Secure transmission in a W-band RoF system based on delta-sigma modulation.

In this Letter, a delta-sigma modulation (DSM) encryption technique in a W-band RoF system is proposed. By performing DSM with different over-sample ratios (OSRs) on the OFDM signal based on the controlled keys generated by the chaotic system at the transmitter and performing constellation masking to disturb the transmitting signal for encryption, a high-order QAM-OFDM-DSM encrypted signal is achieved. In order to further improve the security of the system, bit bidirectional diffusion scrambling is used to resist chosen-plaintext attacks. After experimental verification, under the same transmission power, the encrypted DSM signal can achieve better security than single OSR of DSM signals through a 50-km standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) and a 3-m wireless channel, with the gain of sensitivity increased by ∼1 dBm. From the reliability of the system, the encrypted signal of the proposed scheme can be recovered, which meets a hard decision-forward error correction (HD-FEC) threshold of 3.8 × 10-3.

Secure RoF system based on key nested polar code and feedback neural network.

With the development of 6 G network, the issue of information security is becoming more and more significant. In this paper, a secure RoF system based on key nested polar code and feedback neural network (FNN) is proposed. For the nested polar code, the original key is randomly selected from the constructed codebook and the index of key is encoded by inner polar code which is placed at the location with better channel quality bit of the frozen bit of outer polar code, for the other part of outer polar code, information bits are encrypted by chaotic sequence generated by 4-D cellular neural network. The polar coded sequence is mapped to the 16-QAM symbol for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and then the OFDM signal is modulated to the optical pulse, which is delivered to users through 50 km standard single-mode fiber and 5 m wireless channel. In the receiver, successive cancellation list (SCL) decoder is used for decoding outer polar code and FNN is used for decoding inner polar code to reduce the latency. The experimental results show that, compared with the existing scheme, when the bit err rate is 10-3, the received optical power (ROP) gain of the proposed scheme with SCL2 decoder and SCL4 decoder is ∼1.2 dB and ∼1.6 dB, respectively. And compared with the traditional OFDM signal with polar code, when the bit err rate is 10-3, the ROP gain of the proposed scheme with SCL4 decoder is ∼1 dB. What's more, the randomness of the chaotic key sequence, the ability to resist brute-force attacks and the ability to resist chosen-plaintext attacks are elaborated. Therefore, the proposed scheme can greatly improve the security of the system while ensuring the correct transmission of information.

Coordinated-security based on probabilistic shaping and encryption in MMW-RoF system.

A coordinated-security probabilistic shaping (PS) physical layer encryption scheme is proposed for a W-band millimeter-wave radio-over-fiber (MMW-RoF) system. This scheme mainly includes substituting encryption, coordinated encrypted PS, and unequal length grouping scrambling, which can realize the coordination between PS and chaotic encryption. The key space of the proposed scheme is 10103, which can effectively prevent against brute force cracking and chosen-plaintext attacks. The encrypted orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signal is successfully transmitted over 50-km standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) and a 5-m wireless channel. The results show that the proposed scheme achieves 0.8-dB received optical power gain at a bit error rate (BER) of 10-3 compared with a traditional OFDM signal. The superiority of the proposed scheme in security performance and BER performance has been verified.

Glyoxylate rather than ascorbate is an efficient precursor for oxalate biosynthesis in rice.

