Odd-order quantum noise-like stream cipher scheme based on joint index modulation constellation shaping

This paper proposes an odd-order quantum noise-like stream cipher scheme based on joint index modulation (JIM) constellation shaping. By utilizing subcarrier index modulation and dual-mode index techniques, additional information is transmitted through the combination distribution of silent subcarrier positions and constellation modes associated with subcarriers. An odd-order 9QAM signal is constructed, and by optimizing the index rule, constellation shaping is achieved while transmitting more information, increasing the distribution of constellation points within the signal. A 4D hyper-chaotic system is employed to implement multi-dimensional disturbances, including bitwise XOR of the original signal, subcarriers, symbols, and elevate the constellation order. Furthermore, the scheme performs upsampling on the chaotic system's initial values and actively introduces noise bits, which are appended to the initial signal as a basis state to enable key-accompanying transmission. Ultimately, the constellation-shaped 9QAM signal is escalated to a 576QAM signal with constellation shaping features. Experimental results demonstrate the successful transmission of a 2.94 Gb/s quantum noise stream signal over a 25 km single-mode fiber intensity modulation direct detection (IMDD) system. The experimental results show that the proposed JIM-576QAM1 signal provides a 0.7 dB gain at Forward error correction (FEC) = 3.8 × 10^-3 compared to random distribution of the two constellation modes. The proposed scheme maintains a bit error rate (BER) of 0 for key transmission, and abruptly increases to 0.5 in the event of misalignment, indicating a high sensitivity and accuracy of the system with respect to the key. At varying received optical power, the number of masked signal power remain consistent at 20480, and the detection failure probability stays around 1, demonstrating the stability and security of the proposed quantum noise stream encryption scheme. With a key space as large as 10¹⁴⁹, the scheme can effectively counter brute-force attacks from unauthorized receivers. The proposed scheme exhibits high reliability and security, making it a promising candidate for future optical access applications.