Quantum networks enable many applications beyond the reach of classical networks by supporting the establishment of long-distance entanglement connections, and are already stepped into the entanglement distribution network stage. The entanglement routing with active wavelength multiplexing schemes is urgently required for satisfying the dynamic connection demands of paired users in large-scale quantum networks. In this article, the entanglement distribution network is modeled into a directed graph, where the internal connection loss among all ports within a node is considered for each supported wavelength channel, which is quite different to classical network graphs. Afterwards, we propose a novel first request first service (FRFS) entanglement routing scheme, which performs the modified Dijkstra algorithm to find out the lowest loss path from the entangled photon source to each paired user in order. Evaluation results show that the proposed FRFS entanglement routing scheme can be applied to large-scale and dynamic topology quantum networks.
Quantum networks enable many applications beyond the reach of classical networks by supporting the establishment of long-distance entanglement connections, and are already stepped into the entanglement distribution network stage. The entanglement routing with active wavelength multiplexing schemes is urgently required for satisfying the dynamic connection demands of paired users in large-scale quantum networks. In this article, the entanglement distribution network is modeled into a directed graph, where the internal connection loss among all ports within a node is considered for each supported wavelength channel, which is quite different to classical network graphs. Afterwards, we propose a novel first request first service (FRFS) entanglement routing scheme, which performs the modified Dijkstra algorithm to find out the lowest loss path from the entangled photon source to each paired user in order. Evaluation results show that the proposed FRFS entanglement routing scheme can be applied to large-scale and dynamic topology quantum networks.
Abstract The entanglement distribution networks with various topologies are mainly implemented by active wavelength multiplexing routing strategies, which directly transmit entangled photons between quantum network nodes. However, designing an entanglement routing scheme, which achieves the maximized network connections and the optimal overall network efficiency simultaneously, remains a huge challenge for quantum networks. In this article, we propose a differentiated service entanglement routing (DSER) scheme, which firstly finds out the lowest loss paths and supported wavelength channels with the tensor-based path searching algorithm, and then allocates the paired channels with the differentiated routing strategies. The evaluation results show that the proposed DSER scheme can be performed for constructing various large scale quantum networks.
Entanglement routing selects a path to establish entanglement connections between two arbitrary nodes in quan-tum networks, which plays an important role in quantum com-munication. In quantum networks, quantum decoherence and limited network performance make it challenging to distribute entangled pairs. Many entanglement routing schemes have been proposed to solve this issue but most of them are in a centralized and synchronized manner. However, they may be infeasible in large-scale quantum networks. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a distributed and asynchronous entanglement routing scheme called DFER in which quantum nodes manage requests autonomously. The major challenge is quantum nodes have little knowledge about entangled pairs, which hinders the ability to establish fidelity guaranteed entanglement connections. To ad dress this challenge, we develop DLFR algorithm which estimates the fidelity of end-to-end entanglement connections based on link-level fidelity and calculates link-level fidelity requirement based on the characteristic of purification. Among nodes which meet link-level fidelity requirement, we design DFPS path se lection algorithm to select next hop with the highest expected throughput to distribute entangled pairs. Numerous simulation results demonstrate that DFER can efficiently distribute fidelity guaranteed entangled pairs with high throughput.
The quantum network is designed to connect numerous quantum nodes and support various ground-breaking quantum applications. Most of these applications require communicating parties to share entangled pairs. Therefore, entanglement routing, a technology distributing entangled pairs between distant quantum nodes, plays a vital role in realizing quantum networks’ capability. However, due to the limitation of quantum memory size and quantum decoherence, the entangled pairs shared by adjacent quantum nodes can hardly satisfy concurrent entanglement routing requests, thus leading to severe network congestion. In this paper, we propose a novel congestion mitigation (CM) scheme to tackle such bottleneck problems. The basic idea of CM is to “recycle” idle link-level entanglement resources from well-resourced links to bottleneck links utilizing a unique enabling technology of quantum networks, called entanglement swapping. CM can increase the capacity of each bottleneck link, thus overcoming resource limitations to improve resource utilization and network throughput. To complete our work, we also propose a swapping-based entanglement routing design, including path selection and resource allocation algorithms. Extensive simulations show that our design can significantly alleviate network congestion and improve the request service rate of quantum networks compared to the traditional entanglement routing designs.
