Bit error rates in a frequency coded quantum key distribution system

The quantum bit error rate (QBER) is a measure of the performance of a frequency coded quantum key distribution system. We present a detailed analysis of the system, taking into account the statistics of light at different points in the link. We show that the statistics depends on the choice of phase of both the transmitter and receiver. We also evaluate the effects of crosstalk, out of band noise, and dark count of the gated avalanche photodetector on the QBER. Finally we use QBER to evaluate our implementation of the B92 protocol.