Sampling impairments influence over stealthy fiber-optic signal decryption

Recently we have proposed a method for temporal and spectral stealthy fiber-optic communications. In this technique the signal is spread in the time domain below the noise level and the power spectral density of the signal is spread beneath the noise level in the frequency domain. The power spectral density of the signal is reconstructed by means of sampling which results in coherent addition of the encrypted signal spectral replicas. Hence, the sampling quality plays a major role in the ability to successfully decrypt the received covert signal. In this paper, we mathematically and numerically analyze the effect of sampling impairments over the decryption performance.