Communications of the ACM
'Temporal Cloaking' Could Bring More Secure Optical Communications
In this diagram depicting the basic operation of a "temporal cloak" for optical communications, the signal is modified to have zero intensity when the data are "on," cloaking the information. The cloak converts the pulses back to a flat signal, hiding the
Credit: Joseph Lukens/Purdue University
Purdue University researchers have developed a method for the "temporal cloaking" of optical communications, technology that could improve security for telecommunications.
"More work has to be done before this approach finds practical application, but it does use technology that could integrate smoothly into the existing telecommunications infrastructure," says Purdue's Joseph Lukens.
The method, which works by manipulating the phase of light pulses, cloaks about 46 percent of the time available for sending data in optical communications, potentially making the concept practical for commercial applications. Previous researchers were only able to cloak a tiny fraction of the time available for sending optical data.
"By letting [light pulse phases] interfere with each other, you are able to make them add up to a one or a zero," Lukens says.
Controlling the phase allows the transmission of signals in ones and zeros to send data over optical fibers. "It might be used to prevent communication between people, to corrupt their communication links without them knowing, and you can turn it on and off, so if they suspected something strange was going on you could return it to normal communication," Lukens says.
From Purdue University News
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