[11805] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Quantum cryptography takes to the skies
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Udhay Shankar N)
Thu Oct 3 10:59:48 2002
Date: Thu, 03 Oct 2002 09:21:18 +0530
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: Udhay Shankar N <udhay@pobox.com>
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992875
Quantum cryptography takes to the skies
19:00 02 October 02
NewScientist.com news service
Quantum cryptography keys encoded in photons of light have been transmitted
more than 23 kilometres through air, British researchers have announced.
They say the breakthrough is an important step towards a global
communications system that is completely secure.
Earlier in 2002 a Swiss company managed to send quantum keys over 60
kilometres. But this was through optical fibres, which limits the
technology to ground-based transmission.
"Our experiment paves the way for the development of a secure global
key-distribution network based on optical links to low-Earth-orbit
satellites," says John Rarity, at QinetiQ, the public arm of the UK's
defence research agency.
Rarity acknowledges that the 23 kilometres is still a long way short of the
1000 kilometres needed to reach all LEO satellites, but he believes that
improvements in filtering out ambient light could make this feasible soon.
"I think I will have a system design to do that by March 2003," he says.
Another obstacle to be overcome is to engineer signals that, unlike the
visible light used, will not be absorbed by clouds.
<snip>
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((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
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