Quditto: Emulating and Orchestrating Distributed QKD Network Deployments

TL;DR

Quditto is an open-access emulation platform that models quantum channels and supports various QKD protocols, enabling scalable testing and deployment of quantum key distribution networks without requiring dedicated hardware.

Contribution

It introduces a modular, high-fidelity emulation platform for QKD networks with a standardized API, facilitating large-scale testing and development.

Findings

Successfully deployed networks of various sizes.

Demonstrated flexibility with eavesdropper attacks.

Supported heterogeneous channel conditions.

Abstract

Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) offers information-theoretic security by leveraging quantum mechanics, yet the cost and complexity of dedicated hardware and fiber infrastructure have so far limited large-scale deployment and experimentation. In this paper, we introduce Quditto, an automated open-access emulation platform that combines high-fidelity quantum-channel modeling with a standardized key-delivery API, enabling users to interact with the emulated network exactly as they would with real QKD hardware. Quditto modular design supports pluggable protocol implementations, complex key management schemes and detailed channel models, including variable attenuation and decoherence. We validate Quditto by deploying networks of various sizes and demonstrate its flexibility through two proof-of-concept scenarios featuring eavesdropper attacks and heterogeneous channel conditions.