An Architecture for Meeting Quality-of-Service Requirements in Multi-User Quantum Networks

TL;DR

This paper presents the first end-to-end centralized scheduling architecture for multi-user quantum networks that ensures entanglement quality meets application-specific QoS requirements, addressing unique quantum constraints.

Contribution

It introduces a novel scheduling framework using periodic and resource-constrained techniques, including a new heuristic, for quantum network management.

Findings

Simulations demonstrate effective trade-offs between quantum and classical metrics.

The proposed scheduling approach meets QoS requirements under realistic quantum device constraints.

Performance evaluated on both small and real-world network topologies.

Abstract

Quantum communication can enhance internet technology by enabling novel applications that are provably impossible classically. The successful execution of such applications relies on the generation of quantum entanglement between different users of the network which meets stringent performance requirements. Alongside traditional metrics such as throughput and jitter, one must ensure the generated entanglement is of sufficiently high quality. Meeting such performance requirements demands a careful orchestration of many devices in the network, giving rise to a fundamentally new scheduling problem. Furthermore, technological limitations of near-term quantum devices impose significant constraints on scheduling methods hoping to meet performance requirements. In this work, we propose the first end-to-end design of a centralized quantum network with multiple users that orchestrates the delivery of entanglement which meets quality-of-service (QoS) requirements of applications. We achieve this by using a centrally constructed schedule that manages usage of devices and ensures the coordinated execution of different quantum operations throughout the network. We use periodic task scheduling and resource-constrained project scheduling techniques, including a novel heuristic, to construct the schedules. Our simulations of four small networks using hardware-validated network parameters, and of a real-world fiber topology using futuristic parameters, illustrate trade-offs between traditional and quantum performance metrics.