Danish Rafique

A McEliece-Based Key Exchange Protocol for Optical Communication Systems

The McEliece cryptosystem is one of the public-key cryptosystems that do not have known vulnerabilities to attacks using quantum computers. However, the McEliece cryptosystem has not been widely used for practical applications due to the large key size. We present an authenticated key exchange protocol based on the McEliece cryptosystem. We show that the proposed protocol is well suited for the G.709 Optical Transport Network (OTN) framework and satisfies a typical key refreshing rate used in industry. The proposed protocol addresses known weaknesses of the McEliece cryptosystem under a framework of the PACE protocol. The proposed protocol is implemented in software and demonstrated in a commercial optical communication system.

Machine Learning for Network Automation: Overview, Architecture, and Applications [Invited Tutorial]

Networks are complex interacting systems involving cloud operations, core and metro transport, and mobile connectivity all the way to video streaming and similar user applications.With localized and highly engineered operational tools, it is typical of these networks to take days to weeks for any changes, upgrades, or service deployments to take effect. Machine learning, a sub-domain of artificial intelligence, is highly suitable for complex system representation. In this tutorial paper, we review several machine learning concepts tailored to the optical networking industry and discuss algorithm choices, data and model management strategies, and integration into existing network control and management tools. We then describe four networking case studies in detail, covering predictive maintenance, virtual network topology management, capacity optimization, and optical spectral analysis.

Digital pre-emphasis based system design trade-offs for 64 Gbaud coherent data center interconnects

We report on the role of digital pre-emphasis in facilitating 64 Gbaud DP-64QAM coherent optical systems based on currently available commercial 32 Gbaud transceiver components. In particular, we vary the extent of digital pre-emphasis together with digital-to-analog converter bandwidth and resolution, and show the optical back-to-back performance and transmitter output power trade-offs. Our results suggest that with a minimum required DAC bandwidth and effective number of bits of 25 GHz and 6 bits, respectively (at 1 dB penalty w.r.t best performance), an optimized DPE strength bandwidth of 18 GHz allows for a TX output power of −16 dBm, with an associated maximum OSNR penalty of ∼3 dB, w.r.t. the theoretical bound for 64 Gbaud DP-64QAM.