-form expressions and analytical results are confirmed by Monte-Carlo simulations.

Review on UAV-based FSO links: recent advances, challenges, and performance metrics

“…In Ref. 89, the performance evaluation is done for UAV based FSO CVQKD systems using dual polarization quadrature phase shift keying with coherent detection. Here, Gaussian modulation of coherent states is employed as it is more effective against collective attacks.…”

Securing Non-Terrestrial FSO Link with Public Key Encryption Against Flying Object Attacks

“…The study concluded that the reason for ECC's success was due to industrial adaptation, which is as important as the performance advantages of a data security proposal. Recently, a non-terrestrial satellite or UAV-based FSO system whilst employing quantum key distribution (QKD) to secure the transmission was proposed in [11,12]. However, quantum-based security is cost ineffective because the technology is still in its infancy.…”

Comprehensive Performance Analysis of Hovering UAV-Based FSO Communication System

“…In addition, the asymptotic analysis was also provided. In [27], the performance of a UAV-based FSO system employing prepare and measure continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CV-QKD) protocol based on Gaussian modulation of quantum coherent states (GMCS) under collective attacks was investigated in terms of outage probability, quantum bit error rate (QBER), and secret key rate (SKR). In [28] and [29], the authors carried out the comprehensive performance analysis of UAV-based mixed FSO/RF system models for internet of vehicles (IoV) and space ground integrated network (SAGIN) scenarios, respectively.…”