High performance compact optical cryptosystem without reference arm

Abstract

We present a new compact scheme to ensure high performance optical encryption. In this scheme, the encrypted data and the security key are recorded without need for a reference arm, resulting in a significant decrease in the size and complexity of the cryptosystem. The efficacy of the compact scheme to protect data is verified by encrypting and decrypting different inputs. We also test the resistance to both random noise and data loss. Additionally, the potential of the system is evaluated by encoding the data to be encrypted by means of a customized data container. In this way, we achieve a data volume reduction of 97% for the encrypted data while allowing for noise-free information recovery using the proposed cryptosystem. We experimentally demonstrate both encryption and volume reduction, confirming the validity and applicability of our proposal.