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IEEE Transactions on Communications

Fair-EAS: Entanglement Allocation and Selection for Process-Oriented Fairness in Quantum Communication Networks

Zhaoying Wang, Jian Li, Kaiping Xue, Zhonghui Li, Ruidong Li, Nenghai Yu, Qibin Sun, Jun Lu

Published Dec 12, 2024• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum communication networks enable advanced quantum applications through remote entanglement distribution among source-destination pairs. Despite efforts to optimize entanglement distribution, fairness in multi-request scenarios has been neglected, potentially causing issues like “request starvation”. To address such issue, this paper concentrates on the unique properties of entangled systems and introduces a process-oriented fairness metric, i.e., expected throughput, departing from conventional approaches used in classical networks. Furthermore, we propose an entanglement distribution scheme named Fair-EAS, which prioritizes entanglement allocation and selection for batching multiple requests to maximize overall throughput while maintaining max-min fairness. To facilitate a convenient solution, we transform the nonlinearity of the problem into an equivalent linear programming formulation and decouple the solution into offline and online phases. In the offline phase, we design a multi-round water-filling-like optimization algorithm to determine the optimal path set for predicting entanglement allocation. In the online phase, we introduce an adaptive compensation algorithm and an entanglement “fragment” exhaustion algorithm to dynamically adjust the path set based on successfully generated entangled pairs. Comprehensive simulations show that Fair-EAS outperforms the existing schemes in terms of fairness by significantly enhancing the minimum throughput and throughput deviation among multiple requests while maintaining an overall throughput close to the optimal level.

