Quantum Internet Protocol Stack: a Comprehensive Survey

Abstract

Classical Internet evolved exceptionally during the last five decades, from a network comprising a few static nodes in the early days to a leviathan interconnecting billions of devices. This has been possible by the separation of concern principle, for which the network functionalities are organized as a stack of layers, each providing some communication functionalities through specific network protocols. In this survey, we aim at highlighting the impossibility of adapting the classical Internet protocol stack to the Quantum Internet, due to the marvels of quantum mechanics. Indeed, the design of the Quantum Internet requires a major paradigm shift of the whole protocol stack for harnessing the peculiarities of quantum entanglement and quantum information. In this context, we first overview the relevant literature about Quantum Internet protocol stack. Then, stemming from this, we sheds the light on the open problems and required efforts toward the design of an effective and complete Quantum Internet protocol stack. To the best of authors' knowledge, a survey of this type is the first of its own. What emerges from this analysis is that the Quantum Internet, though still in its infancy, is a disruptive technology whose design requires an inter-disciplinary effort at the border between quantum physics, computer and telecommunications engineering.This work was partially supported by project xxx. Jessica Illiano acknowledges support from TIM S.p.A. through the PhD scholarship.

Packet Switching in Quantum Networks: A Path to Quantum Internet

“…Indeed, proposals for quantum network stacks motivated by the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model [57] have been proposed [16,58] (also see [14] for an in-depth comparison). These network stacks generally focus on robust entanglement distribution, which is then used to perform quantum teleportation as a means of quantum data transfer.…”

“…Which networking infrastructure and protocols can allow for the realization of such a large-scale quantum network? Despite previous proposals [14] there has been no comprehensive answer to this question and proposals for quantum networking protocols and network layers have been limited to particular applications such as entanglement distribution [15][16][17] or quantum key distribution (QKD) [18]. Also from the infrastructure perspective, there has been a quest for classical and quantum network coexistence [19][20][21], although with no clear coexisting protocols or network specifications.…”

On the Robustness of Quantum Algorithms for Blockchain Consensus

“…However, it utilized qutrits which are not readily available and controllable in the NISQ era devices. Therefore, for NISQ era quantum networks, we will consider only qubit-based procedures [ 21 ].…”

The Quantum Internet: Enhancing Classical Internet Services one Qubit at a Time

“…And the other is classical, i.e., a pair of bits transmitted from the source to the destination. Indeed, classical signaling is not limited to teleportation, but it rather constitutes a requirement widespread within the different quantum network tasks and functionalities [6], ranging from entanglement generation through distillation to swapping ad discussed in Section II.…”

“…From the above, it becomes evident that the successful design of the Quantum Internet must carefully assess and account for the interdependence between classical Internet and Quantum Internet. Yet despite its fundamental role, such an interdependence is still underanalyzed, and its deep understanding represents a crucial open problem [6].…”