Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE)

A Two-Level Control Framework for Quantum Networks

Se-young Yu, Elia Perego, Justin Phillips, You-Wei Cheah, Prathwiraj Umesh, Guangqi Gao, Jiarui Liu, Ezra Kissel, Michael Bregar, Ke Sun, Qiming Wu, Raju Valivarthi, Erhan Sağlamyürek, Wenji Wu, M. Spiropulu, Hartmut Häffner, Inder Monga

Published Aug 30, 2025• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum network control is a major research area of the QUANT-NET project. We strive to build a quantum network control plane to orchestrate and manage all the physicallayer technologies, and to explore what a quantum network control plane should look like in the future, so as to automate high-rate and high-fidelity entanglement generation, distribution, and storage in an efficient, reliable, and cost-effective way. To these ends, we have designed a two-level control framework for quantum networks. Within such a framework, a two-level scheduler has been implemented to support synchronous time slot scheduling, network-wide non-real-time control, and nodewide real-time control. This two-level control framework and the scheduler are being deployed and evaluated in the QUANTNET testbed. Enabled by this two-level control framework and the scheduler, several basic quantum network operations have been automated in the testbed, which include automated quantum node calibration and on-demand single photon generation. In this paper, we present this two-level control framework, the scheduler, and the automated quantum network operations that have been enabled in the QUANT-NET testbed.

DOI
10.1109/qce65121.2025.00145

Related papers

An extensible control plane software architecture for quantum networking research

Se-young Yu, Liang Zhang, Ezra Kissel +2 more

As quantum networking experiments move from laboratory experiments to larger scale deployments, integrated control software becomes essential for managing complex interactions between the numerous distributed resources involved. While a number of laboratory-scale control systems have been developed for specific quantum platform demonstrations, an openly available and general solution for operating quantum networks has not emerged. With the QUANT-NET Control Plane (QNCP), we introduce a model-based, extensible control plane implementation that offers a framework for enabling network-wide orchestration in quantum information network environments. QCNP provides a quantum network data model, resource management, communication primitives, and a plugin interface for defining orchestration and protocol interactions across distributed quantum network devices and services. This paper describes the design and architecture of QNCP, its implementation, and opportunities for extensibility and deployment.

Workshop on Quantum Networks and Distributed Quantum Computing (QuNet)•Aug 19, 2025•7 citations

A Scalable Framework for Automation of Quantum Network Experiments

Amin Taherkhani, Kentaro Teramoto, Andrew Todd +2 more

As quantum computing continues to progress, there is an increasing need for standardized quantum network technology [1], [2] to connect quantum computers together. Experimental testbeds are necessary in order to develop quantum network software and hardware. Building a scalable testbed for data center-level quantum networks requires overcoming numerous engineering and technical challenges in quantum communications, quantum processing and quantum storage. In this work, we describe a software framework for use with an all-photonic quantum networking testbed. This framework is designed for rapid development and capable of automated execution of quantum experiments. We introduce PnPQ, an open-source, unified driver library for hardware commonly used in quantum optical experiments. On top of this low-level hardware control library, we present software modules for controlling and coordinating quantum network nodes using remote procedure calls (RPC). Finally, we describe high-level software for performing and analyzing quantum photonic experiments using these software modules. As a whole, these software components comprise the first version of a framework that will enable us to implement and test quantum network architectures. This framework is intended to help us move forward from building simple experiments to complex Quantum systems.

IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE)•Sep 15, 2024•3 citations

The QUANT-NET Testbed Development and Preliminary Results

Damian Schon, Prathwiraj Umesh, You-Wei Cheah +10 more

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is currently supporting Berkeley Lab (LBNL), UC Berkeley (UCB), Caltech, and the University of Innsbruck in constructing a testbed for quantum networking technologies (QUANT-NET). The goal is to establish this network between two sites, LBNL and UCB, connected with an entanglement swapping substrate over ~5 km optical fiber and managed by a quantum network protocol stack. On top of this entanglement swapping substrate the research team will implement the most basic building blocks of distributed quantum computing and quantum repeaters by teleporting a controlled-NOT gate between two far trapped-ion quantum computation nodes. This paper presents QUANT-NET, its design, key technologies, and preliminary results. The preliminary results are focused on the QUANT-NET testbed infrastructure control, measurement, and characterization, which includes the implementation of a Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interferometer across the fiber links, and the development and deployment of link polarization drift control in the testbed. These implementations are critical to our next stage research activities.

IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE)•Sep 15, 2024•8 citations

Arqon: A suite of control applications enabling a reliable quantum network

Scarlett Gauthier, Thomas R. Beauchamp, Stephanie Wehner

A quantum network's purpose is to enable users to execute applications on end nodes. This requires the network to provide the service of creating entangled links between those nodes. Users of mature networks, such as the internet or the telephone network expect accepted service demands to be met reliably. We first define reliability requirements that extend classical computer network concepts to quantum network service delivery. We then introduce Arqon, a suite of control applications designed to deliver reliable service in centrally controlled quantum networks. We demonstrate through both analytic and numerical evaluation that Arqon satisfies all reliability requirements for accepted demands. These evaluations consider static network topologies. We provide a complete Python implementation and perform complexity analysis showing that admission control scales as $O(k^3)$ in the number of incoming demands $k$ and schedule computation scales as ${O(N^3)}$ in the number of accepted demands to schedule $N$.

quant-pharXiv:2604.08692•Apr 13, 2026•0 citations

QUANT-NET: A testbed for quantum networking research over deployed fiber

Inder Monga, Erhan Sağlamyürek, Ezra Kissel +2 more

QUANT-NET is a three-node quantum network research testbed funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The goal is to establish this network between two sites, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) and University of California, Berkeley, connected with an entanglement swapping substrate over optical fiber and managed by a quantum network protocol stack. On top of this entanglement swapping substrate the research team will implement the most basic building blocks of distributed quantum computing and quantum repeater by teleporting a controlled-NOT gate between two far trapped-ion quantum computation nodes. This paper presents QUANT-NET, its design, key technologies, and progress.

Workshop on Quantum Networks and Distributed Quantum Computing (QuNet)•Aug 16, 2023•15 citations

Centralizing Task-based Approach to Quantum Network Control

Alexander Pirker, Robert J. Hayek, Alexander Kolar +3 more

For the last decade, layered stacks have dominated the way of reasoning about architectures for quantum networks. However, layered architectures impose stringent design and timing constraints on quantum networks, adding additional latency to the time required to serve an entanglement generation request. Moreover, increasing delays from the layered approach to network control causes degradation of state, effectively minimizing achievable fidelities. In this work we simulate a resource-centric, task-based approach to quantum network control by utilizing a centralized controller. Using the SeQUeNCe quantum network simulator, we implement the centralized controller which tracks quantum memory availability across all nodes, and schedules objectives in an offline fashion using a priority-based scheduler. We evaluate the performance of this controller on multiple topologies (bottleneck, grid, star, caveman) of significant scale, with varying reservation patterns; thereby we demonstrate the viability of the resource-centric task-based quantum network control framework for scaling. Our simulation results show that the caveman and grid topologies have a higher fraction of delivered requests with low delay compared to the star topology, but with a higher fraction of highly delayed requests as well. Furthermore, we find a linear shift of the CDFs in terms of queue size for all topologies depending on the reservation delay. More interestingly, we conclude that the CDFs of priority queues for the star topology converge fast into saturation for increasing request arrival rates, demonstrating together with the other results that the framework is robust for high load scenarios in quantum networks.

