Stochastic routing in large grid-shaped quantum networks

Abstract

This paper investigates the problem of secret key transmissions for an arbitrary Alice-Bob pair in quantum key distribution (QKD)-based networks. We develop a realistic QKD- based network framework and we show that the key transmission problem on such a framework can be considered as a variant of the classical percolation problem. We also present an adaptive stochastic routing algorithm to protect users from inevitable eavesdroppers. Simulations were carried out not only to validate our approach, but also to compute critical parameters to ensure security. These results show that large quantum networks with eavesdroppers do provide security.