DRDO facility develops Quantum Random Number Generator
Key points…
+ [T]he Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has achieved another milestone in quantum technology by successfully developing a Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG), the Ministry of Defence said on Tuesday. The DRDO Young Scientist Laboratory for Quantum Technologies (DYSL-QT), a DRDO facility based in Mumbai, has developed a QRNG which has the ability to detect random quantum events and convert those into a stream of binary digits.
+ The facility has developed a fiber-optic branch path based QRNG. Branch path-based QRNG relies on the principle that if a single photon falls on a balanced beam splitter, it will take either of the beam-splitter output paths randomly. As the path chosen by the photon is random, the randomness is translated to a sequence of binary digits, also called bits.
A press statement from the Defence Ministry read, “The QRNG system developed by the laboratory (DYSL-QT) has passed the global randomness testing standards of NIST and Die-harder Statistical Test Suites at the speed of around 150 kbps after post-processing. The generated random numbers are also evaluated and verified using DRDO’s indigenously developed Randomness Testing Statistical Test Suite of SAG. With this development, India enters the club of countries which have the technology to achieve the generation of random numbers based on the Quantum Phenomenon.”
+ On December 8, the DRDO announced that their Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) technology underwent a successful trial between two laboratories in Hyderabad, where the quantum technology-based security was validated for a range of 12 km long over a fibre optic channel. QKD is primarily a mechanism to undertake secure communication, which utilises a cryptographic protocol involving various components of quantum mechanics. The technology enables two communicating sides to come up with random secret keys shared by both of them and known exclusively to them, and only they can use it to encrypt and decrypt messages, thus achieving highly secure communication.
+ Various facilities of the DRDO are currently working on various quantum technology-based applications. In December last year, an international symposium on Quantum Information Technology (ISQIT 2019) was organised in Pune by Defence Institute of Advanced Technology (DIAT) of the DRDO, the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) and Joint Advanced Technology Centre (JATC) of Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.
Source: The Indian EXPRESS. Sushant Kulkarni, DRDO facility develops Quantum Random Number Generator…
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