Elisabet Pérez-Cabré

Optical Techniques for Information Security

This paper presents an overview of the potential of free space optical technology in information security, encryption, and authentication. Optical waveform posses many degrees of freedom such as amplitude, phase, polarization, spectral content, and multiplexing which can be combined in different ways to make the information encoding more secure. This paper reviews optical techniques for encryption and security of two-dimensional and three-dimensional data. Interferometric methods are used to record and retrieve data by either optical or digital holography for security applications. Digital holograms are widely used in recording and processing three dimensional data, and are attractive for securing three dimensional data. Also, we review optical authentication techniques applied to ID tags with visible and near infrared imaging. A variety of images and signatures, including biometrics, random codes, and primary images can be combined in an optical ID tag for security and authentication.

Information authentication using photon-counting double-random-phase encrypted images

Photon-counting imaging is integrated with optical encryption for information authentication. An image is double-random-phase encrypted, and a photon-limited encrypted image is obtained. The photon-counting encrypted image is generated with few photons and appears sparse; however, we show that it has sufficient information for decryption and authentication. The decrypted image cannot be easily visualized so that an additional layer of information protection is achieved. The authentication is carried out by recognition algorithms. This approach may make the verification process more robust against attacks. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on integrating photon-counting imaging and encryption for authentication.

Roadmap on optical security

Information security and authentication are important challenges facing society. Recent attacks by hackers on the databases of large commercial and financial companies have demonstrated that more research and development of advanced approaches are necessary to deny unauthorized access to critical data. Free space optical technology has been investigated by many researchers in information security, encryption, and authentication. The main motivation for using optics and photonics for information security is that optical waveforms possess many complex degrees of freedom such as amplitude, phase, polarization, large bandwidth, nonlinear transformations, quantum properties of photons, and multiplexing that can be combined in many ways to make information encryption more secure and more difficult to attack. This roadmap article presents an overview of the potential, recent advances, and challenges of optical security and encryption using free space optics. The roadmap on optical security is comprised of six categories that together include 16 short sections written by authors who have made relevant contributions in this field. The first category of this roadmap describes novel encryption approaches, including secure optical sensing which summarizes double random phase encryption applications and flaws [Yamaguchi], the digital holographic encryption in free space optical technique which describes encryption using multidimensional digital holography [Nomura], simultaneous encryption of multiple signals [Perez-Cabre], asymmetric methods based on information truncation [Nishchal], and dynamic encryption of video sequences [Torroba]. Asymmetric and one-way cryptosystems are analyzed by Peng. The second category is on compression for encryption. In their respective contributions, Alfalou and Stern propose similar goals involving compressed data and compressive sensing encryption. The very important area of cryptanalysis is the topic of the third category with two sections: Sheridan reviews phase retrieval algorithms to perform different attacks, whereas Situ discusses nonlinear optical encryption techniques and the development of a rigorous optical information security theory. The fourth category with two contributions reports how encryption could be implemented at the nano- or micro-scale. Naruse discusses the use of nanostructures in security applications and Carnicer proposes encoding information in a tightly focused beam. In the fifth category, encryption based on ghost imaging using single-pixel detectors is also considered. In particular, the authors [Chen, Tajahuerce] emphasize the need for more specialized hardware and image processing algorithms. Finally, in the sixth category, Mosk and Javidi analyze in their corresponding papers how quantum imaging can benefit optical encryption systems. Sources that use few photons make encryption systems much more difficult to attack, providing a secure method for authentication.

Photon-counting double-random-phase encoding for secure image verification and retrieval

The integration of photon-counting imaging techniques and optical encryption systems can improve information authentication robustness against intruder attacks. Photon-counting imaging generates distributions with far fewer photons than conventional imaging and provides substantial bandwidth reduction by generating sparse encrypted data. We show that photon-limited encrypted distributions have sufficient information for successful decryption, authentication and signal retrieval. Additional compression of the encrypted distribution is applied by limiting the number of phase values used to reproduce the phase information of the complex-valued encrypted data. The validity of this technique—with and without phase compression—is probed through simulated experiments for two types of input images: alphanumerical signs and dithered natural scenes.

