Experimental Demonstration of a Detection-Time-Bin-Shift Polarization Encoding Quantum Key Distribution System
Lijun Ma, Tiejun Chang, Alan Mink, Oliver Slattery, Barry Hershman, Xiao Hong Tang · IEEE Communications Letters · 2008
Detection-time-bin-shift (DTBS) is a scheme that uses time division multiplexing of a single photon detector between two photon bases in a quantum key distribution (QKD) system. This scheme can simplify the structure of a QKD system, reduce its cost and overcome the security problems caused by the dead-time induced self-correlation and the unbalanced characteristics of detectors. In this paper, we introduce an improved DTBS scheme and implement it based on our previously developed conventional fiber-based QKD system using the B92 protocol. Our DTBS QKD system generates sifted keys at a rate of more than 1 Mbit/s with a quantum bit error rate (QBER) lower than 2% over 1.1 km of fiber.