Chaos-based optical cryptosystem with key management

Optical-based cryptosystems have been a promising area of research for secure and reliable data transfer via communication networks in recent years. This paper introduces an optical cryptosystem with enhanced security for image encryption that combines an optical phase retrieval technique with a chaotic map. In the process, a modified phase retrieval technique is used to transform the plaintext into phase-only data, and a pixel scrambling transform is applied to disorganize the phase data. To secure the encoding procedure, chaotic phase mask keys combined with scrambled phase data are used. Additionally, an operation of phase-truncated Fourier transform is applied to produce the ciphertext. The chaos and pixel scrambling transform parameters are required to recover the input data during the decryption process. Moreover, if the person who is exchanging the parameters has system access, the decryption process proceeds in a way that ensures authentication. The proposed cryptosystem makes it easier to implement optical encryption and decryption processes for digital and hardware platforms. The simulation experiment results demonstrate that this idea offers strong security against unauthorized attempts and other possible threats in addition to reliable performance.