Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:2501.15675

Joint Communication and Sensing with Bipartite Entanglement over Bosonic Channels

Tuna Erdoğan, Shi-Yuan Wang, Shang-Jen Su, Matthieu R. Bloch

Published Jan 26, 2025• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We consider a joint communication and sensing problem over an optical link in which a low-power transmitter simultaneously communicates with a receiver and identifies the range of a defect producing a backscattered signal. We model the system as a lossy thermal-noise bosonic channel, in which the target location, modeled as a beamsplitter, affects the timing of the backscattered signal. Motivated by the envisioned deployment of entanglement-enabled quantum networks, we allow the transmitter to exploit shared entanglement to assist both sensing and communication. Since entanglement is known to enhance sensing, as demonstrated in Quantum Illumination (QI), and to increase communication rates through entanglement-assisted communication, the transmitter faces a trade-off in allocating its entanglement resources between the two tasks. Our main result is a characterization of these trade-offs in the form of an achievable rate/error-exponent region, which can outperform time-sharing and demonstrates a quantum advantage.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2501.15675

Related papers

Joint communication and sensing over the lossy bosonic quantum channel

Pere Munar-Vallespir, Janis Nötzel

We study the problem of joint communication and sensing for data transmission systems using optimal quantum instruments in order to transmit data and, at the same time, estimate environmental parameters. In particular we consider the specific but at the same time generic case of a noiseless bosonic classical-quantum channel where part of the transmitted light is reflected back to the transmitter. While sending messages to the receiver, the transmitter tries at the same time to estimate the reflectivity of the channel. Extending earlier results on similar but finite-dimensional systems, we are able to characterize optimal tradeoffs between communication and detection rates. We also compare quantum performance to analogous classical models, quantifying the quantum advantage.

arXiv:2411.11604•IEEE World Forum on Internet of Things (WF-IoT)•Nov 10, 2024•1 citation

Entanglement-Assisted Communication Surpassing the Ultimate Classical Capacity

Shuhong Hao, Haowei Shi, Wei Li +3 more

Entanglement underpins a variety of quantum-enhanced communication, sensing, and computing capabilities. Entanglement-assisted communication (EACOMM) leverages entanglement preshared by communicating parties to boost the rate of classical information transmission. Pioneering theory works showed that EACOMM can enable a communication rate well beyond the ultimate classical capacity of optical communications, but an experimental demonstration of any EACOMM advantage remains elusive. In this Letter we report the implementation of EACOMM surpassing the classical capacity over lossy and noisy bosonic channels. We construct a high-efficiency entanglement source and a phase-conjugate quantum receiver to reap the benefit of preshared entanglement, despite entanglement being broken by channel loss and noise. We show that EACOMM beats the Holevo-Schumacher-Westmoreland capacity of classical communication by up to 16.3%, when both protocols are subject to the same power constraint at the transmitter. As a practical performance benchmark, we implement a classical communication protocol with the identical characteristics for the encoded signal, showing that EACOMM can reduce the bit-error rate by up to 69% over the same bosonic channel. Our work opens a route to provable quantum advantages in a wide range of quantum information processing tasks.

arXiv:2101.07482•Physical Review Letters•Jun 22, 2021•61 citations

On the Utility of Quantum Entanglement for Joint Communication and Instantaneous Detection

Yuhang Yao, Syed A. Jafar

Entanglement is known to significantly improve the performance (separately) of communication and detection schemes that utilize quantum resources. This work explores the simultaneous utility of quantum entanglement for (joint) communication and detection schemes, over channels that are convex combinations of identity, depolarization and erasure operators, both with perfect and imperfect entanglement assistance. The channel state is binary, rapidly time-varying and unknown to the transmitter. While the communication is delay-tolerant, allowing the use of arbitrarily long codewords to ensure reliable decoding, the channel state detection is required to be instantaneous. The detector is neither co-located with the transmitter, nor able to wait for the decoding in order to learn the transmitted waveform. The results of this work appear in the form of communication-rate vs instantaneous-detection-error tradeoffs, with and without quantum entanglement. Despite the challenges that place the two tasks at odds with each other, the results indicate that quantum entanglement can indeed be simultaneously and significantly beneficial for joint communication and instantaneous detection.

