For the QPSK coherent-state discrimination, error performances of the SWN quantum receiver with on-off detectors are analyzed, which can be improved, especially for weak signals when the sequential probing order and displacement parameter are optimized.
Many receiver designs have been studied in the past to discriminate Phase-Shift Keying (PSK) quantum states that are used to encode information before transmitting over the communication channel. Among many types of quantum states, there has been significant work on the use of coherent states for encoding information. Previous work has sought to improve the communication performance in terms of various metrics such as error probability of state discrimination and capacities by employing more complex quantum states such as squeezed-displaced states. One of the simplest receivers for state discrimination is the displacement receiver. However, our calculation demonstrates that when we use optimal parameters for a displacement receiver, squeezed-displaced states might not be necessary, and merely using coherent states suffice. We see no performance improvement in terms of probability of error of state discrimination as well as mutual information using displacement receivers when optimal squeezing parameters are used with squeezing operation on the transmitter side for BPSK and QPSK. In addition, we also study the receiver design scheme for QPSK modulation where squeezing is employed at the receiver side. We find that using squeezing operation on the receiver side just before detection provides an advantage in terms of increased mutual information for the low-photon regime compared to when no squeezing is used. For all other cases, squeezing offers no additional advantage.
Discriminating coherent states of light is an important instance of quantum state discrimination that is central to all applications of laser light. We obtain the ultimate quantum limit on the error probability exponent for discriminating among any M multimode coherent-state signals via the recently developed theory of the quantum Chernoff exponent in M-ary multi-copy state discrimination. A receiver called the Sequential Waveform Nulling (SWN) receiver is proposed for discriminating an arbitrary coherent-state ensemble using only auxiliary coherent-state fields, beam splitters, and non-number-resolving single photon detectors. An explicit error probability analysis of the SWN receiver is used to show that it achieves the quantum limit on the error probability exponent, which is shown to be a factor of four greater than the error probability exponent of an ideal heterodyne-detection receiver on the same ensemble. Apart from being of fundamental interest, these results are relevant to communication, sensing, imaging, and quantum information processing systems that use laser light.
The impossibility of perfectly discriminating non-orthogonal quantum states imposes far-reaching consequences both on quantum and classical communication schemes.Wepropose and numerically analyze an optimized quantum receiver for the discrimination of phase encoded signals. Our scheme outperforms the standard quantum limit and approaches the Helstrom bound for any signal power. The discrimination is performed via an optimized, feedback-mediated displacement prior to a photon counting detector.Weprovide a detailed analysis of the influence of excess noise and technical imperfections on the average error probability. The results demonstrate the receiver’s robustness and show that it can outperform any classical receiver over a wide range of realistic parameters.
We propose and experimentally demonstrate a near-optimal discrimination scheme for the quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) protocol. We show in theory that the performance of our hybrid scheme is superior to the standard scheme—heterodyne detection—for all signal amplitudes and underpin the predictions with our experimental results. Furthermore, our scheme provides hitherto the best performance in the domain of highly attenuated signals. The discrimination is composed of a quadrature measurement, a conditional displacement and a threshold detector.