2024/09/11 by Brandon Ru, Ru, Brandon, Winston K.G. Seah +3
Computer Science · Engineering · #Advanced Optical Network Technologies #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Network Time Synchronization Technologies #Networking and Internet Architecture (cs.NI)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2409.07049
openalex publication_date 2024/09/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Heralded entanglement generation between nodes of a future quantum internet is a fundamental operation that unlocks the potential for quantum communication. In this paper, we propose a decentralized synchronization protocol that operates at the classical control-plane of the link layer, to navigate the coordination challenges of generating heralded entanglement across few-qubit quantum network nodes. Additionally, with quantum network simulations using NetSquid, we show that our protocol achieves lower entanglement request latencies than a naive distributed queue approach. We observe a sixfold reduction in average request latency growth as the number of quantum network links increases. The Eventual Synchronization Protocol (ESP) allows nodes to coordinate on heralded entanglement generation in a scalable manner within multi-peer quantum networks. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first decentralized synchronization protocol for managing heralded entanglement requests.