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IEEE Transactions on Quantum Engineering

Satellite-Based Quantum Key Distribution for Quantum-Secure Dual-Use SATCOM: Architecture, Trust Models, and Orbit-Dependent Performance Analysis

Joan Bas, Albert Compte, Joanna Śliwa, Konrad Wrona

Published Jan 1, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher
DOI
10.1109/tqe.2026.3739832

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Satellite-based quantum key distribution (QKD), leveraging low photon loss in free-space quantum communication, is widely regarded as one of the most promising directions to achieve global-scale QKD. With a constellation of satellites and a set of ground stations in a satellite-based QKD system, how to schedule satellites to achieve efficient QKD is an important problem. This problem has been studied in the dual-downlink architecture, where each satellite distributes pairs of entanglements to two ground stations simultaneously. However, it has not been studied in the single downlink architecture, where satellites create keys with each individual ground station, and then serve as trusted nodes to create keys between pairs of ground stations. While the single downlink architecture provides weaker security in that the satellites need to be trusted, it has many advantages, including the potential of achieving significantly higher key rates, and generating keys between pairs of ground stations that are far away from each other and cannot be served using the dual-downlink architecture. In this paper, we propose a novel opportunistic approach for satellite scheduling that accounts for fairness among the ground station pairs, while taking advantage of the dynamic satellite channels to maximize the system performance. We evaluate this approach in a wide range of settings and demonstrate that it provides the best tradeoffs in terms of total and minimum key rates across the ground station pairs. Our evaluation also highlights the importance of considering seasonal effects and cloud coverage in evaluating satellite-based QKD systems. In addition, we show different tradeoffs in global and regional QKD systems.
Space-based entanglement distribution, as the backbone of the quantum Internet, is poised to enable global quantum networking from infrastructure to application platforms. Satellite-based quantum key distribution (SatQKD), with the entanglement-based QKD protocol of Bennett, Brassard, and Mermin (BBM92), promises source-independent security, but faces a trinity of scalability bottlenecks in dual-downlink configurations. Specifically, asymmetric link characteristics are exacerbated by optical ground station (OGS) pair system parameter differences, while orbit-dependent metrics, e.g., transmission window duration, overpass interval, and trajectory repeatability, introduce finite secret key length (SKL) extraction considerations. Further, quantum satellites will be within the range of multiple OGS pairs, which requires efficient scheduling of SatQKD to prioritize links, mitigate cloud cover disturbance, and maximize finite SKL. Here, we develop a co-modeling framework of dual-downlink SatQKD to support orbital parameter selection and performance comparison for asymmetric system-optics (e.g., aperture diameter, extraneous counts) parameters. We clarify the distinct performance of the SKL extraction methods for Sun-synchronous orbits (SSO) and polar orbits. We further incorporate the finite BBM92 SKL analysis into downlink scheduling optimisation to truncate adverse data collection periods and explore the advantages in flexibility and efficiency for global networking. Our work provides actionable design insights for future entanglement-based global quantum communications.