Quantum Network: Security Assessment and Key Management

Abstract

As an extension of quantum key distribution, secure communication among multiple users is an essential task in a quantum network. When the quantum network structure becomes complicated with a large number of users, it is important to investigate network issues, including security, key management, latency, reliability, scalability, and cost. In this work, we utilize the classical and graph theories to address two critical issues in a quantum network: security and key management. First, we design a communication scheme with the highest security level that trusts a minimum number of intermediate nodes. Second, when the quantum key is a limited resource, we design key management and data scheduling schemes to optimize the utility of data transmission. Our results can be directly applied to the current metropolitan and free-space quantum network implementations and potentially be a standard approach for future quantum network designs.

14 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (13)

• Quantum cryptography: Public key distribution and coin tossing
• Measurement device independent quantum key distribution over 404 km optical fibre
• Experimental Long-Distance Decoy-State Quantum Key Distribution Based On Polarization Encoding
• Long distance decoy state quantum key distribution in optical fiber
• End-to-end capacities of a quantum communication network
• Field and long-term demonstration of a wide area quantum key distribution network
• Measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution over 200 km
• Asymptotic optimality of maximum pressure policies in stochastic processing networks
• Universal Limitations on Quantum Key Distribution over a Network
• The Engineering of a Scalable Multi-Site Communications System Utilizing Quantum Key Distribution (QKD)
• The Security of Quantum Key Distribution using a Simplified Trusted Relay
• Distributed Relay Protocol for Probabilistic Information-Theoretic Security in a Randomly-Compromised Network
• Multipartite entanglement and secret key distribution in quantum networks

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Experimental mode-pairing measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution without global phase-locking
• Field test of mode-pairing quantum key distribution
• Routing algorithm within the multiple non-overlapping paths approach for quantum key distribution networks
• Advantage of the key relay protocol over secure network coding