Given the rapid expansion of the Internet of Things and because of the concerns around counterfeited goods, secure and resilient cryptographic systems are in high demand. Due to the development of digital ecosystems, mobile applications for transactions require fast and reliable methods to generate secure cryptographic keys, such as Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs). We demonstrate a compact and reliable photonic PUF device able to be applied in mobile-based authentication. A miniaturized, energy-efficient, and low-cost token was forged of flexible luminescent organic–inorganic hybrid materials doped with lanthanides, displaying unique challenge–response pairs (CRPs) for two-factor authentication. Under laser irradiation in the red spectral region, a speckle pattern is attained and accessed through conventional charge-coupled cameras, and under ultraviolet light-emitting diodes, it displays a luminescent pattern accessed through hyperspectral imaging and converted to a random intensity-based pattern, ensuring the two-factor authentication. This methodology features the use of a discrete cosine transform to enable a low-cost and semi-compact encryption system suited for speckle and luminescence-based CRPs. The PUF evaluation and the authentication protocol required the analysis of multiple CRPs from different tokens, establishing an optimal cryptographic key size (128 bits) and an optimal decision threshold level that minimizes the error probability.

In contemporary society, secure communications employing chaotic communication schemes have opened new challenges. Chaotic communication schemes in which signals are spectrally spread, with low power spectral density, become useful to improve resilience against multipath fading, making them increasingly important for indoor applications in the framework of visible light communication (VLC). Here, we will explore the 16-QAM orthogonal shift key in combination with Walsh coded chaotic basis for application of a secure VLC link, used simultaneously for illumination and security-enhanced data transmission. The experimental results are carried out for a 12 Baud symbol rate, indicating a symbol error rate below the FEC hard threshold limit for an optical irradiance higher than 25 mW/cm 2, covering a 1.4 m2 operating area.

This dissertation aimed to study and develop optical Physically Unclonable Functions, which are physical devices characterized by having random intrinsic variations, thus being eligible towards high security systems due to their unclonability, uniqueness and randomness. With the rapid expansion of technologies such as Internet of Things and the concerns around counterfeited goods, secure and resilient cryptographic systems are in high demand. Moreover the development of digital ecosystems, mobile applications towards transactions now require fast and reliable algorithms to generate secure cryptographic keys. The statistical nature of speckle-based imaging creates an opportunity for these cryptographic key generators to arise. In the scope of this work, three different tokens were implemented as physically unclonable devices: tracing paper, plastic optical fiber and an organic-inorganic hybrid. These objects were subjected to a visible light laser stimulus and produced a speckle pattern which was then used to retrieve the cryptographic key associated to each of the materials. The methodology deployed in this work features the use of a Discrete Cosine Transform to enable a low-cost and semi-compact 128-bit key encryption channel. Furthermore, the authentication protocol required the analysis of multiple responses from different samples, establishing an optimal decision threshold level that maximized the robustness and minimized the fallibility of the system. The attained 128-bit encryption system performed, across all the samples, bellow the error probability detection limit of 10-12, showing its potential as a cryptographic key generator.

Visible-light communication (VLC) based on white light-emitting diodes has recently attracted much attention to provide high-bitrate data communication in indoor environments. One of the remaining challenges to be resolved to enable the proliferation of VLC systems is related to channel attenuation and multiple path fading. Here, we introduce an advanced VLC system integrating an optical amplifier as a promising solution to overcome channel impairments, providing high bitrate coverage. The optical amplifier is a flexible fiber based on a poly(fluorene)-based lumophore doped within a di-ureasil organic-inorganic hybrid. Optical amplification is demonstrated for pre-amplifier and relay node scenarios, yielding a maximum gain of 5.9 ± 0.2 dB and 3.7 ± 0.2 dB, respectively, establishing the proposed approach as a promising cost-effective solution for VLCs. Additionally, numerical simulations show, for a realistic environment, a 207% improvement in the coverage area, using existing lighting infrastructure without extra cost.

With the rapid development of digital ecosystems, such as mobile applications towards goods/monetary transactions, a new paradigm of data transfer arises, which requires fast and reliable algorithms to generate random numbers. The statistical nature of speckle‐ based imaging creates an opportunity for these generators to arise as random number generators given the unpredictability and irreproducibility of such patterns. Hence, it is shown that the establishment of an experimental system is able to produce unique speckle patterns for remote cryptographic key storage and distribution, with a potential key rate generation of Gbs.

Nowadays, the Internet of Things (IoT) has an astonishingly societal impact in which healthcare services stand out. Amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic scenario, challenges include the development of authenticatable smart IoT devices with the ability to simultaneously track people and sense in realtime human body temperature aiming to infer a health condition in a contactless and remote way through user-friendly equipment such as a smartphone. Univocal smart labels based on quick response (QR) codes were designed and printed on medical substrates (protective masks and adhesive) using flexible organicinorganic luminescent inks. Luminescence thermometry and physical unclonable functions (PUFs) are simultaneously combined allowing non-contact temperature detection, identification, and connection with the IoT environment through a smartphone. This is an intriguing example where luminescent inks based on organic-inorganic hybrids modified by lanthanide ions are used to fabricate a smart label that can sense temperature with remarkable figures of merit, including maximum thermal sensitivity of Sr = 1.46 %K−1 and temperature uncertainty of δT = 0.2 K, and an authentication methodology accuracy, precision, and recall of 96.2%, 98.9%, and 85.7%, respectively. The methodology proposed is feasibly applied for the univocal identification and mobile optical temperature monitoring of individuals, allowing the control of the access to restricted areas and the information transfer to medical entities for post medical evaluation towards a new generation of mobile-assisted eHealth (mHealth).

Commercial light-emitting diodes are a low-cost and energy-efficient solution for the implementation of optical wireless communication, known as visible light communication (VLC). This technology has a huge growing interest, being recently a research spotlight in the scientific community, especially due to the increasing popularity and rapid development of self-sustainable smart houses and the Internet of Things. As the VLC link is free space, big challenges arise in its implementation. To improve the VLC performance, this work proposes an enhanced system solution integrating an optical amplifier. In this context, organic–inorganic hybrids incorporating a blue-emitting conjugated polymer with high quantum yield (>50%) were synthesised and processed as planar waveguides. The waveguides were tested in a testbed scenario, showing a signal amplitude improvement of 2.5 dB, establishing the proposed approach as a promising cost-effective solution for optical amplification in VLCs.