Quantum Illumination and Quantum Radar: A Brief Overview

TL;DR

This paper reviews quantum illumination and quantum radar, discussing their principles, historical development, and current progress, while evaluating their potential and challenges for practical remote sensing applications.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of quantum illumination and radar, highlighting recent theoretical and experimental advancements and critically assessing their realistic potential.

Findings

Quantum illumination offers promising advantages for target detection.

Experimental progress has demonstrated key principles of quantum radar.

Challenges remain in realizing practical microwave-frequency quantum radar.

Abstract

Quantum illumination (QI) and quantum radar have emerged as potentially groundbreaking technologies, leveraging the principles of quantum mechanics to revolutionise the field of remote sensing and target detection. The protocol, particularly in the context of quantum radar, has been subject to a great deal of aspirational conjecture as well as criticism with respect to its realistic potential. In this review, we present a broad overview of the field of quantum target detection focusing on QI and its potential as an underlying scheme for a quantum radar operating at microwave frequencies. We provide context for the field by considering its historical development and fundamental principles. Our aim is to provide a balanced discussion on the state of theoretical and experimental progress towards realising a working QI-based quantum radar, and draw conclusions about its current outlook and future directions.