Implementation of Quantum Key Distribution in Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11) Wireless Networks

There are a large variety of kinds of mobile wireless networks, Wi-Fi, based on the IEEE 802.11 standard, is a wireless local area network, mainly used in offices and campus at universities, meeting rooms, halls in hotels or in airports. For such limited coverage area, IEEE 802.11 standard is building- oriented environment, which potentially offers a chance to let quantum key distribution (QKD) play a role in the wireless communication. In fact, secured data transmission is one of the prime aspects of wireless networks as they are much more vulnerable to security attacks. In this paper, we explore the possibility of using quantum key distribution (QKD) for authentication and data encryption for IEEE 802.11 standard. It will focus on some basic concept that how QKD merges the wireless communication, in particular the IEEE 802.11 standard. The software implementation of the first two phases of QKD, namely (a) raw key extraction and (b) error estimation, will be carefully investigated in this paper. A TCP/IP based client-server concept has been extended to the implement the communication between two users in C++ language.