FiRM: Fidelity-based Rate Maximizing Routes for Quantum Networks

Efficient routing of information between end-nodes is a key enabler for secure quantum networks and quantum secret key sharing, which rely on creating and sustaining entangled states over time. However, such pairwise entanglements degrade due to channel loss and the storage of the entangled photons at the network nodes. The state of entanglement in turn impacts fidelity, a metric which quantifies the degree of similarity between a pair of quantum states. In this paper, we propose a routing solution that satisfies threshold fidelity requirements imposed by a receiver on the quantum information received from multiple transmitter nodes. Our solution selects intermediate repeaters from a pool of such nodes within the network to maximize the sum-rate of quantum information transfer. To this extent, we first provide expressions for the fidelity loss between adjacent nodes as well as for the end-to-end quantum data rate. Then, we propose a novel two-stage routing solution that (i) identifies the k-shortest paths for each transmitter using fidelity as cost metric and (ii) (heuristically) assigns a path for each transmitter depending on whether the repeater nodes have a single or multiple available memory units. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed fidelity-based routing solution satisfies a wide range of fidelity requirements [0.6-0.79] while maximizing the quantum information transfer rate, outperforming the existing distance- and hop-based routing approaches.