Strengthening security and noise resistance in one-way quantum key distribution protocols through hypercube-based quantum walks

TL;DR

This paper proposes a hypercube-based quantum walk topology for one-way quantum key distribution, significantly improving security and noise resistance over circular topologies, supported by an open-source simulation framework.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hypercube topology for quantum walks in QKD, demonstrating enhanced security and noise tolerance, along with an extensible, open-source simulation toolkit.

Findings

Hypercube topology outperforms circular topology in security and noise resistance.

The simulation framework supports realistic noise models and is implemented with Qiskit.

Open-source toolkit facilitates future topology-aware QKD research.

Abstract

Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is a foundational cryptographic protocol that ensures information-theoretic security. However, classical protocols such as BB84, though favored for their simplicity, offer limited resistance to eavesdropping, and perform poorly under realistic noise conditions. Recent research has explored the use of discrete-time Quantum Walks (QWs) to enhance QKD schemes. In this work, we specifically focus on a one-way QKD protocol, where security depends exclusively on the underlying Quantum Walk (QW) topology, rather than the details of the protocol itself. Our paper introduces a novel protocol based on QWs over a hypercube topology and demonstrates that, under identical parameters, it provides significantly enhanced security and noise resistance compared to the circular topology (i.e., state-of-the-art), thereby strengthening protection against eavesdropping. Furthermore, we introduce an efficient and extensible simulation framework for one-way QKD protocols based on QWs, supporting both circular and hypercube topologies. Implemented with IBM's software development kit for quantum computing (i.e., Qiskit), our toolkit enables noise-aware analysis under realistic noise models. To support reproducibility and future developments, we release our entire simulation framework as open-source. This contribution establishes a foundation for the design of topology-aware QKD protocols that combine enhanced noise tolerance with topologically driven security.