Improved key integrity checking for high-speed quantum key distribution using combinatorial group testing with strongly selective family design

Key integrity checking is a necessary process in practical quantum key distribution (QKD) to check whether there is any error bit escaped from the previous error correction procedure. The traditional single-hash method may become a bottleneck in high-speed QKD since it has to discard all the key bits even if just one error bit exists. In this paper, we propose an improved scheme using combinatorial group testing (CGT) based on strong selective family design to verify key integrity in fine granularity and consequently improve the total efficiency of key generation after the error correction procedure. Code shortening technique and parallel computing are also applied to enhance the scheme’s flexibility and to accelerate the computation. Experimental results show that the scheme can identify the rare error bits precisely and thus avoid dropping the great majority of correct bits, while the overhead is reasonable. For a $$2^{20}$$220-bit key, the disclosed information for public comparison is 800 bits (about 0.076 % of the key bits), reducing 256 bits when compared with the previous CGT scheme. Besides, with an Intel® quad-cores CPU at 3.40 GHz and 8 GB RAM, the computational times are 3.0 and 6.3 ms for hashing and decoding, respectively, which are reasonable in real applications and will not cause significant latency in practical QKD systems.