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Quantum routing

William J. Munro, Nicoló Lo Piparo, Michael Hanks, Kae Nemoto

Published Aug 20, 2020• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

It is now widely accepted that a global quantum internet will be developed in the future with many of the essential elements already demonstrated in the laboratory. We are at the stage where many of these elements are being integrated together, however the communities focus has been on small scale networks whose topology makes the of routing of quantum signals quite forward. Moving forward we need to explore how routing will work on this larger scale quantum networks especially when the networks entire topology is not known to all users of that network. We will discuss various routing options that are available and show these impose quite different constraints on the fundamental building blocks of the network. This will be illustrated with a number of examples including several with no classical analog.

DOI
10.1117/12.2567484

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It is now widely accepted that a global quantum internet will be developed in the future with many of the essential elements already demonstrated in the laboratory. We are at the stage where many of these elements are being integrated together, however the communities focus has been on small scale networks whose topology makes the of routing of quantum signals quite forward. Moving forward we need to explore how routing will work on this larger scale quantum networks especially when the networks entire topology is not known to all users of that network. We will discuss various routing options that are available and show these impose quite different constraints on the fundamental building blocks of the network. This will be illustrated with a number of examples including several with no classical analog.
It is now widely accepted that a future quantum internet will be developed supporting a wide variety of applications. The efficiency (and even viability) of such a internet will be highly dependent on how we move information around it. We discuss various routing options and show these impose quite different constraints on the fundamental building blocks of those networks. Introducing the concepts of quantum multiplexing and quantum network aggregation we show how communication maybe possible between two users on that network even when there are insufficient resources to allow such information to be transmitted over individual routes.
The quantum internet is a global system also called the future internet and is considered a complement to the classical packet switching internet, which performs the function of exchanging messages in the network in an innovative way, as it depends on the basic principles of quantum bits. In order to prepare for the quantum internet, its protocols must be configured initially like routing protocols, and because routing in the quantum internet depends mainly on the property of quantum entanglement, it is facing a constant challenge to what the quantum properties impose, Accordingly, studies in this field continue to emerge, as proposals for protocols are renewed. Therefore, in this research, we present a comprehensive study of the recently proposed quantum routing protocols by classifying these protocols into two categories, the first deals with the routing metrics on which the protocol depends, while the other deals with the problem being solved through the routing protocol. It is shown that although many metrics were suggested for routing protocols, the common metric was the throughput (entanglement rate), In addition, it was considered an essential metric in solving most of the routing problems in quantum networks.
Principles of quantum mechanics promise a future quantum internet that connects a wide variety of quantum devices together in a coherent and secure fashion. It is well known that due to the size of this quantum internet, quantum repeaters will be a critical part in a similar fashion to the importance of repeaters in today's telecommunications internet. Given the inherent differences between classical and quantum physics, it is essential to establish how a quantum internet will function including how we route information as well as the functionality quantum repeaters will need to provide. Our considerations here go far beyond quantum key distribution and instead focus on a true network of connected quantum devices, including computers and sensors. We show how the efficient operation of such quantum networks relies on the seamless integration of both quantum and classical communication resources.
Principles of quantum mechanics promise a future quantum internet that connects a wide variety of quantum devices together in a coherent and secure fashion. It is well known that due to the size of this quantum internet, quantum repeaters will be a critical part in a similar fashion to the importance of repeaters in today's telecommunications internet. Given the inherent differences between classical and quantum physics, it is essential to establish how a quantum internet will function including how we route information as well as the functionality quantum repeaters will need to provide. Our considerations here go far beyond quantum key distribution and instead focus on a true network of connected quantum devices, including computers and sensors. We show how the efficient operation of such quantum networks relies on the seamless integration of both quantum and classical communication resources.
The design of the Quantum Internet protocol stack is at its infancy and early-stage conceptualization. And different heterogeneous proposals are currently available in the literature. The underlying assumption of the existing proposals is that they implicitly mimic classical Internet Protocol design principles: “ A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A route indicates how to get there ”. Hence the network nodes are labeled with classical addresses, constituted by classical bits, and these labels aim at reflecting the node location within the network topology. In this paper, we argue that this twofold assumption of classical and location-aware addressing constitutes a restricting design option, which prevents to scale the quantumness to the network functionalities, beyond simple information encoding/decoding. On the contrary, by embracing quantumness within the node addresses, quantum principles and phenomena could be exploited for enabling a quantum native functioning of the entire communication network. This will unleash the ultimate vision and capabilities of the Quantum Internet.
The quantum internet is envisaged to connect quantum systems at a global scale to provide diverse applications unimaginable with the classical internet. However, the technological shortcomings and practical challenges of noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices impose several constraints on the vision of a truly global quantum internet. Recent experimental developments for quantum networks are laying the pathway from small-scale to intermediate-scale noisy quantum networks dedicated to specific operational tasks. Although these networks are not at the global scale, they are capable of providing a clear quantum advantage in their dedicated tasks. We explore the cardinal features of these NISQ networks, discuss their design constraints, and explore the possible applications they provide. We also outline some technical challenges that need to be addressed for the practical implementation of these networks and eventually lead toward a truly global, fully functional quantum internet.