Quantum Key Distribution with Trusted Relay using an ETSI-compliant Software-Defined Controller

Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is a mechanism that allows two entities to agree on a secret key over a quantum channel. Recently, commercially viable QKD technology appeared on the market and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) established a working group to standardize QKD fo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in2023 19th International Conference on the Design of Reliable Communication Networks (DRCN) pp. 1 - 7
Main Authors Bassi, Riccardo, Zhang, Qiaolun, Gatto, Alberto, Tornatore, Massimo, Verticale, Giacomo
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 17.04.2023
Subjects
ETSI
Prototypes
Quantum channels
Quantum key distribution
Reliability engineering
Runtime
Spread spectrum communication
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Summary:Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is a mechanism that allows two entities to agree on a secret key over a quantum channel. Recently, commercially viable QKD technology appeared on the market and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) established a working group to standardize QKD for commercial applications. Several testbeds and pre-commercial QKD networks are being deployed in the world, all requiring sophisticated control mechanisms to enable key exchanges between non-adjacent nodes for remote applications. In this paper, we implement and evaluate a prototype that realizes the architecture defined by ETSI and uses trusted relay nodes to exchange keys between non-adjacent nodes. In particular, we present the Software-Defined Network (SDN) Controller and the Software-Defined QKD nodes designed to control the QKD experimental testbed in Milan, named PoliQI. We test the proposed prototype in an emulation environment, showing its advantages in inter-datacenter communication scenarios in terms of key delivery time and application acceptance ratio.
DOI:10.1109/DRCN57075.2023.10108347