Quantum Communication: From Fundamentals to Recent Trends, Challenges and Open Problems

TL;DR

This paper reviews the fundamentals, recent advancements, and open challenges in quantum communication, emphasizing the integration of quantum physics principles with engineering to enable secure, high-capacity quantum networks and internet infrastructure.

Contribution

It bridges the gap between quantum physics fundamentals and practical engineering, providing a comprehensive review of recent trends, challenges, and open problems in quantum communication and networking.

Findings

Quantum communication leverages superposition and entanglement for enhanced security.

Recent hardware advancements enable basic quantum computing operations.

Open problems include real-world deployment and scalable quantum internet infrastructure.

Abstract

With the recent advancements and developments in quantum technologies, the emerging field of quantum communication and networking has gained the attention of the researchers. Owing to the unique properties of quantum mechanics, viz., quantum superposition and entanglement, this new area of quantum communication has shown potential to replace modernday communication technologies. The enhanced security and high information sharing ability using principles of quantum mechanics has encouraged networking engineers and physicists to develop this technology for next generation wireless systems. However, a conceptual bridge between the fundamentals of quantum mechanics, photonics and the deployability of a quantum communication infrastructure is not well founded in the current literature. This paper aims to fill this gap by merging the theoretical concepts from quantum physics to the engineering and computing perspectives of quantum technology. This paper builds the fundamental concepts required for understanding quantum communication, reviews the key concepts and demonstrates how these concepts can be leveraged for accomplishing successful communication. The paper delves into implementation advancements for executing quantum communication protocols, explaining how hardware implementation enables the achievement of all basic quantum computing operations. Finally, the paper provides a comprehensive and critical review of the state-of-the-art advancements in the field of quantum communication and quantum internet; and points out the recent trends, challenges and open problems for the real-world realization of next generation networking systems.