arXiv:2503.21134•IEEE Transactions on Communications•May 26, 2025•1 citation

Covert Signaling for Communication and Sensing over the Bosonic Channels

Tianrui Tan, Evan J. D. Anderson, Michael S. Bullock +1 more

Preventing signal detection in communication and active sensing requires careful control of transmission power. In fact, the square-root laws (SRL) for covert classical and quantum communication and sensing prescribe that the average output energy per channel use scales as $1/\sqrt{n}$ for $n$ channel uses. \emph{Diffuse} and \emph{sparse} signaling achieve this. The former transmits signals whose energy decays as $1/\sqrt{n}$ over all $n$ channel uses, which is convenient for mathematical analysis. The latter transmits constant-energy signals only approximately $\propto\sqrt{n}$ times out of $n$ channel uses, remaining silent on the others. This offers significant practical advantages in compatibility with modern digital transmitters. Here, we study sparse signaling over the lossy thermal-noise bosonic channel, which is a quantum model of many practical channels (including optical, microwave, and radio-frequency). We characterize the input signal state that minimizes detectability. We find an unintuitive optimal quantum state structure: a mixture of just two consecutive photon-number states. In particular, in the low-brightness regime, the optimal signal state is a mixture of vacuum and a single photon. Since these states are generally suboptimal for both communication and active sensing, we explore the resulting trade-off and identify input-power thresholds for transitions between optimizing covertness and performance in communication and sensing tasks.

quant-pharXiv:2605.08066•May 11, 2026•0 citations

Joint Quantum Communication and Sensing

Shiyuan Wang, Tuna Erdoğan, Uzi Pereg +1 more

To capture the problem of joint communication and sensing in the quantum regime, we consider the problem of reliably communicating over a Classical-Quantum (c-q) channel that depends on a random parameter while simultaneously estimating the random parameter at the transmitter through a noisy feedback channel. Specifically, for non-adaptive estimation strategies, we obtain an exact characterization of the optimal tradeoffs between the rate of communication and the error exponent of parameter estimation. As in the classical setting, the tradeoff is governed by the empirical distribution of the codewords, which simultaneously controls the rate of reliable communication and the error exponent.

IEEE Information Theory Workshop (ITW)•Nov 1, 2022•6 citations

Transceiver Designs Approaching the Entanglement-Assisted Communication Capacity

Ali Cox, Quntao Zhuang, Christos N. Gagatsos +2 more

Preshared entanglement can significantly boost communication rates in the high thermal-noise and low-brightness transmitter regime. In this regime, for a lossy bosonic channel with additive thermal noise, the ratio between the entanglement-assisted capacity and the Holevo capacity---the maximum reliable communication rate permitted by quantum mechanics without any preshared entanglement---scales as $\mathrm{log}(1/{\overline{N}}_{S})$, where the mean transmitted photon number per mode, ${\overline{N}}_{S}\ensuremath{\ll}1$. Thus, preshared entanglement, e.g., distributed by the quantum internet or a satellite-assisted quantum link, promises to significantly improve low-power radio-frequency communications. In this paper, we propose a pair of structured quantum transceiver designs that leverage continuous-variable preshared entanglement (generated, e.g., from a down-conversion source), binary phase modulation, and non-Gaussian joint detection over a codeword block, to achieve this scaling law of capacity enhancement. Furthermore, we describe a modification to the aforesaid receiver using a frontend that uses sum-frequency generation sandwiched with dynamically programmable in-line two-mode squeezers, and a receiver backend that takes full advantage of the output of the receiver's frontend by employing a nondestructive multimode vacuum-or-not measurement to achieve the entanglement-assisted classical communication capacity.

