A Quantum OFDM Framework for Next-Generation Video Transmission over Noisy Channels

Quantum communication presents new opportunities for overcoming the limitations of classical wireless systems, particularly those associated with noise, fading, and interference. Building upon the principles of classical orthogonal frequency division multi-plexing (OFDM), this work proposes a quantum OFDM architecture tailored for video transmission. In the proposed system, video sequences are first compressed using the versatile video coding (VVC) standard with different group of pictures (GOP) sizes. Each GOP size is processed through a channel encoder and mapped to multi-qubit states with various qubit configurations. The quantum-encoded data is converted from serial-to-parallel form and passed through the quantum Fourier transform (QFT) to generate mutually orthogonal quantum subcarriers. Following reserialization, a cyclic prefix is appended to mitigate inter-symbol interference within the quantum channel. At the receiver, the cyclic prefix is removed, and the signal is restored to parallel before the inverse QFT (IQFT) recovers the original quantum subcarriers. Quantum decoding, classical channel decoding, and VVC reconstruction are then employed to recover the videos. Experimental evaluations across different GOP sizes and channel conditions demonstrate that quantum OFDM provides superior resilience to channel noise and improved perceptual quality compared to classical OFDM, achieving peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) up to 47.60 dB, structural similarity index measure (SSIM) up to 0.9987, and video multi-method assessment fusion (VMAF) up to 96.40. Notably, the eight-qubit encoding scheme consistently achieves the highest SNR gains across all channels, underscoring the potential of quantum OFDM as a foundation for future high-quality video transmission.