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arXiv:2408.09930 · IEEE International Conference on Photonics

Making Quantum Key Distribution a Commodity: The All-Silicon Approach

Bernhard Schrenk

Published Aug 27, 2024• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The dawning of the quantum age makes quantum key distribution (QKD) an indispensable necessity for our global communication infrastructure. The realization of an all-silicon QKD transmitter supplied by a light source that is native to silicon integration platforms is seen as a disruptive step towards the pervasive introduction of QKD in new applications, which up to now have not been explored due to the missing credentials of quantum optics as a cost-effective and highly miniaturized technology.

DOI
10.1109/icp60542.2024.10877221

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The dawning of the quantum age makes quantum key distribution (QKD) an indispensable necessity for our global communication infrastructure. The realization of an all-silicon QKD transmitter supplied by a light source that is native to silicon integration platforms is seen as a disruptive step towards the pervasive introduction of QKD in new applications, which up to now have not been explored due to the missing credentials of quantum optics as a cost-effective and highly miniaturized technology.
Quantum key distribution (QKD) allows the secure transmission of encryption keys in the dawning age of quantum computers. However, despite photonic integration efforts, the size and complexity of current QKD systems remains a roadblock for practical deployment in cost-sensitive applications. Here we show a monolithic integrated QKD transmitter that exclusively builds on silicon photonics. We introduce a germanium-on-silicon light emitter acting as source for a co-integrated quantum state encoder, to generate a secure key over a 45.9 km field-installed fiber link. On top of this, we demonstrate the broadband operation of our QKD transmitter by generating keys over 32 wavelength channels, making it an integrated colorless QKD transmitter with full C-band coverage. Employing monolithic silicon technology paves the way towards fully integrated optoelectronic QKD transmitters, enabling a drastic reduction of size and cost while benefiting from the maturity and mass production capabilities of complementary metal–oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. Moreover, omitting the need for rare and costly III-V semiconductor materials to generate light can drastically reduce the overburdening assembly and packaging requirements inherent to optoelectronics, potentially enabling QKD to finally enter new application domains closer to the consumer market.
Quantum key distribution (QKD) provides information-theoretic security independent of computational assumptions, yet the bulk and cost of current systems hinder large-scale deployment. Although integrated photonic technologies have enabled highly integrated QKD chips, practical QKD transmitters are still predominantly implemented as rack-mounted systems. Here, we demonstrate a highly integrated standalone QKD transmitter that integrates all essential functionalities required for practical QKD operation within a compact platform built around a silicon photonic encoding chip. The transmitter occupies only 167×56×21 mm3167 \times 56 \times 21~\mathrm{mm}^3167×56×21 mm3 (∼0.2 dm3\sim 0.2~\mathrm{dm}^3∼0.2 dm3), comparable in size to a half-height, half-width PCIe card and more than 30 times smaller in volume than a conventional 1U rack-mounted system. Paired with a conventional discrete-component receiver, it achieves a secure key rate of 219.1 kbps over 51.3 km of standard single-mode fiber, with performance comparable to that of conventional discrete-component implementations. This work bridges the gap between photonic chip integration and deployable QKD hardware, marking an important step toward transitioning QKD transmitters from conventional rack-mounted equipment to compact board-level platforms.
Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is one of the major cryptographic solutions to tackle the security threats associated to future computational advances, in particular those coming from quantum computing. At the most simple level, QKD can be seen as a highly secure source of symmetric secret keys in two separated places. Nonetheless, the lack of standardization and the strong requirements from the physical layer makes this technology very difficult to integrate in existing infrastructure.However, the success of QKD networks radically depends on the degree in which they can be adopted in the existing infrastructure, and it is a must that it happens via standard protocols and interfaces. The flexibility of novel network paradigms, like Software-Defined Networking (SDN), allows for a faster adoption of new concepts, hardware and services in telecommunications networks. This paradigm can be used for quantum communications, allowing for a fast and scalable deployment of quantum technologies and services in the telecommunications network to a degree that was simply impossible in previous schemes, where the different network devices and their connections should be modified, one by one, to create a quantum communications channel.This tutorial provides an introduction to existing QKD technologies and networks, followed by a descriptive explanation on how SDN principles can be utilized to abstract and integrate QKD systems as part of the network management. This will help to reduce the time-to-market for quantum technologies, and also will make quantum cryptography available as a service to be capitalized by the network operators.
As a promising quantum application, Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) technology has been rapidly developed from point-to-point communication to a large-scale commercial network. However, considering the cost of QKD components and network infrastructure, building a QKD network is challenged by its expensive capital expenditure, which significantly hinders its future popularization. In this article, we envision an evolution roadmap consisting of three stages for the future development of QKD networks, aiming at achieving a fully integrated network architecture that combines QKD and telecommunications networks. Powered by several critical technologies, such as link multiplexing, miniaturized QKD, and transmission optimization, QKD is foreseen to be integrated into telecommunications networks as an add-on module that can be flexibly deployed. After that, we introduce the integrated network architecture design in detail, and respectively provide four QKD-related function implementations. At last, key technologies that should be concerned and further investigated are also discussed with performance evaluation, which can provide theoretical guidance for both industries and academia. Based on the proposed roadmap and integrated architecture, we believe a scalable, easy-to-use, and affordable QKD service can be brought to current telecommunication networks, and extensively applied by ordinary people while using daily applications.