Abstract
Satellite-based platforms are currently the only feasible way of achieving intercontinental range for quantum communication, enabling thus the future global quantum internet. Recent demonstrations by the Chinese spacecraft Micius have spurred an international space race and enormous interest in the development of both scientific and commercial systems. Research efforts so far have concentrated upon in-orbit demonstrations involving a single satellite and one or two ground stations. Ultimately satellite quantum key distribution should enable secure network communication between multiple nodes, which requires efficient scheduling of communication with the set of ground stations. Here we present a study of how satellite quantum key distribution can service many ground stations taking into account realistic constraints such as geography, operational hours, and most importantly, weather conditions. The objective is to maximise the number of keys a set of ground stations located in the United Kingdom could share while simultaneously reflecting the communication needs of each node and its relevance in the network. The problem is formulated as a mixed-integer linear optimisation program and solved to a desired optimality gap using a state of the art solver. The approach is presented using a simulation run throughout six years to investigate the total number of keys that can be sent to ground stations.
Highlights
Communication security is vital for ensuring personal privacy, commercial confidentiality, government integrity, and defence
5 Conclusions We formulated for the first time a Satellite Quantum Key Distribution (SatQKD) as a mathematical program
We modelled a hypothetical but realistic network of optical ground stations and solved the scheduling problem with a rolling horizon of one year for the period between the years 2013 and 2019 using the state-of-the-art commercial solver
Summary
Communication security is vital for ensuring personal privacy, commercial confidentiality, government integrity, and defence. Current communication network encryption infrastructures are built upon public-key encryption methodsa whose security relies on computational complexity properties of certain mathematical problems. Their security is increasingly under threat, from advances in cryptanalysis and, most notably, from the imminent arrival of large-scale quantum computers. Quantum repeaters are required to extend the range of fibre systems. Still, these are far from being technologically mature, and the no-cloning theorem itself will severely bound their performance [9,10,11]. The maximum ground-based communication range achieved is 421 km in fibre [12] and 144 km in free space [13]
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