Feasibility of Quantum Key Distribution from High Altitude Platforms

Yi Chu; Ross Donaldson; Rupesh Kumar; David Grace

Feasibility of Quantum Key Distribution from High Altitude Platforms

Yi Chu, Ross Donaldson, Rupesh Kumar, David Grace

Research output: Working paper › Preprint

Abstract

This paper presents the feasibility study of deploying Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) from High Altitude Platforms (HAPs), as a way of securing future communications applications and services. The paper provides a thorough review of the state of the art HAP technologies and summarises the benefits that HAPs can bring to the QKD services. A detailed link budget analysis is presented in the paper to evaluate the feasibility of delivering QKD from stratospheric HAPs flying at 20 km altitude. The results show a generous link budget under most operating conditions which brings the possibility of using diverged beams, thereby simplifying the Pointing, Acquisition and Tracking (PAT) of the optical system on the HAPs and ground, potentially widening the range of future use cases where QKD could be a viable solution.

Original language	Undefined/Unknown
Number of pages	12
Publication status	Published - 14 Dec 2020

Publication series

Name	arXiv

Bibliographical note

12 pages, 11 figures. Comments are welcome

Keywords

quant-ph

Access to Document

2012.07479v1Other version, 1.46 MB

https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.07479

Cite this

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title = "Feasibility of Quantum Key Distribution from High Altitude Platforms",

abstract = " This paper presents the feasibility study of deploying Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) from High Altitude Platforms (HAPs), as a way of securing future communications applications and services. The paper provides a thorough review of the state of the art HAP technologies and summarises the benefits that HAPs can bring to the QKD services. A detailed link budget analysis is presented in the paper to evaluate the feasibility of delivering QKD from stratospheric HAPs flying at 20 km altitude. The results show a generous link budget under most operating conditions which brings the possibility of using diverged beams, thereby simplifying the Pointing, Acquisition and Tracking (PAT) of the optical system on the HAPs and ground, potentially widening the range of future use cases where QKD could be a viable solution. ",

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AU - Donaldson, Ross

AU - Kumar, Rupesh

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PY - 2020/12/14

Y1 - 2020/12/14

N2 - This paper presents the feasibility study of deploying Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) from High Altitude Platforms (HAPs), as a way of securing future communications applications and services. The paper provides a thorough review of the state of the art HAP technologies and summarises the benefits that HAPs can bring to the QKD services. A detailed link budget analysis is presented in the paper to evaluate the feasibility of delivering QKD from stratospheric HAPs flying at 20 km altitude. The results show a generous link budget under most operating conditions which brings the possibility of using diverged beams, thereby simplifying the Pointing, Acquisition and Tracking (PAT) of the optical system on the HAPs and ground, potentially widening the range of future use cases where QKD could be a viable solution.

AB - This paper presents the feasibility study of deploying Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) from High Altitude Platforms (HAPs), as a way of securing future communications applications and services. The paper provides a thorough review of the state of the art HAP technologies and summarises the benefits that HAPs can bring to the QKD services. A detailed link budget analysis is presented in the paper to evaluate the feasibility of delivering QKD from stratospheric HAPs flying at 20 km altitude. The results show a generous link budget under most operating conditions which brings the possibility of using diverged beams, thereby simplifying the Pointing, Acquisition and Tracking (PAT) of the optical system on the HAPs and ground, potentially widening the range of future use cases where QKD could be a viable solution.

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