Securing Smart Cities With Quantum-Enhanced Deep Learning

Vita Santa Barletta, Danilo Caivano, Alfred Lako +1 more

K. Ganesh Kumar, T. Sangamithra, N. V. Keerthana +3 more

Rapid development of smart cities is critically dependent on intelligent systems that can integrate huge networks of sensors, IoT devices, and data-driven services. It is within this context that new paradigms, such as quantum-enhanced deep learning, have the potential to revolutionise security in smart urban environments. This paper reviews the benefits of combining quantum computing with deep learning to enhance the security of smart cities. Quantum-accelerated algorithms can provide enhanced pattern recognition and encryption, thus allowing for quicker detection of anomalies, more effective threat prediction, and better privacy preservation. Finally, this work identifies the current challenges-hardware constraints, model interpretability, and scalability-pointing out future research directions toward the creation of robust quantum-intelligent security architectures for smart city ecosystems.

Aysan Bashirpour Bonab, Maria Fedele, Vincenzo Formisano +1 more

Dilmurod Turaev, R. N. Ravikumar, Shilpa Aarthi +3 more

Smart cities are based on the common digital infrastructures to make cities more efficient, sustainable, and quality of life, yet the data-driven nature of such integration exposes an enormous threat to security and privacy. Other traditional methods of cybersecurity and deep learning have weaknesses of scalability, strength, and resistance to advanced and future threats. In this chapter, the authors examine the concept of Quantum-Enhanced Deep Learning as a prospective security paradigm of smart city ecosystems. The chapter proves the accuracy of improvement of intrusion detection and communication efficiency by referring to recent case studies of intelligent transportation systems and smart grids when applying hybrid classical-quantum models. The results include the potential of quantum-resilient intelligence to enhance anomaly detection, distributed security operations, and future-ready urban cybersecurity architectures and overcome the challenge of operational and governance.

Rami Baazeem

ABSTRACT The increasing complexity of smart grid IoT ecosystems demands security architectures capable of resisting quantum‐era threats, protecting data privacy, and scaling across large distributed infrastructures. This study introduces a novel hybrid security framework that integrates quantum cryptography, deep learning–based intrusion detection, and federated learning into a unified, high‐assurance design tailored for next‐generation smart grid environments. The architecture employs quantum key distribution (QKD) for secure key generation, an adaptive deep feature obfuscation layer to mitigate adversarial manipulation, and a privacy‐preserving federated learning pipeline that eliminates centralized data exposure. Simulation‐based evaluations demonstrate substantial performance gains, achieving a low quantum bit error rate (1.8%), high key‐generation throughput (4900 keys/s), low latency (18 ms), and intrusion detection accuracy of 98.7%, consistently outperforming conventional cryptographic and machine learning baselines. The framework further exhibits enhanced resilience against quantum‐based and adversarial attacks, with efficient performance maintained even under increasing network density. While real‐world deployment will require hardware‐in‐the‐loop validation and optimization for heterogeneous traffic conditions, the results indicate strong potential for securing future smart grid IoT infrastructures and supporting sustainable smart city applications.