Satellite quantum communication protocol regardless of the weather

Abstract

This paper presents a protocol for a relay configuration of one quantum CubeSat and two quantum drones positioned at distant places over the Earth, where: (a) an entangled pair is generated and distributed by the CubeSat between both drones located over the clouds, (b) each drone descends through the clouds with its respective entangled photon, and (c) each drone generates a new entangled photon pair, conserves one and distributes the other one to Mobile Ground Stations (MGS). These latter photons allow to teleport both CubeSat’s entangled photons to the MGSs. Once on Earth, the CubeSat’s entangled photons constitute a bridge for the teleportation of an arbitrary qubit among the MGSs. In this way, we solve the main problem of all quantum communication between a satellite and the Earth: the weather as well as unfavorable environmental conditions. Finally, this paper evaluates the performance of the protocol, which first teleports the CubeSat’s entangled photons and thanks to these the definitive desired qubit, with implementations on the 16-qubit Melbourne processor of IBM Q Experience, where this evaluation constitutes the first stage of a project that tries to communicate two distant points of the earth at any time regardless of the weather.