2020 12th International Conference on Communication Software and Networks

Chaotic Constellation Scrambling Method for Security-Enhanced CO-

OFDM/OQAM Systems

Zifang Yu Xi Fang
Department of Cyber Department of electronic and communication engineering
Space Security Beijing Electronic Science and Technology Institute
Beijing Electronic Science and Technology Institute Beijing, China
Beijing, China e-mail: xfang@besti.edu.cn
e-mail: ypx0425@163.com

Yang Zhou Ling Xiao

Department of Cyber Department of Cyber
Space Security Space Security
Beijing Electronic Science and Technology Institute Beijing Electronic Science and Technology Institute
Beijing, China Beijing, China
e-mail: 3150102332@zju.edu.cn e-mail: lxll0320@163.com

Lei Zhang*
Department of electronic and communication engineering
Beijing Electronic Science and Technology Institute
Beijing, China
e-mail: zhanglei@besti.edu.cn

Abstract—With the deep research on coherent optical OFDM
offset quadrature amplitude modulation OFDM/OQAM in
these years, and the communication system exposed to
potential threat from various capable attackers, which prompt
people lay emphasis on encryption methods for transmission.
Therefore, in this paper, we systematically discuss an
encryption project with the main purpose of improving
security in coherent optical OFDM/OQAM (CO-
OFDM/OQAM) system, and the scheme applied the chaotic
constellation scrambling (CCS) which founded on chaotic cross
mapping to encrypt transmitted information. Besides, we also
systematically discuss the basic principle of the encryption
scheme for CO-OFDM/OQAM system. According to numerous
studies and analysis on experiment data with caution, such as
the performance of entropy, bit error rate (BER). It’s
conforms that the security of CO-OFDM/OQAM system have
been enhanced.
Keywords-chaotic constellation scrambling (CCS); security-
enhanced; optical communication; coherent optical
OFDM/OQAM; chaotic encryption
I. INTRODUCTION
Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)
combined with offset quadrature amplitude modulation
(OQAM) used in the next generation optical communication
transmission system could make up the shortcomings of the
conventional OFDM [1]. Owing to the special characters of
filter banks, coherent optical OFDM/OQAM (CO-
OFDM/OQAM) system not only can eliminate the cyclic
prefix (CP) and cyclic suffix (CS) to realize higher spectrum
efficiency, but can reduce the influence of the out of band
leakage. Besides, compared to the conventional OFDM, CO-
OFDM/OQAM just transfers real valued symbols and the
orthogonal condition between various sub-carries holds in
the real field for the long and high-speed transmission [2].
With the rapid development between Internet traffic and
networking, the security and privacy of transmitted
information have increasingly becoming more and more
significant in optical communication transmission system [3-
4]. Therefore, how to protect the important transmitted
information safely in the long distance is urgent and difficult.
So far, a large number of various technologies for secure
transfer information have been published previous in the
world, and many of which concentrate the security on the
media access control (MAC), physical and applications
layers with bad performance [5-6]. In order to improve the
effect of security enhancement, owing to the good properties
of chaotic map such as higher sensitivity to initial value,
ergodicity, and high randomness, chaotic encryption has
come into use for security-enhanced in coherent optical
OFDM/OQAM system [7]. Furthermore, In [8] proposed a
chaos IQ-encryption-based optimal frame transmission
technique in an optical OFDM-PON system.
In this paper, we have shown the complete channel
transmission model and systematically demonstrated an
encryption project named chaotic constellation scrambling

