Team Achievements
July 2022: QuTech, Eurofiber and Juniper demonstrate an MDI-QKD testbed
In July 2022 the team succesfully demonstrated a deployed MDI-QKD system to be functional inside Utrecht datacenters. Industry partners Eurofiber and Juniper will use this testbed to investigate commercialization of quantum networking technology. Read more.
May 2022: Installing the MDI-QKD nodes in Utrecht Data Centers
In May 2022 the team took the MDI-QKD system out of the lab once again, to install them in various Data Centers in the Utrecht region. The system was installed in standard data center racks to show the practical use of the nodes in a relevant, active environment.
This move is part of a bigger project with Eurofiber, where particular effort will be taken to investigate and test use cases of the MDI-QKD system. Stay tuned for updates!
December 2021: Quantum safe banking over a telescope link
A challenge of fiber based QKD is the distance limit between nodes. One of the solutions is the use of free space links, to potentially enable satellite based QKD. The team has therefore collaborated with TNO Space to replace a fiber link with a free space link
In December 2021, the team demonstrated their full system integrated with telescopes, where the obtained keys secured financial transactions for weeks: A real-world application of secure quantum keys.
July 2021: Real world deployment
In July 2021, the team took their Measurement Device Independent Quantum Key Distribution (MDI-QKD) out of the lab and deployed it in the field. In MDI-QKD, two end nodes, Alice and Bob, send qubits to a central node, where they interfere and get detected. Information about the detection and the sent qubits can be used to generate a secret key. In the deployment, Alice was located at QuTech, Bob in Den Haag and then Center Node in Rijswijk. The qubits were sent from end node to center node via optical fiber.
During this deployment, the team also demonstrated coexistence of the quantum signals and classical data traffic. In total, 3 different channels travelled over the same fiber: The quantum signals, a 100 Mb/s classical signal and a 10 Gb/s classical signal. The classical channels were generated by high-end routers, demonstrating integration of our technology and the industry.
To further demonstrate the practical use of MDI-QKD, the generated key was used to encrypt a video stream between the two end nodes. The full demonstration shows an important step towards the future secure quantum network.
Want to learn more about this project? Watch the full video of the showcase day!