Difference Between Electrical and Optical Signal Encryption?

[Fiona Rozario]

What is the difference between encrypting an electrical signal and converting it to optics; & converting the signal to optics and then encrypting it? (Any of the symmetric or asymmetric encryption techniques).

 

[berkeman]

What is the difference between encrypting an electrical signal and converting it to optics; & converting the signal to optics and then encrypting it? (Any of the symmetric or asymmetric encryption techniques).

What are your thoughts? And how do you propose to encrypt the optical signal?

 

[Fiona Rozario]

With reference to the papers attached...I am just unclear in my head as to why one would need to encrypt in the optical domain. Wouldn't it be just simpler to encrypt in the electrical domain and then convert it to optics?

 

[Baluncore]

It is unlikely at this stage that such an optical technique would have a commercial advantage. If it did they would not be publishing their research.

The advantage of an all optical processor would be better security because it could not be “wedged” by the insertion of hostile software via the net. A parallel optical processor would improve image encryption speed.

Optical encryption has a disadvantage in that it cannot benefit from widely used image compression techniques and requires a reliable error correction code. There is however a possibility of using optical techniques such as spatial frequency analysis prior to optical encryption. Maybe that is how they could implement compression?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_optics#Fourier_analysis_and_functional_decomposition

 

[Risha Rommi]

A scheme for all-optical encryption/decryption of QPSK signals based on ND-FWM in HNLF is proposed