Routing and Wavelength Assignment with Minimal Attack Radius for QKD Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new metric and optimization approach for routing in QKD networks to minimize attack impact, enhancing security and resilience against physical-layer threats.

Contribution

It proposes the RWA-MAR problem, formulates it with ILP, and develops a scalable heuristic incorporating key caching and flexible network architecture modeling.

Findings

The heuristic effectively reduces maximum affected requests under attack.

Simulation shows improved security and scalability over baseline methods.

Incorporates flexible architecture parameters for diverse scenarios.

Abstract

Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) can distribute keys with guaranteed security but remains susceptible to key exchange interruption due to physical-layer threats, such as high-power jamming attacks. To address this challenge, we first introduce a novel metric, namely Maximum Number of Affected Requests (maxNAR), to quantify the worst-case impact of a single physical-layer attack, and then we investigate a new problem of Routing and Wavelength Assignment with Minimal Attack Radius (RWA-MAR). We formulate the problem using an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) model and propose a scalable heuristic to efficiently minimize maxNAR. Our approach incorporates key caching through Quantum Key Pools (QKPs) to enhance resilience and optimize resource utilization. Moreover, we model the impact of different QKD network architectures, employing Optical Bypass (OB) for optical switching of quantum channels and Trusted Relay (TR) for secure key forwarding. Moreover, a tunable parameter is designed in the heuristic to guide the preference for OB or TR, offering enhanced adaptability and dynamic control in diverse network scenarios. Simulation results confirm that our method significantly outperforms the baseline in terms of security and scalability.