Computational Simulation Framework for Tactical Quantum Network Applications

Dashiell L. P. Vitullo, Trevor Cook, Daniel E. Jones, Lisa M. Scott, Brian T. Kirby

Abstract: Quantum networks in their most general configuration consist of nodes, containing sources, detectors, memories, and logic gates, connected by both quantum and classical channels. Quantum networks leverage the unique properties of quantum mechanics to enable "beyond classical" communication, sensing, and computing protocols. The research community has recently emphasized computational simulation of these networks as an approach to gauging their performance, understanding their properties, and considering the impact of technical standards. Despite this, the implications of quantum networks in military contexts with limited resources remains underexplored. We review a recently introduced quantum network simulation framework that we developed, named QuanTACT, that is specifically tailored for integration into existing tactical simulation tools, such as the Extendable Mobile Ad hoc Network Emulator (EMANE). The QuanTACT framework is built from the SQUANCH quantum network simulation tool by adding quantum channel models for optical fiber and various subroutines required for entanglement-based QKD simulation such as key sifting, information reconciliation, and privacy amplification. Our choice of SQUANCH as opposed to other quantum network simulation tools is due to the agent-based model utilized by SQUANCH which allows for fully parallelized simulations with multiple agents running their own processes. This distributed architecture is, by design, consistent with EMANE and facilitates future integration. Building off of benchmark results based on field-deployed QKD experiments, we investigate the computational scaling properties of this system for linear chains of nodes that exchange keys via an XOR operation.