arXiv:2208.07979•Physical Review Applied•Jun 5, 2023•7 citations
We consider a joint communication and sensing problem over an optical link in which a low-power transmitter simultaneously communicates with a receiver and identifies the range of a defect producing a backscattered signal. We model the system as a lossy thermal-noise bosonic channel, in which the target location, modeled as a beamsplitter, affects the timing of the backscattered signal. Motivated by the envisioned deployment of entanglement-enabled quantum networks, we allow the transmitter to exploit shared entanglement to assist both sensing and communication. Since entanglement is known to enhance sensing, as demonstrated in Quantum Illumination (QI), and to increase communication rates through entanglement-assisted communication, the transmitter faces a trade-off in allocating its entanglement resources between the two tasks. Our main result is a characterization of these trade-offs in the form of an achievable rate/error-exponent region, which can outperform time-sharing and demonstrates a quantum advantage.
We study the problem of joint communication and sensing for data transmission systems using optimal quantum instruments in order to transmit data and, at the same time, estimate environmental parameters. In particular we consider the specific but at the same time generic case of a noiseless bosonic classical-quantum channel where part of the transmitted light is reflected back to the transmitter. While sending messages to the receiver, the transmitter tries at the same time to estimate the reflectivity of the channel. Extending earlier results on similar but finite-dimensional systems, we are able to characterize optimal tradeoffs between communication and detection rates. We also compare quantum performance to analogous classical models, quantifying the quantum advantage.
Entanglement underpins a variety of quantum-enhanced communication, sensing, and computing capabilities. Entanglement-assisted communication (EACOMM) leverages entanglement preshared by communicating parties to boost the rate of classical information transmission. Pioneering theory works showed that EACOMM can enable a communication rate well beyond the ultimate classical capacity of optical communications, but an experimental demonstration of any EACOMM advantage remains elusive. In this Letter we report the implementation of EACOMM surpassing the classical capacity over lossy and noisy bosonic channels. We construct a high-efficiency entanglement source and a phase-conjugate quantum receiver to reap the benefit of preshared entanglement, despite entanglement being broken by channel loss and noise. We show that EACOMM beats the Holevo-Schumacher-Westmoreland capacity of classical communication by up to 16.3%, when both protocols are subject to the same power constraint at the transmitter. As a practical performance benchmark, we implement a classical communication protocol with the identical characteristics for the encoded signal, showing that EACOMM can reduce the bit-error rate by up to 69% over the same bosonic channel. Our work opens a route to provable quantum advantages in a wide range of quantum information processing tasks.
Entanglement is known to significantly improve the performance (separately) of communication and detection schemes that utilize quantum resources. This work explores the simultaneous utility of quantum entanglement for (joint) communication and detection schemes, over channels that are convex combinations of identity, depolarization and erasure operators, both with perfect and imperfect entanglement assistance. The channel state is binary, rapidly time-varying and unknown to the transmitter. While the communication is delay-tolerant, allowing the use of arbitrarily long codewords to ensure reliable decoding, the channel state detection is required to be instantaneous. The detector is neither co-located with the transmitter, nor able to wait for the decoding in order to learn the transmitted waveform. The results of this work appear in the form of communication-rate vs instantaneous-detection-error tradeoffs, with and without quantum entanglement. Despite the challenges that place the two tasks at odds with each other, the results indicate that quantum entanglement can indeed be simultaneously and significantly beneficial for joint communication and instantaneous detection.
Preventing signal detection in communication and active sensing requires careful control of transmission power. In fact, the square-root laws (SRL) for covert classical and quantum communication and sensing prescribe that the average output energy per channel use scales as 1/n1/\sqrt{n}1/n​ for nnn channel uses. \emph{Diffuse} and \emph{sparse} signaling achieve this. The former transmits signals whose energy decays as 1/n1/\sqrt{n}1/n​ over all nnn channel uses, which is convenient for mathematical analysis. The latter transmits constant-energy signals only approximately ∝n\propto\sqrt{n}∝n​ times out of nnn channel uses, remaining silent on the others. This offers significant practical advantages in compatibility with modern digital transmitters. Here, we study sparse signaling over the lossy thermal-noise bosonic channel, which is a quantum model of many practical channels (including optical, microwave, and radio-frequency). We characterize the input signal state that minimizes detectability. We find an unintuitive optimal quantum state structure: a mixture of just two consecutive photon-number states. In particular, in the low-brightness regime, the optimal signal state is a mixture of vacuum and a single photon. Since these states are generally suboptimal for both communication and active sensing, we explore the resulting trade-off and identify input-power thresholds for transitions between optimizing covertness and performance in communication and sensing tasks.
To capture the problem of joint communication and sensing in the quantum regime, we consider the problem of reliably communicating over a Classical-Quantum (c-q) channel that depends on a random parameter while simultaneously estimating the random parameter at the transmitter through a noisy feedback channel. Specifically, for non-adaptive estimation strategies, we obtain an exact characterization of the optimal tradeoffs between the rate of communication and the error exponent of parameter estimation. As in the classical setting, the tradeoff is governed by the empirical distribution of the codewords, which simultaneously controls the rate of reliable communication and the error exponent.
Preshared entanglement can significantly boost communication rates in the high thermal-noise and low-brightness transmitter regime. In this regime, for a lossy bosonic channel with additive thermal noise, the ratio between the entanglement-assisted capacity and the Holevo capacity---the maximum reliable communication rate permitted by quantum mechanics without any preshared entanglement---scales as log(1/N‾S)\mathrm{log}(1/{\overline{N}}_{S})log(1/NS​), where the mean transmitted photon number per mode, ${\overline{N}}_{S}\ensuremath{\ll}1$. Thus, preshared entanglement, e.g., distributed by the quantum internet or a satellite-assisted quantum link, promises to significantly improve low-power radio-frequency communications. In this paper, we propose a pair of structured quantum transceiver designs that leverage continuous-variable preshared entanglement (generated, e.g., from a down-conversion source), binary phase modulation, and non-Gaussian joint detection over a codeword block, to achieve this scaling law of capacity enhancement. Furthermore, we describe a modification to the aforesaid receiver using a frontend that uses sum-frequency generation sandwiched with dynamically programmable in-line two-mode squeezers, and a receiver backend that takes full advantage of the output of the receiver's frontend by employing a nondestructive multimode vacuum-or-not measurement to achieve the entanglement-assisted classical communication capacity.