Oxalate is widely distributed in the plant kingdom. While excess oxalate in food crops is detrimental to animal and human health, it may play various functional roles in plants, particularly for coping with environmental stresses. Understanding its biosynthetic mechanism in plants, therefore, becomes increasingly important both theoretically and practically. However, it is still a matter of debate as to what precursor and pathway are ultimately used for oxalate biosynthesis in plants. In this study, both physiological and molecular approaches were applied to address these questions. First, it was observed that when glycolate or glyoxylate was fed into detached leaves, both organic acids were equally effective in stimulating oxalate accumulation. In addition, the stimulation could be completely inhibited by cysteine, a glyoxylate scavenger that forms cysteine-glyoxylate adducts. To verify the role of glyoxylate further, various transgenic plants were generated, in which several genes involved in glyoxylate metabolism [i.e. SGAT (serine-glyoxylate aminotransferase), GGAT (glutamate-glyoxylate aminotransferase), HPR (hydroxypyruvate reductase), ICL (isocitrate lyase)], were transcriptionally regulated through RNAi or over-expression. Analyses on these transgenic plants consistently revealed that glyoxylate acted as an efficient precursor for oxalate biosynthesis in rice. Unexpectedly, it was found that oxalate accumulation was not correlated with photorespiration, even though this pathway is known to be a major source of glyoxylate. Further, when GLDH (L-galactono-1,4-lactone dehydrogenase), a key enzyme gene for ascorbate biosynthesis, was down-regulated, the oxalate abundance remained constant, despite ascorbate having been largely reduced as expected in these transgenic plants. Taken together, our results strongly suggest that glyoxylate rather than ascorbate is an efficient precursor for oxalate biosynthesis, and that oxalate accumulation and regulation do not necessarily depend on photorespiration, possibly due to the occurrence of the anaplerotic reaction that may compensate for glyoxylate formation in rice.

Inducible antisense suppression of glycolate oxidase reveals its strong regulation over photosynthesis in rice.

Photorespiration is one of the most intensively studied topics in plant biology. While a number of mutants deficient in photorespiratory enzymes have been identified and characterized for their physiological functions, efforts on glycolate oxidase (GLO; EC 1.1.3.15) have not been so successful. This is a report about the generation of transgenic rice (Oryza sativa L.) plants carrying a GLO antisense gene driven by an estradiol-inducible promoter, which allowed for controllable suppressions of GLO and its detailed functional analyses. The GLO-suppressed plants showed typical photorespiration-deficient phenotypes. More intriguingly, it was found that a positive and linear correlation existed between GLO activities and the net photosynthetic rates (P(N)), and photoinhibition subsequently occurred once P(N) reduction surpassed 60%, indicating GLO can exert a strong regulation over photosynthesis. Various expression analyses identified that Rubisco activase was transcriptionally suppressed in the GLO-suppressed plants, consistent with the decreased Rubisco activation states. While the substrate glycolate accumulated substantially, few changes were observed for the product glyoxylate, and for some other downstream metabolites or genes as well in the transgenic plants. Further analyses revealed that isocitrate lyase and malate synthase, two key enzymes in the glyoxylate cycle, were highly up-regulated under GLO deficiency. Taken together, the results suggest that GLO is a typical photorespiratory enzyme and that it can exert a strong regulation over photosynthesis, possibly through a feed-back inhibition on Rubisco activase, and that the glyoxylate cycle may be partially activated to compensate for the photorespiratory glyoxylate when GLO is suppressed in rice.

Dependence of nitrate-induced oxalate accumulation on nitrate reduction in rice leaves.

Oxalate, a common constituent in many plants, is known to play important functional roles in plants. However, excess levels of oxalate in edible parts of plants adversely affect their quality as food. Understanding the regulatory mechanism in plants, particularly in food crops, is of both scientific and practical significance. While a number of studies have shown that nitrate can efficiently induce oxalate accumulation in plants, how it elicits such an effect is not well understood. This study aimed to gain a further insight into the mechanism underlying the nitrate-induced oxalate accumulation. Nitrate-N efficiently caused oxalate accumulation in rice leaves, depending on the nitrate concentrations and treatment time. In contrast, same nitrogen molar levels of the other N forms such as nitrite, ammonium, glutamate and urea either had no effect on the accumulation or even reduced the oxalate level. When glutamate, glutamine, asparate and asparagine were added into the nutrient solution that already contained saturating concentration of nitrate, both oxalate levels and NR activity were correspondingly decreased. In all of these modes of treatment, the change in NR activity was positively paralleled to that in oxalate levels. For a further confirmation, we generated the transgenic rice plants with a NR interference gene introduced. The result further demonstrated that in the transgenic plants, unlike in wild-type plants, oxalate was no longer able to accumulate in response to the nitrate treatment even though the endogenous nitrate levels were substantially elevated. Taken together, our results suggest that the nitrate-induced oxalate accumulation in rice leaves is dependent on the NR-catalyzed nitrate reduction, rather than on nitrate itself or nitrite reduction or its downstream metabolites.