Abstract

The possibility of generating and exchanging keys between secure sites is of interest to various commercial and military programmes. Conventional key exchange methods generally utilise Public Key methods and rely on computational complexity as proof against tampering and eavesdropping. One area where future proofing against the rapid improvements in computational power is absolutely essential is in the upload of keys to satellites Here we discuss the first tentative steps to an optically based system for uploading keys to remote platforms using polarisation encoding of weak pulses of light. This method relies on the rules of physics, those of quantum mechanics, to guarantee the absolute security of key generation and exchange and is known as quantum cryptography [1].

© 2000 IEEE