A link layer protocol for quantum networks
At a Glance
Section titled āAt a Glanceā| Metadata | Details |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 2019-08-14 |
| Authors | Axel Dahlberg, Matthew Skrzypczyk, Tim Coopmans, Leon Wubben, Filip RozpÄdek |
| Institutions | Delft University of Technology |
| Citations | 217 |
Abstract
Section titled āAbstractāQuantum communication brings radically new capabilities that are provably\nimpossible to attain in any classical network. Here, we take the first step\nfrom a physics experiment to a fully fledged quantum internet system. We\npropose a functional allocation of a quantum network stack and construct the\nfirst physical and link layer protocols that turn ad-hoc physics experiments\nproducing heralded entanglement between quantum processors into a well-defined\nand robust service. This lays the groundwork for designing and implementing\nscalable control and application protocols in platform-independent software. To\ndesign our protocol, we identify use cases, as well as fundamental and\ntechnological design considerations of quantum network hardware, illustrated by\nconsidering the state-of-the-art quantum processor platform available to us\n(Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) centers in diamond). Using a purpose built\ndiscrete-event simulator for quantum networks, we examine the robustness and\nperformance of our protocol using extensive simulations on a super-computing\ncluster. We perform a full implementation of our protocol, where we\nsuccessfully validate the physical simulation model against data gathered from\nthe NV hardware. We first observe that our protocol is robust even in a regime\nof exaggerated losses of classical control messages with only little impact on\nthe performance of the system.We proceed to study the performance of our\nprotocols for 169 distinct simulation scenarios, including tradeoffs between\ntraditional performance metrics such as throughput and the quality of\nentanglement. Finally, we initiate the study of quantum network scheduling\nstrategies to optimize protocol performance for different use cases.\n