高精度的时间同步是星地量子密钥分发实验的关键.给出了一种新型的时间同步方案,该方案采用与量子信号光共光路的同步光脉冲,采用单光子探测器对同步光脉冲进行探测,通过基于时间标记型高精度时间测量插件对信号事例和同步事例进行精确的时间测量.解决了星地量子密钥分发实验中星上同步光对卫星平台载荷和资源要求较高及同步光与量子信号光的隔离问题.系统成功应用于16 km自由空间量子密钥分发实验中,并达到1.023ns(1σ)的全系统时间同步精度,量子密钥分发原始码成码率为8.27 kHz.
High-resolution time synchronization is the crucial technology of quantum key distribution experiment from ground to satellite.A new scheme of time synchronization was presented.In this scheme,a synchronous pulse which has the same wavelength with the quantum signal was adopted and single photo detector was used to detect the synchronous pulse.High-resolution time measurement module was used to measure the instance of synchronous pulse and signal pulse.This scheme overcomes the problem that the the synchronization laser requires much more resources of satellite and the isolation between the synchronization pulse and quantum single pulse.This system was successfully applied to the 16 km quantum key distribution in free space channel.Synchronous resolution of the system is 1.023 ns and bit rate of the raw key for the quantum key distribution is 8.27 kHz.