Simulation-Based Analysis of Delay-Reducing Quantum Data Plane Repeater Protocols

Emerging communication systems are expected to integrate new types of communication networks including quantum networks. In contrast to classical networks, the communication in quantum networks is accomplished with qubits and their attribute entanglement. Entanglement is a type of correlation between multiple qubits with no counterpart in classical communication. With the help of entanglement new protocols are developed to perform classical and quantum network tasks more efficiently. The main task of quantum networks is to share entanglement to distant communication partners with the help of intermediate nodes and repeated entanglement swapping, the so called Repeater Protocol. Due to the decoherence of quantum states, establishing entanglement has to be accomplished with minimal delay to preserve the states of qubits. This paper proposes a new Repeater Protocol FRP, which reduces delay by up to 51% and on average by 13% in establishing end-to-end entanglement compared with the direct approach CRP. Additionally, the provided solution lowers hardware requirements for quantum routers. Both protocols, CRP and FRP are evaluated in terms of end-to-end delay and fidelity in extensive simulations with a parameter search on 3 different topologies.