Totally secure classical communication utilizing Johnson (-like) noise and Kirchoff's law Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • An absolutely secure, fast, inexpensive, robust, maintenance-free and low-power-consumption communication is proposed. The states of the information bit are represented by two resistance values. The sender and the receiver have such resistors available and they randomly select and connect one of them to the channel at the beginning of each clock period. The thermal noise voltage and current can be observed but Kirchoff's law provides only a second-order equation. A secure bit is communicated when the actual resistance values at the sender's side and the receiver's side differ. Then the second order equation yields the two resistance values but the eavesdropper is unable to determine the actual locations of the resistors and to find out the state of the sender's bit. The receiver knows that the sender has the inverse of his bit, similarly to quantum entanglement. The eavesdropper can decode the message if, for each bits, she inject current in the wire and measures the voltage change and the current changes in the two directions. However, in this way she gets discovered by the very first bit she decodes. Instead of thermal noise, proper external noise generators should be used when the communication is not aimed to be stealth. 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

published proceedings

  • PHYSICS LETTERS A

altmetric score

  • 7

author list (cited authors)

  • Kish, L. B.

citation count

  • 105

complete list of authors

  • Kish, LB

publication date

  • January 2006