The decoy-state quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol has been widely used in commercial QKD systems. Several QKD field networks show its practicability and commercial prospects. Importantly, practical decoy-state QKD systems should be characterized with device imperfections. In this paper, for the case without intensity fluctuations, we present the parameter estimation based on the Chernoff bound for a practical decoy-state QKD protocol and compare performances of that based on Hoeffding's inequality and the Chernoff bound, respectively. Taking intensity fluctuations into consideration, we present the finite-key analysis with composable security against general attacks based on Azuma's inequality. Our numerical results show that the finite-key analysis based on the Chernoff bound is tighter than Hoeffding's inequality when the total number of transmitting signals $N<1\times {10}^{12}$. Moreover, the intensity fluctuations' influence is more obvious when the data size of total transmitting signals is small. Our results emphasize the importance of the stability of the intensity modulator as well as the accurate estimation of emitted pulse's intensity.

• Received 5 June 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.94.032335