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 (CCS) which designed specially for security enhancement in S
CO-OFDM/OQAM system. When we transfer pieces of by the using of phase modulation Im , n (m  n) . In (2),
information in the long distance, the scheme which bases on 2
chaotic cross mapping has been used to protect the T [k ]
represents the phase noise.
transmitted information form attack through scramble the When passing through the fiber channel, the received
constellation of the original signal. According to the OFDM/OQAM symbols could be written as
simulation result, we have also analyzed carefully some
contrast indicators similar to the entropy or bit error rate
(BER) when transmission information under different ­r[k ] h[k ] s[k ]  w[k ] ¦ s[k  l ]h[l ]  w[k ] (3)
° l
conditions in nonlinear field in CO-OFDM/OQAM system. ° 2Smk S ( m n)
° N  j N  j 2  jT [ k ]
II. SECURITY-ENHANCED SYSTEM STRUCTURE MODE ® m,n ¦
d ' r[ k ] g * [ k  n ]e e e (4)
° k 2
The schematic diagram of the security-enhanced coherent °d 'm,n [decrypt ] ! d m,n (5)
optical OFDM/OQAM system is shown in Fig. 1. The °¯
baseband discrete-time domain format CO-OFDM/OQAM
signal can be written as In (3) to (5), herer[k ] is the received time-domain
OFDM/OQAM symbol, h[k ] is the channel impulse
­am,n  [encrypt] ! a'm,n (1)
°° response, w[k ] is the ASE noise, while d 'm ,n denotes the
M 1 j 2 S mk S
®s[k ] e jT [ k ] ¦ ¦ a'm,n g[k  n N ]e N e 2
j ( m n) demodulation of the OFDM/OQAM symbol in the receiver,
° n m 0  2 
(2) d m,n is the finally symbol decrypted from d 'm,n .
°¯ g m ,n [ k ] Substituting (2) and (3) into (4), we could obtain
 qN  P
In (1) and (2), here am.n denotes the real-valued d 'm , n ¦ ^a'
p ,q
m p ,n q `
j p  q  pq 2 np Ag [
2
,
N
]H m  wm,n (6)
transmitted symbol of the mth sub-carrier in the nth H m,n in (6) denotes the frequency-domain channel response.
OFDM/OQAM block, while a'm.n represent the encrypted
Ag represents the ambiguity function of the prototype filter
one, which is extracted from the in-phase (XI) or the
quadrature-phase (XQ) part of the transmitted data symbols in discrete time-domain.
(encrypted) after quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM)
mapping and encryption process. The orthogonal property
between different symbols in the real domain is guaranteed

Figure 1. Schematic diagram of optical OFDM/OQAM system. S/P: serial-to-parallel conversion; IFFT: inverse fast Fourier transform; D/A: digital-to-
analog conversion; LO: local oscillator; MZM: Mach-Zehnder modulator; PD: photo detector; CEE: channel estimation and equalization; LPF: low-pass
filter

III. ENCRYPTION AND DECRYPTION PRINCIPLE ª XI m,n  M  1 º ª AI m,n  M  1 º

« » ª 1 am , n º« »
The CCS encryption method is modified from an « XQ 2 M  1» «b » « AQ 2 M  1» mod( M ) (7)
« m,n » ¬ m,n am,nbm,n  1¼ « m,n »
advanced image hiding (Arnold mapping) [9], which is «¬ 2 »¼ «¬ 2 »¼
written as:

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 where AI m,n , AQm,n are the in(I) and quadrature(Q) phase
parts of a 16-QAM symbol on the mth sub-carrier in the nth
OFDM block, separately, while XI m,n , XQm,n represent the
two parts of the corresponding encrypted 16-QAM symbol.
am,n , bm,n are the parameters of the transformation matrix
(am,n , bm,n 1,2,..., M ) . Here M log 2 ( N ), N is the
order of the QAM constellation. In (7), the parameters
am,n , bm,n are generated by utilizing a cross chaotic map
which has the following iterative formula
IV. SIMULATION RESULT AND DISCUSSION
We validate the proposed method by simulating the
security-enhanced CO-OFDM/OQAM system via the
commercial software VPI transmission-Maker 10.1. For the
completeness of discussion, the performance of the common
CO-OFDM/OQAM system is also shown for comparison.
The simulation parameters are designed as follows. The fast
Fourier transform/inverse fast Fourier transform (FFT/IFFT)
size is chosen as 256 and the 16-QAM modulation format is
adopted. And 8 pilot sub-carriers were periodically inserted
for the facility of phase correction. The CP and CS are
eliminated. The pulse length of the prototype filter was

extract xm,n , kthmod M   1

chosen as K=4N=1024. Each frame contains 150
am , n OFDM/OQAM blocks and the first three consecutive blocks
extract  ym,n , kthmod M   1
(8) are used as pilot preambles for channel estimation. The fiber
bm,n link consists of several spans of 100km standard single mode
where xm,n and ym,n are chaotic sequences, while the fiber (SSMF) with an average loss of 20dB each. An ideal
function of extract(xm,n,M) is to return the kth digit after Erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) fully compensated the
decimal point of xm,n. In (8), xm,n and ym,n are generated by fiber attenuation in each span. The differential group delay is
utilizing the following iterative formula described as cross 5ps per square of kilometers. The performances of the CO-
chaotic mapping: OFDM/OQAM system employing the CCS have been
demonstrated. The optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR) is
­x 1  Dy controlled by feeding appropriate amplified spontaneous
° m, n 0, n  1
® § ·
if m 1
(9) emission (ASE) noise at the receiver. The BER is calculated
° ym, n cos¨ E arccos x0, n  1 ¸ for a random sequence and the random sets of ASE noise.
¯ © ¹
­x 1  Dy For the simplicity of discussion, the fiber nonlinear effect is
° m, n m  1, n
if 1  m  F not considered in this paper.
® § · (10)
° ym, n cos¨ E arccos xm  1, n ¸
¯ © ¹
­x 1  Dy
° 1, n m, n  1
® § ·
if m F
(11)
° y1, n cos¨ E arccos xm, n  1 ¸
¯ © ¹

