Abstract: Classical Internet employs buffering, switching, and routing functionality to send information over thousands of kilometers of under-sea fiber-optical cables, while exposing the data to attackers. Quantum networks provide an alternative paradigm where data can be encoded into photonic degrees of freedom, e. g., polarization, and transmitted as entangled (correlated) photons. This secures quantum bits (qubits) from attackers due to its properties, such as qubits cannot be amplified, duplicated or measured without altering them. However, the future quantum networks need to imitate the functionality of classical Internet, which is challenging. We are developing a quantum wrapper (QW) protocol, which wraps a quantum payload, i.e., actual information, into a header carrying routing information. The header and payload are transmitted separately in time or frequency without affecting the data. This will ensure that our QW protocol can incorporate today’s networking protocols and coexist with classical network. Currently, we are investigating the effect of copropagating classical channel on a quantum channel, the quantum bit error rate of successively transmitted entangled photons from a source to a receiver, and the performance of quantum communication channel under perturbation.
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