QEYSSat and QKDSat: Quantum Communications at Honeywell
Hugh Podmore, Warren Soh, Alexander Pickston +8 more
This paper provides an overview of the major quantum communications programs at Honeywell Aerospace. Honeywell Aerospace is implementing, on behalf of the Canadian Space Agency, the Quantum Encryption and Science Satellite (QEYSSat), a Canadian science and technology demonstration mission which aims to explore the next generation of secure communications infrastructure delivered via satellites. The QEYSSat mission will use a satellite receiver to demonstrate the distribution of secure keys on a global scale via uplink configuration. Planned experiments with the QEYSSat mission include long-range Bell tests of quantum entanglement, and demonstrations of quantum key distribution (QKD) between QEYSSat and several ground stations to provide a testbed for practical key distribution and management. QEYSSat will also be used to further develop the practicality of space-based quantum key distribution. The QEYSSat satellite will be capable of acting as both a weak coherent pulse transmitter as well as a receiver for both BB84 and BBM92 protocols. Honeywell also will fly a secondary laser communications terminal as a hosted payload on QEYSSat. This payload will serve as a flight demonstrator for Honeywell’s commercial inter-satellite and space-to-ground laser communications terminal. The secondary payload will be enabled to also support a weak coherent pulse downlink. In addition to heritage-building, the secondary payload will also serve as an operations demonstration for the upcoming QKDSat network.Beyond QEYSSat, Honeywell is implementing the QKDSat mission in a public-private partnership with the European Space Agency. The QKDSat program consists of an initial deployment of a single satellite and multiple user ground stations for the purposes of establishing an operational global quantum key distribution infrastructure capable of connecting ground-based quantum key distribution networks at scale. The hybrid laser communications terminals hosted on QKDSat are based on the QEYSSat secondary payload design and provide a high-rate BB84 downlink as well as a high-speed bidirectional classical communications channel.Beyond space segments, Honeywell is designing and building a network of ground stations to support both the QEYSSat and QKDSat programs. The QEYSSat mission is expected to operate in conjunction with an optical quantum ground station developed by Honeywell and the Institute for Quantum Computing, hosted by the Canadian Space Agency. The QKDSat mission focuses on a ground network which includes sites in the UK and continental Europe.This paper provides an overview of both the QEYSSat and QKDSat missions including the quantum payloads, ground segments, and the payload and mission-level performance indicators.
IEEE International Conference on Space Optical Systems and Applications (ICSOS)•Oct 28, 2025•0 citations