System reduces cost of information sharing

11 May 2010

Computer users will soon be able to securely share information online with a cheaper system than they currently pay for, thanks to computer scientists.

Professors at the University of Hertfordshire's School of Computer Science have developed a fibre optic system to privately transmit communications between two users online.

The system uses a beacon to broadcast information around a communication loop, which users can access via a secret key. The system would enable them to access large amounts of information without it becoming available to other users.

Professor Bruce Christianson, who worked on the project with colleague Professor Alex Shafarenko and Professor Sergei Turitsyn from the University of Aston, said: "It is like using background noise to allow two users to share a secret that no one else knows.

"This development means that we can offer a high level of security for less than a tenth of the cost usually involved in buying specialised quantum technology for this purpose."

He added that one of the main selling points of the system is its error-correction technology, which ensures the integrity of information.

"Various people have proposed similar ideas in the past but our system has introduced a novel error correcting scheme, which means we can use cheap fibre optic technology and make it work at amazingly high transmission rates," said Professor Christianson.

A UK patent has been awarded and an international patent is pending for this system.

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