HYDERABAD: A milestone was achieved by defence laboratories as trials in two DRDO labs in Hyderabad — DRDL and RCI — demonstrated secure communication through latest technologies.
Defence minister Rajnath Singh congratulated the DRDO team for a demonstration of what is known as quantum key distribution (QKD) technology. “Secure communications are vital for defence and strategic agencies world over,” defence authorities said, explaining how the distribution of encryption keys from time to time was important. Sharing of keys over the air or wired links requires encryption, and this also requires that the encryption keys be pre-shared.
In the QKD technology, encryption keys are sent as qubits in a fibre optic cable. Quantum computing uses qubits as basic resources, similar to how bits are used as basic resources in classical computing.
The QKD is designed in a way that if an illegitimate entity tries to read the transmission, it will disturb the qubits – which are encoded on photons – and this will generate transmission errors, leading to legitimate end-users being immediately informed.
