Efficient QUantum Light for TechnologY

Informations projet

EQUALITY

N° de convention de subvention: 817021

DOI

10.3030/817021

Projet clôturé

Date de signature de la CE 27 Avril 2018

Date de début 1 Mai 2018

Date de fin 31 Octobre 2018

Financé au titre de

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Coût total

€ 71 429,00

Contribution de l’UE

€ 50 000,00

Coordonné par

QUANDELA
France

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EQUALITY (Efficient QUantum Light for TechnologY)

Période du rapport: 2018-05-01 au 2018-10-31

Résumé du contexte et des objectifs généraux du projet

Since recent development in quantum technologies and more largely in algorithms will revolutionize the Information Technologies, current security of the digital infrastructures in Europe and around the world could be soon under threat due to the possible obsolescence of mathematically-based cryptographic techniques. Therefore, the integrity of critical infrastructures and services could be affected as well as the confidentiality of data.
The most promising solution to maintain end-to-end security in the long term is the implementation of a Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) infrastructure in parallel of the current infrastructure.
For years, many public institutions (like the European Telecommunications Standards Institute – ETSI) recommended that private enterprises and public organisations should begin to upgrade their infrastructure with QKD infrastructures. Furthermore, a call for projects about the deployment of a QKD testbed have been published by the European Commission.
Many commercial products are available on the market then but most of them are limited to a few Kb/s for the exchange of keys with a maximum distance shorter than 100km. Quandela’s innovating products allow the bit rate to reach about 100Mb/s over a distance longer than 300km.
The present projects aimed to study how new products commercialized by Quandela could be adapted to penetrate and amplify the deployment of a quantum infrastructure in order to ensure a end-to-end security of digital infrastructures.

Travail effectué depuis le début du projet jusqu’à la fin de la période considérée dans le rapport et principaux résultats atteints jusqu’à présent

During this project, we investigated the potential of a new generation of light emitters commercialized by Quandela. Quandela is one of the first company to propose a new generation of emitters based on semiconducting nanostructures. Compared to previous generations of quantum light sources, these emitters allow the emission of 100Mb/s which is a worldwide record rate and above all allow the generation of more pure quantum states of light (entangled particles) that allow the distribution of quantum keys over a longer distance.
In this work, we studied the entry barriers for this new innovative product to be adopted by the actors of communications and of digital security.

We contacted several actors that are active in the deployment of QKD networks, industrial as well as academics, in order to understand their technical expectations.

Progrès au-delà de l’état des connaissances et impact potentiel prévu (y compris l’impact socio-économique et les conséquences sociétales plus larges du projet jusqu’à présent)

The main conclusion of our interviews is that the main advantage of Quandela devices allow to overcome the optical fibers that are present in the communication network and to increase the maximum distance between trusted nodes by a factor of around 5-6. As a consequence, the required density of trusted nodes in a continental fibered network would be divided by the square of this factor, about 30 then.
Consequently, Quandela sources will make the deployment a secured QKD network since this technology will allow to largely increase the distance between the nodes and will minimize the number of infrastructure adapatations that are necessary.

Photo of the light emitters commercialized by Quandela