Multipoint phase calibration for improved compensation of inherent wavefront distortion in parallel aligned liquid crystal on silicon displays

The inherent distortion of a reflective parallel aligned spatial light modulator (SLM) may need compensation not only for the backplane curvature but also for other possible nonuniformities caused by thickness variations of the liquid crystal layer across the aperture. First, we build a global look-up table (LUT) of phase modulation versus the addressed gray level for the whole device aperture. Second, when a lack of spatial uniformity is observed, we define a grid of cells onto the SLM aperture and develop a multipoint calibration. The relative phase variations between neighboring cells for a uniform gray level lead us to build a multi-LUT for improved compensation. Multipoint calibration can be done using either phase-shift interferometry or Fourier diffraction pattern analysis of binary phase gratings. Experimental results show the compensation progress in diffractive optical elements displayed on two SLMs.

Dynamic compensation of chromatic aberration in a programmable diffractive lens

A proposal to dynamically compensate chromatic aberration of a programmable phase Fresnel lens displayed on a liquid crystal device and working under broadband illumination is presented. It is based on time multiplexing a set of lenses, designed with a common focal length for different wavelengths, and a tunable spectral filter that makes each sublens work almost monochromatically. Both the tunable filter and the sublens displayed by the spatial light modulator are synchronized. The whole set of sublenses are displayed within the integration time of the sensor. As a result the central order focalization has a unique location at the focal plane and it is common for all selected wavelengths. Transversal chromatic aberration of the polychromatic point spread function is reduced by properly adjusting the pupil size of each sublens. Longitudinal chromatic aberration is compensated by making depth of focus curves coincident for the selected wavelengths. Experimental results are in very good agreement with theory.

Improved decryption quality and security of a joint transform correlator-based encryption system

Some image encryption systems based on modified double random phase encoding and joint transform correlator architecture produce low quality decrypted images and are vulnerable to a variety of attacks. In this work, we analyse the algorithm of some reported methods that optically implement the double random phase encryption in a joint transform correlator. We show that it is possible to significantly improve the quality of the decrypted image by introducing a simple nonlinear operation in the encrypted function that contains the joint power spectrum. This nonlinearity also makes the system more resistant to chosen-plaintext attacks. We additionally explore the system resistance against this type of attack when a variety of probability density functions are used to generate the two random phase masks of the encryption–decryption process. Numerical results are presented and discussed.

Multifactor authentication reinforces optical security

A new optical method to obtain multifactor image encoding and authentication is proposed. The encoded complex-amplitude image function fulfills the general requirements of invisible content, extreme difficulty in copying or counterfeiting, and real-time automatic verification. This optical technique is attractive for high-security purposes that require multifactor reliable authentication. A demonstration using a combination of biometric images and key codes is provided. Retina images, which are very effective for authentication, are used as biometric signals. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on combined multiple signal encoding and simultaneous AND authentications for optical security reinforcement.

Nonlinear optical security system based on a joint transform correlator in the Fresnel domain

A new optical security system for image encryption based on a nonlinear joint transform correlator (JTC) in the Fresnel domain (FrD) is proposed. The proposal of the encryption process is a lensless optical system that produces a real encrypted image and is a simplified version of some previous JTC-based encryption systems. We use a random complex mask as the key in the nonlinear system for the purpose of increasing the security of the encrypted image. In order to retrieve the primary image in the decryption process, a nonlinear operation has to be introduced in the encrypted function. The optical decryption process is implemented through the Fresnel transform and the fractional Fourier transform. The security system proposed in this paper preserves the shift-invariance property of the JTC-based encryption system in the Fourier domain, with respect to the lateral displacement of the key random mask in the decryption process. This system shows an improved resistance to chosen-plaintext and known-plaintext attacks, as they have been proposed in the cryptanalysis of the JTC encrypting system. Numerical simulations show the validity of this new optical security system.

Chromatic compensation of programmable Fresnel lenses

Two proposals to compensate chromatic aberration of a programmable phase Fresnel lens displayed on a liquid crystal device and working under polychromatic illumination are presented. They are based on multiplexing a set of lenses, designed with a common focal length for different wavelengths, and a multicolor filter that makes each sublens work almost monochromatically. One proposal uses spatial multiplexing with mosaic aperture. The other uses a rotating scheme, a color filter against an array of lens sectors, and hybrid spatial-time integration. The central order focalization has a unique location at the focal plane. We have drastically reduced the transversal chromatic aberration of the polychromatic point spread function by properly adjusting the pupil size of each sublens. Depth of focus curves have been made coincident too for the selected wavelengths.