where the chaotic sequences xm,n , ym,n  > 1䠈1@ , α and β

are the control parameters. In (9), (10) and (11), the initial
iteration values x0,0 and y0,0 are set as a pair of security keys
of CCS encryption and decryption process kept by both
transmitter and receiver. When α = 2, β = 6 the system
described by (9), (10) and (11) has chaotic behavior. The
state has a high sensitivity to the initial values, because of the
chaotic characteristic of the cross chaotic mapping.
At the receiver end, leaving channel factors aside, the
decryption process is performed basing on the following
formula
ª RI m,n  M  1 º ª YI m,n  M  1 º
« » ª1  am,nbm,n  am , n º «
« RQ 2 M  1» « b « 2
« m,n » ¬ m,n 1 »¼ « YQm,n  M  1»
¬« 2 ¼» ¬« 2 ¼»
here YI m,n , YQm,n are the in (I) and quadrature-phase (Q)
parts of the received undecrypted 16-QAM symbol
corresponding to the encryption process at the transmitter
end, respectively. While RI m,n , RQm,n represent the two
parts of the recovered 16-QAM symbol after decryption.
Other parameters are corresponding to the encryption
process. By utilizing formula (8)-(11), the receiver can
obtain the same iterative process and the same am,n and bm,n
at the transmitter end.
Figure 2. Comparison of the BER performance for the CO-OFDM/OQAM
system without and with the CCS after 1000km, 1500km and 2000km
» transmission with the sampling rate = 10GS/s. (ND: no decryption).
» mod( M )
(12)
Fig. 2 compared the BER performances of the CO-
OFDM/OQAM systems employing the CCS or not in the
transmission scenarios. The sampling rate Rs is 10GS/s. the
security keys contain the initial iteration values x(1)0,0=-
0.5765, y(1)0,0=0.6589, x(2)0,0=-0.7843 and y(2)0,0=0.4987 in
the CCS method. The key is randomly selected from -1 to 1.
For the simplicity of discussion, we assume that the
transmitter and receiver share the keys. As shown in Fig. 2,
compared with the original system, the BER performance of
the CO-OFDM/OQAM systems after CCS process did not
deteriorate badly under the same OSNR regardless of the
transmission distance. This conclusion is valid when the

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 sampling rate Rs is added according to the Fig. 3 and the Fig.
4. This is mainly due to the simulation format and the higher
information entropy of CCS, which means the CCS has
better chaotic performance. In this paper, the information
entropy of one symbol scrambled is utilized to indicate the
randomness of sequence and the security of information. The
probability of this constellation point is expressed by the
number of target points scrambled after CCS transformation.
Figure 3. Comparison of the BER performance for the CO-OFDM/OQAM
system without and with the CCS after 500km, 800km and 1000km
transmission with the sampling rate = 20GS/s. (ND: no decryption).
Figure 4. Comparison of the BER performance for the CO-OFDM/OQAM
system without and with the CCS after 200km, 300km and 400km
transmission with the sampling rate =32GS/s. (ND: no decryption).
In the Fig. 3, the BER performances of CO-
OFDM/OQAM systems with the use of encryption and
unencrypted process after 500km, 800km and 1000km
SSMF transmission when the Rs is 20GS/s are compared.
According to the black line in Fig. 3, which is the BER of the
security-enhanced system, we observed that the BER
performance deteriorates with the increase of the
transmission distance.
Fig. 4 illustrates the BER performances of the CO-
OFDM/OQAM systems with the CCS method and
unencrypted process in the linear transmission scenarios.
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When the Rs is 32GS/s. According to the blue line in the Fig.
4, which means the encrypted data is accepted by someone
other than the receiver, it is clear that the BER performances
of the illegal receivers who are lack of the security keys is
about 0.5. Thus, they cannot decrypt the message correctly
and obtain any information from the symbols.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we systematically study and analyze the
security of the CO-OFDM/OQAM system after CCS. the
CCS method is used to encrypt the signal to be transmitted
by scrambling the constellation of the signal. This CO-
OFDM/OQAM system after the CCS method has high
information theoretical confidentiality. Compared with the
common CO-OFDM/OQAM system, the BER performances
indicate that most received signals can be recovered correctly
if the receiver has right security keys at the appropriate
sampling rate and distance. Thus, the implementation of the
proposed method will not greatly reduce the transmission
performance at the same time physical-layer security is
enhanced.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by the National Natural Science
and Foundation of China (No. 61701008), Fundamental
Research Funds for the Central Universities of China
(No.328201913).
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