Patent ID: 8488967

Claim:
An optical system for transporting encrypted data, the optical system comprising: a transmitter for transmitting an encrypted signal, the transmitter including: a source for generating a sequence of optical pulses, each optical pulse having a plurality of spectral lines uniformly spaced in frequency with fixed absolute frequency and relative phase; a passive optical splitter for copying the sequence of optical pulses and outputting a plurality of channels, each channel being identical to the sequence of optical pulses; a plurality of data modulators, each associated with a respective channel of the plurality of channels, each data modulator modulating the respective channel using data to generate a modulated data signal; a respective spectral phase encoder coupled to each of the plurality of data modulators, the spectral phase encoder encoding respective modulated data signals using a plurality of mutually orthogonal phase codes that are individually associated with the respective spectral phase encoder; an optical combiner for combining the encoded data signals; and a spectral phase scrambler for code-scrambling the combined data signals using a plurality of scramble codes individually associated with the respective channels as encryption keys to generate the encrypted signal; and a receiver for receiving and decrypting the encrypted signal, the receiver including; a spectral phase descrambler for descrambling the encrypted signal signals using compliments of the plurality of scramble codes as decryption keys to generate a descrambled data signal; a plurality of spectral phase decoders for applying an inverse of the phase codes to the descrambled data signal to generate a decoded signal, each spectral phase decoder being a conjugate match to one of the respective spectral phase encoder; a respective optical time gate coupled to each of the plurality of spectral phase decoders, for time gating the decoded signal to isolate a desired data signal; and a detector coupled to the respective optical time gate for detecting and demodulating the desired data signal to retrieve the data.