Joint authentication public network cryptographic key distribution protocol based on single exposure compressive ghost imaging

In the existing ghost-imaging-based cryptographic key distribution (GCKD) protocols, the cryptographic keys need to be encoded by using many modulated patterns, which undoubtedly incurs long measurement time and huge memory consumption. Given this, based on snapshot compressive ghost imaging, a public network cryptographic key distribution protocol is proposed, where the cryptographic keys and joint authentication information are encrypted into several color block diagrams to guarantee security. It transforms the previous single-pixel sequential multiple measurements into multi-pixel single exposure measurements, significantly reducing sampling time and memory storage. Both simulation and experimental results have demonstrated the feasibility of this protocol and its ability to detect illegal attacks. Therefore, it takes GCKD a big step closer to practical applications.