Implementation of the simplified BB84 protocol for the Q-ANSER mission
A. Álvarez‐Herrero, A. B. Balado Margeli, Á. Jimenez +25 more
Q-ANSER is a Spanish technological in-orbit demonstration mission specifically designed to progress on the technology necessary to perform a Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) link between small satellites in space. Two 16U CubeSats in formation based on the previous INTA developed platform called ANSER will be used for this purpose. The QKD protocol that is going to be implemented in this mission is a simplified BB84 polarization-based protocol that allows to minimize the number of required detectors to two. This is an important advantage taking into account the limited available resources in a CubeSat. The main link indicators (i.e.: Quantum Bit Error Rate and Secret Key Rate) have been calculated to determine the critical parameters (i.e.: transmitter aperture, receiver aperture, quantum channel wavelength, pointing error, satellites distance, minimum transmission time) to guarantee the success of the mission. Taking into account this, the conceptual design of the mission and, specifically, the payload, has been carried out and a summary is described here.
IEEE International Conference on Space Optical Systems and Applications (ICSOS)•Oct 28, 2025•0 citations