QUIET

QUIET (“Quan­tum Inter­net of Things”) is a joint pro­ject fun­ded by the BMBF with the aim of deve­lo­ping a hybrid quan­tum-con­ven­tio­nal – i.e. based on both Quan­tum Tech­no­lo­gies and clas­sic com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on tech­no­lo­gy – com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on net­work.

MOTIVATION
The digi­tiza­ti­on of our socie­ty is pro­gres­sing more and more. An ever-incre­asing num­ber of devices have net­work con­nec­tions, which means that they can exch­an­ge infor­ma­ti­on with one ano­ther and thus respond opti­mal­ly to user requi­re­ments.

This “Inter­net of Things” and the asso­cia­ted increase in the exch­an­ge of our data places incre­asing demands on the secu­ri­ty of our com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on net­works. New tech­no­lo­gies are requi­red to meet the­se demands. Pre­vious net­work-enab­led devices regu­lar­ly exch­an­ge data with each other. Curr­ent­ly, howe­ver, they encrypt your data based on cryp­to­gra­phic pro­to­cols, which are based exclu­si­ve­ly on the fini­te per­for­mance of today’s com­pu­ters. This limits the maxi­mum pos­si­ble data rates and data secu­ri­ty. The use of Quan­tum Sta­tes in a Quan­tum Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on net­work offers a novel solu­ti­on. Here, data is encrypt­ed and exch­an­ged with each other using Quan­tum Sta­tes of light based on fun­da­men­tal laws of natu­re. This will allow mes­sa­ges to be trans­mit­ted secu­re­ly and quick­ly in the future. 

GOALS AND PROCEDURE
The joint pro­ject “Quan­tum Inter­net of Things (QUIET)” aims to deve­lop a hybrid quan­tum-con­ven­tio­nal com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on net­work. In the inter­ac­tion of dis­tri­bu­ted Quan­tum Sta­tes and con­ven­tio­nal trans­mis­si­on, (Quan­tum) Sen­sors are to be net­work­ed. This should signi­fi­cant­ly increase the per­for­mance and secu­ri­ty of the net­work. All levels of the net­work are con­side­red, from the phy­si­cal lay­er to net­work pro­to­cols. In the pro­ject lea­ding rese­arch groups from the fields of Quan­tum Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on and net­work tech­no­lo­gy are working inten­si­ve­ly with com­pa­nies from the tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons sec­tor with the “Inno­va­ti­on Hub of Quan­tum Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on”.

Part­ners
DEUTSCHE TELEKOM AG, T‑LABS
The T‑Labs are the rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment depart­ment of Deut­sche Tele­kom AG (DTAG), which focu­ses on imple­men­ting new tech­no­lo­gy trends and deli­ve­ring tan­gi­ble results for Deut­sche Telekom’s inno­va­ti­on port­fo­lio. Cur­rent rese­arch are­as at T‑Labs include: Future Net­works, Spa­ti­al Com­pu­ting, Net­work Secu­ri­ty & Digi­tal Twin and decen­tra­li­zed sys­tems. Co-Rese­arch is the team’s main task with the visi­on of achie­ving the best pos­si­ble cus­to­mer expe­ri­ence and rese­ar­ching dis­rup­ti­ve tech­no­lo­gies for future tele­com infra­struc­tures. From the Ber­lin loca­ti­on, T‑Labs works with the world’s lea­ding uni­ver­si­ties, start-ups, inves­tors, rese­arch insti­tu­tes and indus­tri­al inno­va­ti­on insti­tu­ti­ons to shape the future of com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on ser­vices tog­e­ther.
In the QUIET pro­ject DTAG focu­ses both on the end-to-end func­tion­a­li­ty of an inte­gra­ted Quan­tum IoT Sys­tem and on archi­tec­tu­ral and ope­ra­tio­nal aspects that repre­sent the skills to be pro­vi­ded in a cost- and time-opti­mi­zed way. In par­ti­cu­lar, DTAG would like to pur­sue the poten­ti­al for inno­va­ti­on in the “secu­ri­ty-by-design” dimen­si­on, i.e. robust­ly pro­vi­ding secu­ri­ty and pri­va­cy from the sen­sor to the backend and back with the appro­pria­te use of Quan­tum Resour­ces. Oppor­tu­ni­ties for impro­ving per­for­mance in terms of data through­put and ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy should also be exami­ned more clo­se­ly along the IoT end-to-end view.

TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITÄT (TU) DRESDEN
Prof. Dr. Frank H. P. Fit­zek (DTPK):
More than 70 sci­en­tists work at the Deut­sche Tele­kom Pro­fes­sor­ship for Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on Net­works. The main rese­arch are­as of the chair focus on 5G/6G, the tac­ti­le inter­net, Quan­tum Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on, post-Shan­non theo­ry, net­work coding (NC), com­pres­sed sens­ing (CS), soft­ware defi­ned net­works (SDN), net­work func­tion vir­tua­liza­ti­on (NFV) and dis­tri­bu­ted Cloud Com­pu­ting (CC). The chair mana­ges the 6G-life rese­arch hub, the Clus­ter of Excel­lence Tac­ti­le Inter­net with Human-in-the-Loop (CeTI) and coor­di­na­tes the Cen­ter for Explainable and Effi­ci­ent AI Tech­no­lo­gies (CEE-AI).

Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Jür­gen Czar­s­ke (MST):  
The Chair for Mea­su­re­ment and Sen­sor Sys­tem Tech­no­lo­gy (MST) hea­ded by Prof. Czar­s­ke has pro­ven exper­ti­se in the deve­lo­p­ment of sys­tems for pho­to­nics and optics. Prof. Czar­s­ke is a Fel­low of OPTICA, SPIE and EOS. Sin­ce working for Sie­mens AG in the 1980s, he has had expe­ri­ence in opti­cal com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons tech­no­lo­gy. MST has recei­ved over 80 sci­en­ti­fic awards and honors, most recent­ly the Joseph Fraun­ho­fer Award / Robert M. Bur­ley Pri­ze and the Ber­tha Benz Pri­ze from the Daim­ler and Benz Foun­da­ti­on. The MST chair is working on para­digm shifts for com­pu­ter-aided laser sys­tems that are tail­o­red to spe­ci­fic are­as of appli­ca­ti­on. Using deep lear­ning, few-mode and mul­ti­mo­de fibers can be cha­rac­te­ri­zed to trans­fer to phy­si­cal lay­er secu­ri­ty and Quan­tum Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons. 

Prof. Dr. Kam­biz Jams­hi­di (IPD):
The Inte­gra­ted Pho­to­nic Devices (IPD) group uses a fab­less approach, i. H. focu­ses on the model­ling, design and cha­rac­te­riza­ti­on of pho­to­nic cir­cuits. The IPD is invol­ved in seve­ral projects/initiatives and works tog­e­ther with seve­ral natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal rese­arch insti­tu­tes and com­pa­nies. The IPD group deals with the rea­liza­ti­on of pho­to­nic struc­tures with EPIC and PIC tech­no­lo­gies with a focus on Quan­tum Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on and (clas­si­cal and non-clas­si­cal) com­pu­ting appli­ca­ti­ons.

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dirk Plet­tem­ei­er (HFT): 
The Chair of High Fre­quen­cy Tech­no­lo­gy (HFT) hea­ded by Prof. Plet­tem­ei­er has exten­si­ve expe­ri­ence in the deve­lo­p­ment of pho­to­nic sys­tems and high fre­quen­cy elec­tro­nics as well as appli­ca­ti­on-ori­en­ted com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on sys­tems. In par­ti­cu­lar, the inte­gra­ti­on of broad­band anten­nas and ultra-fast data trans­mis­si­on sys­tems is a focus. In addi­ti­on to the anten­na deve­lo­p­ment, this also includes the inves­ti­ga­ti­on of the pro­pa­ga­ti­on of elec­tro­ma­gne­tic waves in the spe­ci­fic appli­ca­ti­on sce­na­rio, the cha­rac­te­riza­ti­on of elec­tro­ma­gne­tic mate­ri­al pro­per­ties for the anten­na design and the metro­lo­gi­cal cha­rac­te­riza­ti­on of the manu­fac­tu­red anten­nas. The chair also has expe­ri­ence with the mea­su­re­ment and con­s­truc­tion of micro­wa­ve pho­to­nic and opti­cal com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on sys­tems. 

TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITÄT (TU) MÜNCHEN
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dr. rer. nat. Hol­ger Boche (LTI):  
The LTI working group at TUM has been working on the deve­lo­p­ment of Quan­tum Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on sin­ce 2010. An important buil­ding block for a future tech­no­lo­gi­cal use of Quan­tum Sys­tems for infor­ma­ti­on trans­mis­si­on is a mathe­ma­ti­cal­ly deve­lo­ped and ope­ra­tio­nal­ly meaningful Quan­tum Infor­ma­ti­on Theo­ry. As in the case of clas­si­cal infor­ma­ti­on, an asym­pto­tic theo­ry in the sen­se of Shan­non is a sui­ta­ble frame­work. The main focus of the rese­arch work is a quan­ti­ta­ti­ve under­stan­ding of the role of various com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on resour­ces of a clas­si­cal and quan­tum-theo­re­ti­cal natu­re and their mutu­al rela­ti­onships with one ano­ther. 

Dr.-Math. Chris­ti­an Dep­pe (LNT): 
Sin­ce 2018, Dr. Dep­pe tea­ches and rese­ar­ches in the field of Quan­tum Tech­no­lo­gies at the Chair of Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons Engi­nee­ring at the Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich led by Prof. Ger­hard Kra­mer (Hum­boldt Pro­fes­sor­ship 2010). In tea­ching and rese­arch in elec­tri­cal engi­nee­ring, he repres­ents the are­as of Quan­tum Error Cor­rec­tion, Quan­tum Algo­rith­ms, Quan­tum Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on, coding theo­ry, dis­crete mathe­ma­tics and opti­miza­ti­on. In Munich, Dr. Dep­pe heads the BMBF pro­jects “Quan­tum Repea­ter in Quan­tum Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on Net­works” and “Infor­ma­ti­on and Coding Theo­ry for Quan­tum Token-Based Authen­ti­ca­ti­on and Secu­re Sto­rage”. 

Dr. rer. nat. Janis Nöt­zel (TQD): 
Dr. Nöt­zel recei­ved his doc­to­ra­te in 2012 with his dis­ser­ta­ti­on “Quan­tum Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on under Chan­nel Uncer­tain­ty”. He work­ed in the BMBF pro­jects “Sys­tem models and mul­ti­path com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on pro­to­cols for quan­tum repea­ters” and “Eaves­drop­ping-pro­of com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on, attacks and sys­tem design”, was a DFG scho­lar­ship hol­der and hea­ded a rese­arch trans­fer at the TU Dres­den. In 2018 he moved to the Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich as head of the first DFG Emmy-Noe­ther group in elec­tri­cal engi­nee­ring for the field of Quan­tum Tech­no­lo­gies, whe­re he rese­ar­ches the inte­gra­ti­on of Quan­tum Tech­no­lo­gy into com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on net­works and the are­as of Quan­tum Net­works, infor­ma­ti­on-theo­re­ti­cal mode­ling of phy­si­cal pro­ces­ses and soft­ware engi­nee­ring for Quan­tum Hard­ware repres­ents. 

LEIBNIZ-INSTITUT FÜR FESTKÖRPER- UND WERKSTOFFFORSCHUNG (IFW) DRESDEN
The Insti­tu­te for Inte­gra­ti­ve Nano­sci­en­ces (IIN) of the Leib­niz Insti­tu­te for Solid Sta­te and Mate­ri­als Rese­arch Dres­den (IFW) deals with nano­tech­no­lo­gies that enable a varie­ty of appli­ca­ti­ons from nano­ro­bo­tics to Quan­tum Pho­to­nics. The nano­pho­to­nics group of the IIN, led by Dr. Cas­par Hopf­mann, is a world lea­der in the manu­fac­tu­re of ent­an­gled pho­ton pair sources based on semi­con­duc­tor Quan­tum Dots. It was recent­ly pro­ven that the Quan­tum Dots as Quan­tum Sys­tems can also be used as opti­cal­ly acti­ve Quan­tum Sto­rage Sys­tems. The group is an acti­ve part­ner of the QR.X and ct.qmat asso­cia­ti­ons.