Quantum entanglement enables important computing applications such as quantum key distribution. Based on quantum entanglement, quantum networks are built to provide long-distance secret sharing between two remote communication parties. Establishing a multi-hop quantum entanglement exhibits a high failure rate, and existing quantum networks rely on trusted repeater nodes to transmit quantum bits. However, when the scale of a quantum network increases, it requires end-to-end multi-hop quantum entanglements in order to deliver secret bits without letting the repeaters know the secret bits. This work focuses on the entanglement routing problem, whose objective is to build long-distance entanglements via untrusted repeaters for concurrent source-destination pairs through multiple hops. Different from existing work that analyzes the traditional routing techniques on special network topologies, we present a comprehensive entanglement routing model that reflects the differences between quantum networks and classical networks as well as a new entanglement routing algorithm that utilizes the unique properties of quantum networks. Evaluation results show that the proposed algorithm Q-CAST increases the number of successful long-distance entanglements by a big margin compared to other methods. The model and simulator developed by this work may encourage more network researchers to study the entanglement routing problem.
A network of devices capable of transmitting quantum information called a quantum network has promising applications with vast benefits. One of the most near term achievable application is the quantum key distribution. It could be used for sharing a secret key between two end-users through any insecure authenticated communication channel. Other than sharing a secret key, a quantum network can be used for connecting quantum computers. Quantum computers have the potential to solve computational problems that their classical counterparts would require significantly more time to do so. By connecting such devices, distributed computation problems such as leader election or distributed consensus between nodes can be solved securely. For such applications to be put into practice on a large scale, there are open practical questions still to be answered. In a quantum network, a data qubit containing quantum information is transmitted by an operation called quantum teleportation. For it, two nodes need to share entanglement. Quantum teleportation then ensures the safe transmission of a qubit by using the shared entanglement and the exchange of two classical bits. This operation, however, consumes entanglement between the nodes, changing the network topology with each served request. In quantum networks, certain nodes share entanglement between each other. Routing in quantum networks entails determining which of these shared entanglements are used to transmit quantum information. As this proves to be a difficult task, we study quantum networks and in particular consider the problem of routing entanglement in quantum networks. The average latency for routing entanglement in a quantum network has been studied so far using a distributed routing approach. Thus, we present numerical simulation results of centralised routing for the average latency of demands in two existing entanglement generation models. In the first, shared entanglement between nodes is created on-demand. In the second, certain nodes pre-share entanglement before the demand comes. Our results show the intuition that using a centralised routing approach in the on-demand model results in drastically more average latency than in the model with pre-shared entanglement. Since some nodes might not be informed about the change in topology, we study the effect of the propagation of information about the network topology to nodes in the network. Our observations based on simulation results show that the average latency is significantly higher if the information about the topology is not propagated well in the network. As propagating information to all nodes in a network would be a significant load for the network, we consider information propagation within a radius and still observe a considerable decrease in average latency. At last, we present a technique called link prediction which can be performed by any node without the need for information propagation and still achieve a considerable decrease in average latency. It can be effectively used to predict the change of topology in a quantum network by using knowledge about the network topology for a certain future point in time and previous knowledge about the network traffic.
Quantum entanglement enables important computing applications such as quantum key distribution. Based on quantum entanglement, quantum networks are built to provide long-distance secret sharing between two remote communication parties. Establishing a multi-hop quantum entanglement exhibits a high failure rate, and existing quantum networks rely on trusted repeater nodes to transmit quantum bits. However, when the scale of a quantum network increases, it requires end-to-end multi-hop quantum entanglements in order to deliver secret bits without letting the repeaters know the secret bits. This work focuses on the entanglement routing problem, whose objective is to build long-distance entanglements via untrusted repeaters for concurrent source-destination pairs through multiple hops. Different from existing work that analyzes the traditional routing techniques on special network topologies, we present a comprehensive entanglement routing model that reflects the differences between quantum networks and classical networks as well as a new entanglement routing algorithm that utilizes the unique properties of quantum networks. Evaluation results show that the proposed algorithm Q-CAST increases the number of successful long-distance entanglements by a big margin compared to other methods. The model and simulator developed by this work may encourage more network researchers to study the entanglement routing problem.