Constellation-masked secure communication technique for OFDM-PON

This paper proposes a novel secure communication technique using constellation masking for applications in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing passive optical network (OFDM-PON). The constellation masking is applied both on each subcarrier and among different subcarriers. The Arnold mapping is utilized as the parameter function for the mask factors. A interleave length is employed to provide a scalable masking granularity for different ONUs. A 15.54 Gb/s constellation-masked 32QAM-OFDM signal has been successfully transmitted over 25-km single mode fiber in the experiment. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme can effectively protect the system from illegal ONU without wasting the bandwidth. The constellation-masked technique suggests an effective solution for the physical secure communication in future OFDM access network.