News: Initia­ti­ve from the Com­mu­ni­ty for the Deve­lo­p­ment of a QTF-Back­bone

In recent years, two new tech­no­lo­gies have come to the fore for opti­cal fiber net­works: opti­cal Quan­tum Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on for the rea­liza­ti­on of phy­si­cal­ly secu­re mes­sa­ge trans­mis­si­on and the opti­cal dis­tri­bu­ti­on of time and fre­quen­cy (T&F) signals with a lar­ge gain in accu­ra­cy. The fur­ther deve­lo­p­ment and broad use of the­se tech­no­lo­gies as part of R&D acti­vi­ties and in future com­mer­cial appli­ca­ti­ons opens up new pos­si­bi­li­ties, such as the oppor­tu­ni­ty for “end-to-end secu­ri­ty in a hyper-con­nec­ted world” or impro­ved posi­tio­ning sys­tems. In par­al­lel to the direct deve­lo­p­ment of sys­tems and com­pon­ents within the frame­work of initia­ti­ves such as QuNet3, QR.X3, and SQuaD, this requi­res the estab­lish­ment and main­ten­an­ce of a sui­ta­ble R&D infra­struc­tu­re at natio­nal and Euro­pean level. This infra­struc­tu­re, which joint­ly sup­ports Quan­tum Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on and Time and Frequen­cy Dis­tri­bu­ti­on (“QTF-Back­bone”), requi­res a per­spec­ti­ve of at least a deca­de. Quan­tum Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on and time and fre­quen­cy dis­tri­bu­ti­on place spe­cial demands on such a dedi­ca­ted fiber link and pro­mi­se gre­at syn­er­gies in the joint imple­men­ta­ti­on — both are­as should bene­fit from the capa­bi­li­ties of the com­ple­men­ta­ry part­ner in order to deve­lop their full spe­ci­fic func­tion­a­li­ty.

The “Initia­ti­ve for the estab­lish­ment of a fiber optic back­bone for Quan­tum Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on and time and fre­quen­cy dis­tri­bu­ti­on in Ger­ma­ny”, that ori­gi­na­tes from the Ger­man quan­tum com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons com­mu­ni­ty aims to initia­te a Ger­man fiber optic back­bone, which will then be available for rese­arch, deve­lo­p­ment and use of Quan­tum Tech­no­lo­gies (QT) as well as Time and Fre­quen­cy signals (T&F) in the coming deca­de. Fur­ther infor­ma­ti­on on the QTF-Back­bone can be found on the web­site set up for this pur­po­se and in the sum­ma­ry.

Aut­hor: PTB

Figu­re: Sym­bo­lic repre­sen­ta­ti­on of a QTF back­bone con­sis­ting of opti­cal fibers and nodes (POPs), which would be available for rese­arch, deve­lo­p­ment, and use of appli­ca­ti­ons in the fields of Quan­tum Tech­no­lo­gies and time and fre­quen­cy signals (QT&F) throug­hout Ger­ma­ny.

Aut­hor of the illus­tra­ti­on: © PTB