—A novel optical frequency-hopping (OFH) scheme using optical delay interferometers (DI) is proposed and demonstrated for secure transmission in free space. By performing carrier suppression modulation on the light wave emitted by the laser and connecting the phase modulator (PM) and DI in series, the conversion of the light wave modulated by the Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) from phase modulation to intensity modulation can be realized, and finally output the desired optical frequency-shift-keying (OFSK) carrier signal. Meanwhile, by controlling the positions of the frequencies of the positive and negative first-order sideband light waves on the DI frequency response curve, the OFSK signals output by the two ports of the DI can be complemented in the time domain. For the proposed OFH scheme, we carried out simulation experiments of 5 km free-space link transmission and back-to-back transmission with a communication rate of 10 Gbps, and the simulation results proved the feasibility of the scheme. Additionally, we also analyze the security performance of the proposed scheme and give the security space based on the eavesdropping probability. © 2023 Elsevier B.V.