GIST Professor Ham Byungseung Proposes New Absolute-Security Wireless Communication Correcting Signal Distortion

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Lee Gwan-woo] Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) announced on the 25th that Professor Ham Byung-seung of the Department of Electrical, Electronics and Computer Engineering (Director of the Gwangyang Quantum Information Processing Center) proposed a new type of absolute security wireless communication protocol that self-corrects signal distortion caused by air, wind, fog, clouds, rain, etc., which are key elements in next-generation wireless communication and autonomous vehicles’ LiDAR.

LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) is a device that recognizes the surrounding environment in 3D to help autonomous vehicles drive safely. Its operating principle is to continuously emit millions of laser beams per second and measure the distance by calculating the time it takes for the beams to return to the sensor.

LiDAR enables recognition and tracking of obstacles, people, and vehicles during driving, and can also recognize road lane boundaries and front traffic light signals with high accuracy.

Professor Ham not only self-corrected the signal (image) distortion, which is a limitation of LiDAR, but also identified and demonstrated the principle of wireless classical cryptographic communication, a next-generation core technology that simultaneously satisfies speed and security in the ‘connectivity’ aspect, one of the four key elements of future autonomous vehicle technology.

The technology proposed in this study is compatible with current commercial systems and solves unconditional security using classical light sources, i.e., lasers, instead of single photons. It is related to a new wireless secure communication technology that implements the only existing signal distortion self-correction method based on the nonlinear phase conjugation principle using a dual Mach-Zehnder interferometer, showing great potential.

While existing quantum cryptographic communication relies on the no-cloning principle of quantized signals for unconditional security, this research secures absolute security through channel quantization (quantum superposition) rather than signal quantization. The key distribution process is deterministic, similar to the optical memory principle, and the cryptographic key generation and exchange speed is comparable to wireless communication data transmission speeds.

Additionally, the proposed absolute security wireless communication technology is compatible with existing wireless communication devices and has the advantage of self-correcting signal distortion caused by radio wave media through phase conjugation. It can be directly applied to LiDAR, which is essential for autonomous driving, without the need for software, camera sensors, or radar assistance, and wireless quantum communication can be applied to quantum LiDAR, a future technology.

Professor Ham said, “We have secured the world’s first wireless classical cryptographic key distribution technology that guarantees absolute security, which was previously impossible by any method, and self-corrects signal (image) distortion.” He added, “We expect this absolute security wireless communication technology, along with this quantum LiDAR, to be applied in future autonomous vehicles as well as in defense networks, administrative networks, financial networks, medical data transmission for remote healthcare, and educational networks for remote lectures.”

Meanwhile, the research results were published online on the 21st in Scientific Reports, a sister journal of Nature.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.