Modeling and simulation of practical quantum secure communication network

Abstract

As the Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) technology supporting the pointto-point application matures, the need to build the Quantum Secure Communication Network (QSCN) to guarantee the security of a large scale of nodes becomes urgent. Considering the project time and expense control, it is the first choice to build the QSCN based on an existing classical network. Suitable modeling and simulation are very important to construct a QSCN successfully and efficiently. In this paper, a practical QSCN model, which can reflect the network state well, is proposed. The model considers the volatile traffic demand of the classical network and the real key generation capability of the QKD devices, which can enhance the accuracy of simulation to a great extent. In addition, two unique QSCN performance indicators, ITS (information-theoretic secure) communication capability and ITS communication efficiency, are proposed in the model, which are necessary supplements for the evaluation of a QSCN except for those traditional performance indicators of classical networks. Finally, the accuracy of the proposed QSCN model and the necessity of the proposed performance indicators are verified by plentiful simulations results. characteristics of QSCN. Sec. 3 describes the practical QSCN model by proposes traffic generation module, key generation module and two performance indicators. Sec. 4 designs a simulation to analyze the network performance in detail based on the QSCN model. Sec. 5 concludes this study and outlines the future works. Definition of quantum secure communication networkIn many studies, both terms of QSCN and QKD network are used to indicate the communication network based on QKD device. For the sake of better argument, QKD network is defined as a set of infrastructures for generating ITS key based on the laws of quantum mechanics [30] in this paper. The QSCN is defined as a network that provides the secure communication service utilizing the keys generated by QKD network. In order to achieve the ITS secure communication, the one-time-pad (OTP) encryption algorithm is adopted in the performance analysis in this paper. If ITS is not pursued in an application, the popular encryption algorithms, such as AES, DES and etc., are also acceptable. The QSCN consists of two parts: QKD network and classical network [31], shown as Fig. 1. Fig. 1 Hierarchical diagram of QSCN

The Evolution of Quantum Key Distribution Networks: On the Road to the Qinternet

“…Previously, an extended version of the Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) protocol was developed in [395] as a routing protocol for the SECOQC QKD network [43], [396], in which Dijkstra algorithm was used for finding the shortest path between the source and destination QKD nodes. Another commonly used routing protocol is the destination-sequenced distance-vector routing protocol [397], which has also been used in the modeling and simulation of a practical QKD network [398].…”

An Efficient Routing Protocol for Quantum Key Distribution Networks

“…The numbers on each edge represent the length of the optical fiber link (in km). The parameters of the QKD device in the experiment are the same as used in [26]. The ITS communication capability in [26] refers to the maximal communication requirement that this network topology can support theoretically.…”

“…The parameters of the QKD device in the experiment are the same as used in [26]. The ITS communication capability in [26] refers to the maximal communication requirement that this network topology can support theoretically. The QKD network cannot work normally when the average communication requirement is larger than its ITS communication capability.…”

“…Therefore, we define the communication level as the ratio of the average communication requirement and the ITS communication capability. Thus, the average communication requirement is set to the product of information-theoretic security (ITS) communication capability [26] of USNET multiplied by its communication level in this experiment. Different communication levels from 0 to 1 are selected in this experiment.…”

“…Figure 4: Topology of the USNET network [26] The experimental results, shown in Figure 5 indicate that the quantum secure key utilization of OLSR is significantly higher than that of AODV and DSDV at all communication levels. This can be attributed to the dynamic link-state awareness and selective broadcasting mechanism, which can detect the link-state when the quantum secure key is insufficient.…”