quant-pharXiv:2605.03336•May 6, 2026•0 citations
Quantum network control is a major research area of the QUANT-NET project. We strive to build a quantum network control plane to orchestrate and manage all the physicallayer technologies, and to explore what a quantum network control plane should look like in the future, so as to automate high-rate and high-fidelity entanglement generation, distribution, and storage in an efficient, reliable, and cost-effective way. To these ends, we have designed a two-level control framework for quantum networks. Within such a framework, a two-level scheduler has been implemented to support synchronous time slot scheduling, network-wide non-real-time control, and nodewide real-time control. This two-level control framework and the scheduler are being deployed and evaluated in the QUANTNET testbed. Enabled by this two-level control framework and the scheduler, several basic quantum network operations have been automated in the testbed, which include automated quantum node calibration and on-demand single photon generation. In this paper, we present this two-level control framework, the scheduler, and the automated quantum network operations that have been enabled in the QUANT-NET testbed.
As quantum networking experiments move from laboratory experiments to larger scale deployments, integrated control software becomes essential for managing complex interactions between the numerous distributed resources involved. While a number of laboratory-scale control systems have been developed for specific quantum platform demonstrations, an openly available and general solution for operating quantum networks has not emerged. With the QUANT-NET Control Plane (QNCP), we introduce a model-based, extensible control plane implementation that offers a framework for enabling network-wide orchestration in quantum information network environments. QCNP provides a quantum network data model, resource management, communication primitives, and a plugin interface for defining orchestration and protocol interactions across distributed quantum network devices and services. This paper describes the design and architecture of QNCP, its implementation, and opportunities for extensibility and deployment.
As quantum computing continues to progress, there is an increasing need for standardized quantum network technology [1], [2] to connect quantum computers together. Experimental testbeds are necessary in order to develop quantum network software and hardware. Building a scalable testbed for data center-level quantum networks requires overcoming numerous engineering and technical challenges in quantum communications, quantum processing and quantum storage. In this work, we describe a software framework for use with an all-photonic quantum networking testbed. This framework is designed for rapid development and capable of automated execution of quantum experiments. We introduce PnPQ, an open-source, unified driver library for hardware commonly used in quantum optical experiments. On top of this low-level hardware control library, we present software modules for controlling and coordinating quantum network nodes using remote procedure calls (RPC). Finally, we describe high-level software for performing and analyzing quantum photonic experiments using these software modules. As a whole, these software components comprise the first version of a framework that will enable us to implement and test quantum network architectures. This framework is intended to help us move forward from building simple experiments to complex Quantum systems.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is currently supporting Berkeley Lab (LBNL), UC Berkeley (UCB), Caltech, and the University of Innsbruck in constructing a testbed for quantum networking technologies (QUANT-NET). The goal is to establish this network between two sites, LBNL and UCB, connected with an entanglement swapping substrate over ~5 km optical fiber and managed by a quantum network protocol stack. On top of this entanglement swapping substrate the research team will implement the most basic building blocks of distributed quantum computing and quantum repeaters by teleporting a controlled-NOT gate between two far trapped-ion quantum computation nodes. This paper presents QUANT-NET, its design, key technologies, and preliminary results. The preliminary results are focused on the QUANT-NET testbed infrastructure control, measurement, and characterization, which includes the implementation of a Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interferometer across the fiber links, and the development and deployment of link polarization drift control in the testbed. These implementations are critical to our next stage research activities.
A quantum network's purpose is to enable users to execute applications on end nodes. This requires the network to provide the service of creating entangled links between those nodes. Users of mature networks, such as the internet or the telephone network expect accepted service demands to be met reliably. We first define reliability requirements that extend classical computer network concepts to quantum network service delivery. We then introduce Arqon, a suite of control applications designed to deliver reliable service in centrally controlled quantum networks. We demonstrate through both analytic and numerical evaluation that Arqon satisfies all reliability requirements for accepted demands. These evaluations consider static network topologies. We provide a complete Python implementation and perform complexity analysis showing that admission control scales as O(k3)O(k^3)O(k3) in the number of incoming demands kkk and schedule computation scales as O(N3){O(N^3)}O(N3) in the number of accepted demands to schedule NNN.
QUANT-NET is a three-node quantum network research testbed funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The goal is to establish this network between two sites, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) and University of California, Berkeley, connected with an entanglement swapping substrate over optical fiber and managed by a quantum network protocol stack. On top of this entanglement swapping substrate the research team will implement the most basic building blocks of distributed quantum computing and quantum repeater by teleporting a controlled-NOT gate between two far trapped-ion quantum computation nodes. This paper presents QUANT-NET, its design, key technologies, and progress.
For the last decade, layered stacks have dominated the way of reasoning about architectures for quantum networks. However, layered architectures impose stringent design and timing constraints on quantum networks, adding additional latency to the time required to serve an entanglement generation request. Moreover, increasing delays from the layered approach to network control causes degradation of state, effectively minimizing achievable fidelities. In this work we simulate a resource-centric, task-based approach to quantum network control by utilizing a centralized controller. Using the SeQUeNCe quantum network simulator, we implement the centralized controller which tracks quantum memory availability across all nodes, and schedules objectives in an offline fashion using a priority-based scheduler. We evaluate the performance of this controller on multiple topologies (bottleneck, grid, star, caveman) of significant scale, with varying reservation patterns; thereby we demonstrate the viability of the resource-centric task-based quantum network control framework for scaling. Our simulation results show that the caveman and grid topologies have a higher fraction of delivered requests with low delay compared to the star topology, but with a higher fraction of highly delayed requests as well. Furthermore, we find a linear shift of the CDFs in terms of queue size for all topologies depending on the reservation delay. More interestingly, we conclude that the CDFs of priority queues for the star topology converge fast into saturation for increasing request arrival rates, demonstrating together with the other results that the framework is robust for high load scenarios in quantum networks.