Alice and Bob are unhappy – Eve has stolen all their secrets! A secure QKD communication system would surely help! But how to design it? Quantum calculations are hard, and lab experiments are expensive and time-consuming. Choosing efficient protocols, selecting components, building a system, and estimating its performance are all nontrivial tasks!

VPIphotonics develops a simulation tool to support quantum communication engineers

Researchers and engineers at VPIphotonics have shown that a classical simulation framework can be utilized for modeling QKD protocols based on weak coherent states. A first version of the quantum key distribution toolkit “VPItoolkit QKD” has been developed and provided to the project consortium for evaluation. What can it do for you? The simulation tool contains key building blocks like CV-QKD transmitters, receivers, DSP as well as modules for parameter and secret key rate estimation, and it can take into account various imperfections and degradation effects. VPIphotonics continues development to add DV-QKD protocols and enhance the toolkit features to provide a powerful design tool to a wide community of quantum communication engineers.

Does the future look promising? It is a long way to go, but what you can do already now is to drop a secret message to Santa@vpiphotonics.com asking him for a nice gift for Alice and Bob.