Optical scanning cryptography for secure wireless transmission

We propose a method for secure wireless transmission of encrypted information. By use of an encryption key, an image or document is optically encrypted by optical heterodyne scanning and hence encryption is performed on the fly. We call this technique optical scanning cryptography. The output of the heterodyne encrypted signal is at radio frequency and can be directly sent through an antenna to a secure site for digital storage to be prepared for decryption. In the secure site, an identical optical scanning system to that used for encryption is used, together with a decryption key, to generate an electrical signal. The electrical signal is then processed and sent to a computer to be used for decryption. Utilizing the stored information received from the encryption stage and the electrical information from the secure site, a digital decryption unit performs a decryption algorithm. If the encryption key and the decryption key are matched, the decryption unit will decrypt the image or document faithfully. The overall cryptosystem can perform the incoherent optical processing counterpart of the well-known coherent double-random phase-encoding technique. We present computer simulations of the idea. (C) 2003 Optical Society of America.