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Optical Fiber Communication Conference

Deployed systems for quantum communications

Qiang Zhang

Published Jan 1, 2018• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum communication, based on the quantum physics, can provide information theoretical security. The gap between ideal devices and realistic setups, however, has raised various security loopholes, which have become the targets of many attacks and obstacles against its deployment and applications. I shall review the various efforts towards secure QKD system with practical devices over the society. Then I shall provide details about the deployed quantum communication systems in China, including metropolitan, backbone and satellite based international network, the technology challenging, the performance and an outlook.

DOI
10.1364/ofc.2018.tu3g.2

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Quantum communication, based on the quantum physics, can provide information theoretical security. The gap between ideal devices and realistic setups, however, has raised various security loopholes, which have become the targets of many attacks and obstacles against its deployment and applications. I shall review the various efforts towards secure QKD system with practical devices over the society. Then I shall provide details about the deployed quantum communication systems in China, including metropolitan, backbone and satellite based international network, the technology challenging, the performance and an outlook.
Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) offers a revolutionary method for achieving information-theoretic security in communication systems by leveraging quantum mechanical principles. With foundational protocols like BB84 and newer innovations such as phase-matching and device-independent QKD, the field has rapidly progressed from theoretical constructs to real-world prototypes. Recent advancements in integrated photonics, high-speed key generation, and satellite-based systems suggest a transformative potential for global cybersecurity infrastructure. However, significant challenges remain in extending secure communication distances, ensuring practical implementation security, reducing cost and size of components, and integrating QKD into existing network architectures. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art in QKD, discusses emerging trends such as chip-based and layered QKD systems, evaluates satellite and free-space deployments, and examines the practical limitations and solutions for long-distance and high-rate secure communications. It concludes by highlighting future directions including standardization, hybrid classical-quantum infrastructures, and software-defined QKD networks.
Quantum communication, based on the quantum physics, can provide information theoretical security. Building a global quantum network is one ultimate goal for the research of quantum information. Here, this talk will review the progress for quantum communication in China, including quantum key distribution over metropolitan area with untrustful relay, field test of quantum entanglement swapping over metropolitan network, the 2000 km quantum key distribution main trunk line, and satellite based quantum communication.
Quantum key distribution (QKD) together with one time pad encoding can provide information-theoretical security for communication. Currently, though QKD has been widely deployed in many metropolitan fiber networks, its implementation in a large scale remains experimentally challenging. This letter provides a brief review on the experimental efforts towards the goal of global QKD, including the security of practical QKD with imperfect devices, QKD metropolitan and backbone networks over optical fiber and satellite-based QKD over free space.
Quantum communication based on quantum mechanics is a secure communication technology,which can provide unconditional security between communication parties in principle. Recently,quantum communication technology and its practical engineering have been regarded by many counties and regions such as the US,European Union,China and Japan. With the engineering development of quantum communication technology,it has been progressing from point-to-point communications to network applications,including local area networks and wide area networks. Furthermore,global quantum communication is developing. In the review,we summarize in detail the development of the quantum communication networks built by various countries,and introduce the plans of quantum satellites.
The increasing number of cyber threats and the approaching development of quantum computing demand a critical review of existing cryptographic approaches. The goal of this work is to evaluate the security and practicality of utilizing Quantum Key Distribution for secure communications. QKD utilizes the laws of quantum mechanics to provide a secure and unbreakable method for exchanging information. Protocols like BB84 are resistant to threatening attacks from both classical and quantum adversaries. The methodology utilizes simulated models and quantum communication toolkits to study critical characteristics such as key generation speed, QBER, latency and scalability. Performance of QKD is compared to that of classical schemes such as RSA-2048, ECC-256 and AES-256. Results reveal that although QKD provides unparalleled theoretical security, its deployment has notable obstacles such as intricate infrastructure, restrictions on distance and elevated latency. Our study reveals that optimizing the interplay between security and practicality in QKD deployment can yield a highly effective safeguard for next-generation communication networks.
Quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols have unique advantages of enabling symmetric key sharing with information-theoretic security (ITS) between remote locations, which ensure the long-term security even in the era of quantum computation. QKD-based quantum secure communication (QSC) enhancing the security of key generation and update rate of keys, which could be integrated with a variety of cryptographic applications and communication protocols, has become one of the important solutions to improve information security. In recent years, the research on QKD has been active and productive, the performance of novel protocol systems has been improved significantly, and the feasibility of satellite-based QKD has been experimentally verified. QKD network construction, application exploration, and standardization have been carried out in China as well as other countries and regions around the world. Although QKD-based QSC applications and industrialization are still in the initial stage, the research and exploration momentum is positive and more achievements could be expected in the future.