DOI
10.1109/tcomm.2024.3516497

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Quantum communication networks enable advanced quantum applications through remote entanglement distribution among source-destination pairs. Despite efforts to optimize entanglement distribution, fairness in multi-request scenarios has been neglected, potentially causing issues like “request starvation”. To address such issue, this paper concentrates on the unique properties of entangled systems and introduces a process-oriented fairness metric, i.e., expected throughput, departing from conventional approaches used in classical networks. Furthermore, we propose an entanglement distribution scheme named Fair-EAS, which prioritizes entanglement allocation and selection for batching multiple requests to maximize overall throughput while maintaining max-min fairness. To facilitate a convenient solution, we transform the nonlinearity of the problem into an equivalent linear programming formulation and decouple the solution into offline and online phases. In the offline phase, we design a multi-round water-filling-like optimization algorithm to determine the optimal path set for predicting entanglement allocation. In the online phase, we introduce an adaptive compensation algorithm and an entanglement “fragment” exhaustion algorithm to dynamically adjust the path set based on successfully generated entangled pairs. Comprehensive simulations show that Fair-EAS outperforms the existing schemes in terms of fairness by significantly enhancing the minimum throughput and throughput deviation among multiple requests while maintaining an overall throughput close to the optimal level.
Remote entanglement distribution in an efficient and reliable manner, especially in the context of a large-scale quantum network with multiple requests, remains an unsolved challenge. The key difficulties lie in achieving spontaneous and precise control over the entanglement distribution procedure, as multiple nodes need to reach a consensus on how to perform it. From the network aspect, allocating link-layer entangled pairs as resources to achieve high efficiency is also challenging. To address these issues, we propose a decentralized Reliable Entanglement Distribution Protocol (REDP) for large-scale networks. The protocol operates in a Forward-Backward Propagation (FBP) manner, where consensus is reached hop-by-hop and disseminated to all nodes on the path. We further use probabilistic analysis and quasi-static modeling to seek the fairness and efficiency of the network based on the above transmission model. Accordingly, we introduce a Source Window Strategy (SWS) and an Entanglement Allocation Strategy (EAS) to assign sending windows and allocate resources for multiple requests, ensuring a high level of fairness and efficiency from a network perspective. Through systematic simulations involving both classical and quantum communication protocols, we demonstrate that REDP outperforms existing approaches in terms of fairness, throughput, and fidelity performance.
Quantum Data Networks (QDNs) typically leverage teleportation to reliably send data quantum bits (called qubits) to their destinations. To teleport a data qubit from Alice to Bob, one entanglement connection between Alice and Bob needs to be established. Accordingly, we have to establish as many entanglement connections as possible with limited quantum resources in order to maximize the network throughput. Conventional methods assume a known traffic matrix and calculate the paths to establish entanglement connections in one batch using a centralized algorithm. However, these methods are not scalable in large scale QDNs since it is time consuming to optimize the entanglement paths for a batch of requests, which may result in a long time slot duration and significantly reduce the network throughput. To address this issue, we propose an Online Entanglement Routing (OER) scheme which determines the entanglement paths for each request when it arrives. In addition, OER pursues work conservation and fairness among all requests in the QDNs. Through extensive simulations, we demonstrate that OER not only outperforms two representative heuristics by up to 61.27% and 52.79%, respectively, in terms of average request completion time, but also achieves a better fairness performance than these two counterparts.
The entanglement distribution problem over quantum networks has been widely studied, with the objective of maximizing network throughput, that is, the number of entanglements distributed for all user pairs. However, most of the existing works only focus on throughput maximization while neglecting fairness considerations. In this paper, we first characterize the fairness of an entanglement distribution scheme by introducing a fairness factor based on Element-Wise Inequalities, referred to as EWI-fairness. The EWI-fairness requires that the entanglement distribution rate of each user pair exceeds a certain threshold, ensuring the fair distribution. Second, we enforce fairness guarantees into two existing distribution methods, Temporal Multiplexing Distribution (TMD) and Flow Multiplexing Distribution (FMD). Our theoretical analysis reveals that FMD-based scheme outperforms TMD-based scheme. Therefore, we focus on optimizing FMD-based scheme. Third, we formulate the fair entanglement distribution problem as a linear programming problem, where fairness requirements serve as constraints, aiming to identify the optimal FMD-based scheme with the highest throughput. Simulation results demonstrate that the optimized FMD-based scheme achieves a higher throughput compared to existing schemes under identical fairness requirements.
Quantum entanglement networks has ushered in a new era of communication, with the core task of generating long-distance quantum entanglement being crucial for a multitude of quantum applications. Although current research is primarily focused on establishing long-distance entanglement across various network topologies, there is still a lack of attention to the variability of communication requests within quantum networks. This paper introduces the Fair and Restricted Resource Allocation Algorithm (FARA), designed to meet the business-driven resource allocation requirements within quantum networks. This algorithm prioritizes the demands and urgency of requests to establish a fairer response mechanism, leading to an enhanced user experience. We refine the strategy for allocating network resources to maximize their use during multiple concurrent requests and to improve the success rate of business. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed scheme improves the business success rate by 6.35% to 24.58% and user satisfaction by 0.922 to 4.533 points compared to the Q-CAST algorithm. Additionally, resource wastage is reduced by 473 to 800 units. These enhancements indicate that our research provides effective strategies for business-driven optimization in quantum networks and makes a positive contribution to the development of entanglement networks towards more practical and efficient applications.
Entanglement distribution between distant quantum nodes plays an important role in quantum networks. However, due to the unique properties of quantum mechanics and hardware limitations, entanglement resources in quantum networks are scarce. Quantum links that fail to meet request demands become bottleneck links, significantly hindering remote entanglement distribution in multi-request scenarios. In this paper, we propose an entanglement routing scheme called SwappingBoost that can effectively reduce resource consumption along entanglement distribution paths, alleviating the negative impact of bottleneck links. SwappingBoost first employs a decreasing resource reservation method to compensate for resource losses caused by failed entanglement swapping, freeing up pre-reserved resources on downstream links to accommodate other paths and requests. Besides, SwappingBoost introduces a path-priority-based rounding algorithm that achieves integer-level resource allocation while ensuring balanced resource allocation. Extensive simulation results demonstrate that SwappingBoost can effectively reduce the load of bottleneck links, enhancing network throughput while maintaining fairness among multiple requests.
Entanglement distribution in quantum networks must jointly account for limited link capacities, probabilistic entanglement swapping, and heterogeneous link fidelities. In this paper, we study multi-pair fidelity-aware rate allocation in quantum networks. We formulate three rate-allocation problems: rate sum, rate sum subject to minimum-rate constraints, and max-min fairness. Prior work has studied a special case of the rate sum problem, where all links have identical fidelity. This special case admits a polynomial-time algorithm. We prove that all three problems are NP-hard. We then study optimization versions of these problems which maximize the minimum end-to-end fidelity subject to throughput or fairness requirements. We present fully polynomial-time approximation schemes (FPTAS) for solving these optimization problems. Experiments on randomly generated networks demonstrate the computational effectiveness of the proposed schemes.