• Photonics Research
  • Vol. 9, Issue 6, 1124 (2021)
Xianglei Yan1、2, Xihua Zou1、2、*, Peixuan Li1、2, Wei Pan1、2, and Lianshan Yan1、2
Author Affiliations
  • 1Center for Information Photonics and Communications, School of Information Science and Technology, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu 611756, China
  • 2International Cooperation Research Center of China: Communications & Sensor Networks for Modern Transportation, Chengdu 611756, China
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    DOI: 10.1364/PRJ.419605 Cite this Article Set citation alerts
    Xianglei Yan, Xihua Zou, Peixuan Li, Wei Pan, Lianshan Yan. Covert wireless communication using massive optical comb channels for deep denoising[J]. Photonics Research, 2021, 9(6): 1124 Copy Citation Text show less

    Abstract

    Covert wireless communications are unprecedentedly vital for security and privacy of individuals, government, and military bodies. Besides encryption, hiding signal transmission deeply under noise background highly proliferates the covertness in the physical layer. A deep signal hiding leads to a low interception probability at the interceptor but a poor data recovery at the receiver. To ensure both high covertness and high-fidelity recovery, massive and dense optical comb channels are utilized for deep denoising through the analog spectrum convolution. Using an external modulation-based optical frequency comb (OFC) and a single detection branch, the available optical comb channels can sustainably scale up by breaking or greatly mitigating physical bottlenecks on immense hardware and spectrum requirements. Thus, a striking signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) rise can be achieved for deep denoising. Combination of 1024 comb channels (the first parallel comb channel number beyond 1000) and the analog spectrum convolution enable a record SNR enhancement of 29 dB for a microwave signal with a 10.24 GHz bandwidth and a 10 Mbit/s data rate, which is deeply hidden below the in-band noises by 18 dB or even 30 dB in both the frequency and time domains. This method opens a new avenue for covert communications.
    Xianglei Yan, Xihua Zou, Peixuan Li, Wei Pan, Lianshan Yan. Covert wireless communication using massive optical comb channels for deep denoising[J]. Photonics Research, 2021, 9(6): 1124
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